Abstract

Family vlogging content creators on social media apps like TikTok have the potential to make large sums of money but at what cost to the children featured in those accounts? Allowing children to be used in family vlogging accounts provides the opportunity for cyber creeps to stalk, target and communicate with children who lack the life experience to deal with such behaviour. Some cyber creeps have been proven to seek in-person meetings with children, after the formation of a one-sided parasocial relationship that a child would not be expected to understand or anticipate. Some children featured in family vlogging accounts may also be victimised by their own parents and guardians. The abuse occurring in this context can include physical and psychological abuse, and the exploitation of the child’s digital labour. This paper will discuss the issue of children featured in family vlogging accounts being exposed to various forms of abuse and exploitation from cyber creeps and from their own families, in light of the limited legal protections for the children involved.    

Children featured in TikTok family vlogging accounts may be exposed to various forms of abuse and exploitation from online predators, and from their own families.

Social media’s growing popularity can be exemplified by TikTok, commonly known as a joyous social media app (Schellewald, 2023) which promotes short-form video, and livestreaming. People can sign up for a TikTok account from the age of 13 with limited affordances and the TikTok LIVE Safety Guide states that “creators must be 18+ to go LIVE” (TikTok, 2025). Despite these rules, parents often include their children on their family vlogging accounts on TikTok. Family vlogging is a popular genre on TikTok and can be loosely defined as content uploaded by one or more parent to social media, with the videos uploaded focussing on family activities (Dunn, 2025) including the most personal moments of family life such as a child’s tantrum, family dinner or even visits from government officials like Child Protective Services and police. The presence of children on family vlogging livestreams raises concerns about the child’s privacy and safety, while parents who share social media content of their children without their informed consent raise concerns about the ethics of their own behaviour. In response to criticism, family vloggers may respond that their videos and livestreams provide income for their family and a source of relatable content for viewers. Family vloggers on TikTok like the Resilient Jenkins (@jenkinsresiliencecrew) maintain over 262,000 followers and frequently achieve millions of views on their videos which can include cooking, playing and celebrating birthdays. The Resilient Jenkins have posted videos of their children in bed and sleeping which may help the viewer to feel more connected to the creators but the cost to the welfare of their own children may be great. Cyberbullying, online predators and the cold reality of commodifying a child for financial gain (Divon, 2025) are factors to be considered as children featured in TikTok family vlogging accounts may be exposed to various forms of abuse and exploitation from online predators, and from their own families.

Some family vloggers use their children on social media before they are capable of understanding they have a right to say no to participating in that type of content creation, with minors being generally unaware of their rights until at least the age of 9 (Melton, 1980). This lack of awareness may be making some children vulnerable to exploitation by trusted family members who profit from the child’s lack of understanding and ability to advocate for themselves. The family vlogging genre, exemplified by creators like TikTok’s the Resilient Jenkins (@jenkinsresiliencecrew) can involve filming and livestreaming children from birth with the intention of financial gain (Morehouse, 2024) despite the children’s ignorance of their role in the money-making process. Children appearing on livestreams are not only vulnerable to losing their privacy, but to online grooming as well. Online grooming may be defined as being when a cyber creep uses the messaging affordances of a social media app to target a child for some sort of erotic intent (Shiau, 2024). Children without their own TikTok account, and those who choose not to follow adults on their own account may still be targeted by comments from cyber creeps if their parents are involved in family vlogging because livestreaming on TikTok allows for comments to be sent and seen in real time. The ability of children on family vlogging accounts to see comments from viewers who may include cyber creeps, supports research showing that minors have become progressively more susceptible to online exploitation (Fine, 2024). Online cyber creeps are able to view and message children on TikTok family vlogging accounts when the children in question could otherwise have blocked them. This means family vlogging accounts are effectively a loophole of access to children by adult cyber creeps who can deceive children and parents by cultivating phoney profiles (Wani, 2017) which are then used to follow family vlogging accounts. Once a cyber creep has access to an account featuring children, data indicates that 19.57% of the content they see will show minors wearing skimpy clothes, and this type of content has been associated with undesirable comments (Schirmer, 2024) directed towards the children.

It has been proven that minors are messaged by cyber creeps for inappropriate content on social media apps including TikTok (Schirmer, 2024) meaning parents who post family vlogging content may unwittingly facilitate a cyber creeps’ attempt to exploit their children. When a cyber creep uses a family vlogging account to contact a child, they may develop a parasocial relationship with them, and the cyber creep may want to meet the child in person (Schirmer, 2024). The possibility that children of family vloggers may fall victim to this type of predatory behaviour suggests family vlogging places children in danger and that this danger is facilitated, either knowingly or not, by the parents who own the family vlogging accounts. The author presents no evidence to suggest that family vloggers have deliberately placed their children in danger however it is noted that studies have shown that “more than 60% of adult respondents claim they are aware of online grooming and its corresponding dangers” (Dorsanny, et. Al., 2021). This general awareness does not appear to deter family vloggers from uploading content however, some of which may seem harmless to a healthy mind but may be sexualised in the mind of a predatory cyber creep who will follow and message a child online with the desired outcome of eventually meeting the child in person (Cano et. al., 2014).

The potential for children on family vlogging accounts to be exposed to abuse highlights the need for greater protections of the child’s right to privacy and safety. Breaches of a child’s privacy and safety through family vlogging may generally mean exposing the child’s name and face to an endless number of viewers, most of whom are strangers. Other breaches of privacy could occur because of malicious cyber hacking like doxing, which is the leaking of a content creator’s private details online (Douglas, 2016). There have also been instances where family vloggers have unwittingly doxed their own location, which is no less serious than malicious doxing because of the potential risk to children at the disclosed location. Protecting children from these risks is required because of their defenceless position (Minkus et. al., 2015) and the responsibility for the child’s protection falls on the parents and guardians who own the family vlogging accounts. Every video of a child posted on a family vlogging account can be viewed by a limitless amount of people and pieces of information like habits and personal style are revealed to viewers without discrimination. This reality would suggest that limiting viewers to family and friends would better protect children from harm however online sharing between closed communities may still not be safe when considering FBI statistics recorded 90% of criminal violence against minors was committed by a family member or friend (Minkus et. al., 2015). Parental responsibility also extends to the type of digital legacy created for the children of the owners of the family vlogging account. Memories made up of the children’s private moments become part of the digital world when they are uploaded to the online space, and this occurs without the child’s informed consent. This becomes problematic when considering that if a child’s information is uploaded to any social media site the parent will have created a digital footprint that the child will find almost impossible to erase later in life (Minkus et. al., 2015).

If parents persist in exposing their children to danger by including them on family vlogging accounts, whether in videos or on livestreams, the opportunity for legal protection of the child may be limited at present as studies have shown the justice system has fallen behind in dealing with cyber creeps who may use TikTok and other social networking sites as a virtual smorgasbord of potential victims (Vartapetiance, 2014). This shortfall in legal protection for the child is additional to the failure of the social networking sites like TikTok to stop children from appearing in family vlogging livestreams, despite their own guidelines stating that only people over the age of 18 can go LIVE (TikTok, 2025). Further to this point, online social networking sites have mostly been left to manage their own user’s objectionable behaviour (Yar, 2018) meaning there may be limited opportunity for the law to deal with a cyber creep’s inappropriate messaging of any child they contact through a family vlogging account. Online predators are hard to distinguish (Vartapetiance, 2014) for many reasons and children who are old enough to read may be at risk of communicating with a cyber creep using a fake profile to send messages to children on TikTok LIVE. A child’s presence on a livestream will be visible to the cyber creep, but the cyber creep’s true identity will be concealed to the child and their family. Any communication between the child and a cyber creep that is facilitated by the child’s appearance on any sort of family vlogging content will expose the child to risk that they do not have the emotional sophistication to defend themselves from (Vartapetiance, 2014).  

Despite these risks, parent-owners of family vlogging accounts continue to upload content featuring their children with various motives, including money however the income earned from this form of digital labour returns negligible benefits to the children involved (Van den Abeele, 2022). Children of family vloggers may not be aware that their family income is being generated from paid product promotions (Masterson, 2021) dependent on their digital labour. Child digital labour uploaded to family vlogging accounts includes making a child speak to camera, filming the child’s playtime and even filming children while asleep such as in a video published by the Resilient Jenkins entitled “co-sleeping with toddler and newborn” (Resilient Jenkins, n.d.) which had over 864,000 views by 03/04/2025. The questionable rationale for using a child’s private playtime for financial profit may be explained by statistics showing that 86% of American respondents admitted they would upload social media content for financial gain (Masterson, 2021). While financial gain may be accepted as motive for an adult to commercialise their own content, this motivation can’t be applied to a child before they have the capacity to understand the value of their own work and time. Further, some family vloggers have been caught using child abuse as motivation for their children to better perform in social media content. There have been several publicised cases including the arrest of Machelle Hobson in 2019 (Abrams, 2023) which have demonstrated that some parents are willing to harm their children for financial gain. Despite public awareness of the potential and actual harms suffered by some children as a result of family vlogging, its appeal remains, possibly because money and followers equal status in the world of social media (Kim, 2020).

TikTok is a very popular social media app which offers creators the ability to post photos, videos and to go live. The TikTok guidelines state that children are excluded from appearing on livestreams, however children have been featured in the livestreams of family vlogging accounts. Family vlogging is generally defined as content uploaded to social media by one or more parents or guardians, which includes children and is focussed on home life and family issues. Some of the issues included in family vlogging content may be very personal, such as videos uploaded showing children sleeping, and criticism does not appear to deter family vloggers from continuing to upload controversial content. It has been shown that minors are incapable of understanding the social and financial implications of their inclusion in family vlogging content, and that this fact may facilitate their exploitation. Family vlogging accounts have messaging features which allow children to be used to communicate with followers, some of whom may be concealing their identity, and this may place the children in danger of being pursued for inappropriate content, or even physical meet-ups. If a child is used in family vlogging content, they have no opportunity to block adults they don’t feel comfortable communicating with which may imply the children in these circumstances are being placed in danger by their own parents and guardians. Other issues facing children who are used on family vlogging accounts include the creation of a digital footprint which they may find near impossible to erase later in life, and the normalisation of sharing personal information they may rather keep private. Family vloggers have continued to create and upload content including their children despite the risks outlined and this may be explained in part by the opportunity for the family vlogging accounts holders to earn large amounts of money, and to gain a large following. Other factors affecting the continuation of uploading content featuring children may also be that laws to deal with the protection of a child’s rights online have proven to be inadequate for this purpose.   

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