Illinois passes law to compensate child influencers

Illinois passed a law on Friday requiring child influencers to be paid.

Starting next July, parents who post videos of their children under 16 years old must set aside earnings generated from these posts in a trust fund for the child that they can access once they’re 18.

The amount the child earns depends on how long they are featured in the video. For the law to apply, a child must be in at least 30% of monetized videos over the course of one 30-day period within the past 12 months. However, the child doesn’t actually have to appear in the video for the law to apply; for instance, a parent telling a story about their kid counts.

These “kidfluencers” can take legal action if they weren’t properly compensated by their parents, though as NBC notes, “the bill does not provide a government enforcement mechanism, meaning compliance and legal action is left up to individual families.”

The new rights for young influencers in Illinois echo similar protections for child actors. In 1939, California passed the Coogan Act, which ensures that kids working in the entertainment industry receive at least 15% of their earnings.

“The rise of social media has given children new opportunities to earn a profit. Many parents have taken this opportunity to pocket the money, while making their children continue to work in these digital environments,” Illinois Sen. Dave Koehler, who sponsored the bill, said in a press release.

Last year, a survey conducted by The Motherhood—a marketing agency that partly specializes in parenting influencers—found that nearly all of the roughly 360 influencers it surveyed within its network said they include their children in sponsored posts.

“I think brands need to be very cognizant of their rates for influencers, and how much they’re budgeting for these things, factoring in all of this [and thinking], ‘Not only am I working with the influencer, I’m working with her child too,’” Deanna Tomaselli, VP of client services at The Motherhood, told us at the time.

While similar bills to protect child influencers have been proposed in states like Washington, it remains to be seen how they fare. Still, some child’s rights activists are hopeful that these types of laws will continue gaining traction.

“Social media labor and careers are becoming increasingly common and viable forms of income, and it’s important that the law catches up with technology to ensure minors aren’t being exploited,” Jessica Maddox, an assistant professor at the University of Alabama who specializes in social media studies, told CNN.