01-07-2025
Why Soup and Caleb Finn want to see better protections for the kids of family influencers
Like many influencers, 'Soup' has made a name for herself on TikTok by candidly sharing the highs and lows of motherhood.
Yet the 18-million-plus followers of the 29-year-old and her partner Caleb Finn — who are some of the biggest creators in Australia — have never once seen the faces of their kids.
"We looked a lot into children that had grown up in [the influencer] industry and how it affected them mentally and socially," the Melbourne local told triple j Hack.
"We decided that we'd give our children fake names, we'd cover their faces, and very limitedly show them online."
But not everyone's drawing the line where Soup and Caleb are; social media is full of parents filming their kids 24/7, pranking them, using their real names and essentially creating a brand for themselves and their family.
It's a huge business and, despite the looming social media ban facing under-16s, it's an industry that still goes largely unregulated in Australia.
Crystal Abidin, Professor of Internet Studies at Curtin University and the author of an upcoming book about child influencers, says while there are "long-standing guidelines" for how child actors should be treated, it becomes "fuzzy territory" when influencers are involved.
For example, if a clothing brand was shooting their own ad campaign and wanted to cast a child in it, they'd need to work within state-based laws, which include limitations on working hours, and often require special licences.
But if that brand were to simply hire a parenting influencer to shoot their child in the same clothes at home, that child-actor legislation wouldn't necessarily apply.
Crystal says when it comes to contracting influencers, brands "aren't really clear on what the safeguards are behind the scenes".
"You merely trust [that] their manager, who's probably their mum or parent, acts in their best interest."
Sponsored content aside, Faith Gordon — an associate professor in Law at ANU, who specialises in youth justice — says family vlogging raises "immediate ethical concerns".
"There's a clear power dynamic … so consent really comes into play quite considerably.
"The family home is one of the most private spaces that we have in our lives, somewhere that one would hope to be relaxed … without someone observing them constantly, [let alone] millions of people."
And content creation at home makes working hours murky, too.
If a child's daily life is being filmed all day every day, when are they really playing, and when are they working?
"I definitely think there's a difference between exploitation and representation," Soup says.
"You're filming their tantrum, you're filming when they're going through puberty, their worst moments, and you're posting that for millions of people to see."
Overseas, some jurisdictions have begun to slowly implement measures to better protect child influencers and family creators.
The US states of California and Illinois expanded their child-labour laws last year, requiring parents to set aside a percentage of a child's earnings in a trust they can access as an adult.
France introduced similar protections in 2020, when it also regulated the working hours of social media stars and legislated a young influencer's "right to be forgotten".
This means platforms, including search engines, must remove all personal data at the child's request, which Gordon says is a key issue in Australia.
While it could be uncomfortable or fraught to ask your parent to take down content, she says approaching platforms themselves is often ineffective too, leaving young people "feeling really anxious about the delays and the time that it takes to get content removed".
Crystal says China has some of the most comprehensive laws in this area.
"It's not just the parent and child who face regulation, it's the brand that contracts them, as well as the platform that hosts that content.
"Everybody has a vested interest, whether out of love or fear of penalty, to ensure that the children involved in this industry are … protected and safe."
In Australia, if young people feel that content is sexual, harmful or incites violence towards them, they can make a complaint to the e-Safety Commissioner.
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner is also developing a Children's Online Privacy Code, which is currently in consultation and due to come into effect by December 2026.
The Code applies to social media services and will amend the Privacy Act and the Australian Privacy Principles to better protect young people online.
The Australian Influencer Marketing Council, a not-for-profit industry body, is creating an industry information sheet on working with child and family influencers, to help guide brands on best practice in the area.
In the meantime, Soup says it's up to sponsors and platforms to better regulate the booming industry. She says applying child-actor laws to influencer kids is step one.
"Brands should put these rules into contracts if they know children are going to be involved in videos.
"It's up to brands and social media platforms to … make sure that everyone is doing this in a safe way."
For Crystal, legislation and industry leadership will only be strengthened by contribution from online audiences themselves.
"[Followers] can spot immediately when something is out of place because they also tend to follow so many different creators," she says.
"They [know] when someone is a bit cheeky and trying to fly under the radar of guidelines and law."
While it may seem frivolous or fun to an outsider, Gordon stresses that for many of these young people, creating influencer content is a job — and they're entitled to protection.
"We're going to ban children 16 and under from many of the platforms where vlogging goes on," Gordon says.
"If they can't access these platforms but their content is being posted there, what do we do about that?
"It's not something we've heard about from the federal government … and I think it's something that's missing."
