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SMNTY Classics: The Dark Side of Mom Influencers · Stuff Mom Never Told You

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Anny and Samantha.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: I welcome to Stuff Never Told Your production by Heart Radio,
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: and for today's classic, we are bringing back one that
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: we did with Bridget about mom influencers. And the reason
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: for that is this has been a huge topic of
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: conversation lately. There's been some books, some kind of tell
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: all books from children who have been exploited in this
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: way coming out.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: I think there's been some like mini series about it,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: which I'm always.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: Kind of of two minds about because I'm glad we're
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: talking about it, but at the same time, it also
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: feels like you're making money off of exploited at the
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: same time, so it can be true.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Two things can be true. Yes, So I thought we
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: would bring this one back and please enjoy.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to Stephan
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Never Told You, a protection of iHeartRadio, and today we
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: are once again thrilled, so ecstatic, joyful to be joined
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: by the amazing world traveling Bridget.
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: I love the introductions you all give. They like truly
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: warm my heart.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, well, you warm our heart by being here, especially
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: when you're doing so much other stuff and you are
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: coming at us from a different location.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: Correct, that's right.
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  Speaker 3: I'm coming from you lot. Well, it won't be live
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: when people hear this, but live for right now from
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: Mexico City, Mexico, where it's nice and warm. Yeah, it's
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: lovely here.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: It looks lovely.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: You've got like a like healthy light globe coming in
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: behind me.
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: Where where we're staying is like has a lovely view,
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: and like all the different monuments and stuff. And then
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: there's I didn't know that Mexico City is so mountainous,
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: so it's like a really it's kind of like being
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: in California, like a beautiful view. But then skyscrapers. Yeah,
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: ten out of ten can.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Recommend yes, So you're having a good time.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Can you give us some highlights, some food maybe that
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: you've had.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: Oh? Yes, everything I've eaten has been amazing, honestly, it's
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: so one of the reasons I wanted to come to
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: Mexico City was because of the food. I've been told
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: that you could go to like Michelin Star super bougie
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: restaurant and get a delicious meal in Mexico City if
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: you wanted to, or just get like, you know, cheap
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: tacos on the street, and that would be delicious, and
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: so I've been eating all the things. Lots of street tacos,
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: which are great. Something else I like is they take
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: breakfast very seriously here, which I am a breakfast person.
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: I really like that. So lots of good breakfast items. Yeah,
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: so far i've been I've only been here since Saturday,
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: so it hasn't been that long. But looking forward to
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  Speaker 3: eating all the things.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: Yes, oh yes, well you've been.
• 3:26
  Speaker 4: There almost a week, so I think you've gotten You've
• 3:28
  Speaker 4: gotten some variety. I'm sure you're gonna have a whole
• 3:30
  Speaker 4: lot more. But that's I'm very jealous of, like the
• 3:32
  Speaker 4: breakfast because I'm sure it's all spicy and delicious.
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: There's something about a savory, spicy breakfast.
• 3:40
  Speaker 5: The spot it does, it really does on it. They'll
• 3:48
  Speaker 5: be there, save a couch.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: For me, save a couch, yes, yes, just as well.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: We're looking forward to checking back in more food updates hopefully.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: But yeah, thank you so much for taking the time
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: to join us from a different city when you haven't
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: been there that long.
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: Oh, always a pleasure. And my own podcast, There Are
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: No Girls on the Internet, is on a hiatus, so
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: I feel like in this time where I'm not podcasting.
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: Having an outlet where I can be like, I saw
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  Speaker 3: this thing on the internet and I have to talk
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: about it with somebody has been great for me. So
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  Speaker 3: thank you for having me.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, And the topic you bought today is fascinating
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: and such like a big one and one that we
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: have discussed a lot on the show recently because we've
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: been kind of on a tech streak on the show
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: and not to like, not to put words into anyone
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: else's mouths. But I didn't grow up with social media.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: I got it late college, I would say, was the
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: earliest that I got. Some friends of mine got it
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: when I was in high school, but I was kind
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: of a late bloomer, as they say. And I know
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: it sounds kind of like back in my day, but
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  Speaker 2: I'm pretty thankful for it, honestly, in a lot of ways.
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  Speaker 3: And this.
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  Speaker 2: Kind of new phenomenon of all of our lives, but
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  Speaker 2: especially in this outline bridget of children's lives being on
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  Speaker 2: the internet is fairly new and in a lot of
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: ways kind of disturbing, a little unsettling. I did want
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: to ask before we get into this conversation both of you,
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: what was your kind of experience with social media and also,
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: and you can pass on this one because I know
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: it's kind of a subject.
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  Speaker 1: Does your family follow you on social media?
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  Speaker 3: Ooh, what a good question?
• 5:56
  Speaker 4: Well, you know, I we just before we got on here,
• 6:01
  Speaker 4: talked about the fact that I am from the generation
• 6:04
  Speaker 4: of Beeper's and that the Internet was not a thing
• 6:07
  Speaker 4: until I almost got into college.
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  Speaker 5: Essentially, like at the tail end of everything.
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  Speaker 4: The beeper was due to my job and at my
• 6:16
  Speaker 4: first job out of college, I was a child abuse
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: investigator and those systems were getting online. I was still
• 6:25
  Speaker 4: in the time when we were doing everything by hand.
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  Speaker 5: Essentially, that was where I am.
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: The technology and social media was fairly new for me.
• 6:33
  Speaker 4: I think outside of college had like MySpace and Facebook.
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  Speaker 4: I dabbled at first, and since then I'm like, Okay,
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  Speaker 4: I like the social media thing, but I'm also very grateful,
• 6:47
  Speaker 4: especially seeing what my nieces and nephew have gone through
• 6:50
  Speaker 4: with social media, which they are a gen zer so
• 6:53
  Speaker 4: is a whole different level. I do have family that
• 6:56
  Speaker 4: follow me, I do not like it, and now a
• 6:59
  Speaker 4: post less because follow me.
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So we were talking about how the first time
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: I met you, Samantha, you this was just a couple
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: of years ago. You had a beeper on your person
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: the first time you met in person four years ago. Yeah,
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: my my relationship with social media, I Annie, I'm kind
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: of like you, Like, I am so glad that I
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: came of age in a time where social media, Like
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: I'm glad that what I was doing on social media
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: or like the early days of my Internet usage is
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: not still around to haunt me or least Scott, I
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: hope not. So. I was using things like live journal
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: when I was in early high school, and I remember
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: I was in college when we first got Facebook, and
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: before Facebook it was MySpace, so like I was like
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: a scene kid and so college like MySpace dominated my
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: college experience. Like that was like how you understood and
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: kept up with my gross scenister hipster friends in college.
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: But it's funny because even though I was dabbling with
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: social media back then, it's so different than it is today.
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: Like it's like it doesn't even feel like the same thing.
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: I guess it technically was social media, but the implications
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: were so different then. I mean, back then you were
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: spending hours making it so that when you go to
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: your MySpace page, it has like falling stars and an
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: auto play panic at the disco song that nobody can pause.
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: But it was stuff like that, and then it was
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: social media, but it was so different than today, the
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: question of whether or not my family follows me on
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: social media. I don't allow them to follow me on
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  Speaker 3: social media. This could be a longer conversation, but I
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  Speaker 3: feel like I've kind of accepted that my social media
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: and digital presence is not actually who I am in
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: real life. And so you know, you should really be
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: thinking about, like when you post on social media, like
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: who is your audience? Who is this? And so who
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: I actually am that the audience for that is like
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: my friends and family, people who knew me in real life,
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: my online persona, if you will. That's not for my
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: friends and family. That's where people who are interested in
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: my podcast, interested in my content, that kind of thing. Like,
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  Speaker 3: And so I draw like pretty clear distinction between the two.
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: Like I almost think of my my social media or
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: my digital self as like my avatar for my real self.
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: And I don't like the idea of the two kind
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: of the two worlds kind of overlapping. So I try
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: to keep a very clear distinction between my friends and
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: family IRL and my social media persona which I don't
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: see as my real self, if that makes sense. I
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: know I probably sound like somebody who just took a
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: huge bong rip. I swear to god I have not.
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  Speaker 4: You know, that's pretty fascinating because I think that says
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  Speaker 4: a lot to the reality of social media when you
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  Speaker 4: say it like that, there is a persona, and there
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  Speaker 4: is this whole level of understanding that there's a difference
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  Speaker 4: between the person and what's seen on screen and in
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  Speaker 4: different accounts and different platforms. And I know, as we're
• 10:09
  Speaker 4: talking about the subject you're bringing, which I have a
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: lot of opinions, So I'm really really excited and a
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  Speaker 4: lot of concerns, just as being in child welfare, but
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  Speaker 4: in that level of what we see and what is
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  Speaker 4: posted and who has control of what is being posted.
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  Speaker 3: Absolutely, it's so complicated, and I think it's complicated for
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  Speaker 3: me as a grown woman in my thirties. I can
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: only manage how much more complicated it gets navigating this
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: as a young person. So I know that I came
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: on the show quite a while ago to talk about
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: Francis Hogan, the Facebook whistleblower, and what her whistle blowing
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: revealed about what Facebook and Instagram knows about how social
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: media negatively impacts young girls, and so that was a
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: conversation that we had. But this conversation is a little
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: bit different because it really asks what happens when it's
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: not the teen or the child child getting on social
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: media themselves. What happens when it's the mom or the
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: parent who is kind of forcing I use that word
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: in quotes, forcing their child to be part of their
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: social media content, part of their social media persona. And
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: so on my podcast, there are no girls on the Internet.
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: I did this fascinating interview with this woman, Sarah Adams,
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: and she runs the TikTok account mom Uncharted. She told
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: me that she calls her account mom Uncharted because social media,
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: if you think about it, is really like this uncharted
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: territory for parenting and we really do not know how
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: social media will impact our kids. If you want to
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: listen to the whole interview, check out my podcast. She's
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: a really fascinating person, but her social media account is
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: dedicated to explorations of kind of mom influencing and like
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: mom run accounts and all the different ways that parents.
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: It's honestly, it's usually moms use their children for content
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: on social media. She told me that social media, you know,
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: the dynamics around it have changed so quickly, not that
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: long ago. If I was to say something like, oh,
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: sharing your kid on social media, you might think that
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: means like posting a cute picture on Facebook where your
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: great aunt or your uncle or something might like it. Now,
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: kids who are not even really old enough to understand
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: what it means, not to mention, not old enough to
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: consent to it, can have their most intimate or sensitive
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: or embarrassing moments seen by millions of people on social
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: media platforms like TikTok.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: Right, as we've said in a lot of these past episodes,
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: this is sort of an iteration of things we've seen before.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: This is going to also kind of age me.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: But my parents want saying a video of me as
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: a kid to America's funny as on videos. But that's
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: like very different, Like they weren't going to make money
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: off of it, right, Yeah, oh my god.
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: Wait what were you doing in that video?
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: Never your mind?
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: No, I was I was alternately like so enamored with
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: a frog and then terrified of the frog. It's just
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: like it wasn't that funny, but they thought it was
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: very funny, but.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: Then it became like you know, reality.
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: TV, and we've talked about those things before as well,
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: of like kind of the dance mom's situation, and then
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: now it becomes what we're seeing on social media where
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: people are making money off of this content of their kids,
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: where the kids can't consent to it, where it will
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: probably never be able to be fully erased if that's
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: what they wanted, If that's what they wanted, And then
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: I know we're going to talk about this later, but
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: there's kind of all these achy issues around, like parasocial
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: relationships people develop with these kids, and what do we
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: do about that? Like is that the platform or is
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: it the parent that's posting this content? Like all all
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: of these questions that come from from what it like
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: one level can seem like, oh, this is just a
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: cute video of this kid falling over but on, but
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: when you dig deeper than that, there's just all of
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: these other questions.
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: Exactly and you put it so well right, just two
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: levels at I don't feel like every parent who shares
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: content of their kid is is creative equal here, Like
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: there's a pretty big difference between you know, sharing the
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: occasional family vacation video or like cute picture or whatever
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: with your friends on social media or even the wider Internet.
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: There's a difference between that which I think most people
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: do and is like fine and running a business that
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: generates income from relying on an audience of millions of
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: people engaging with your child, right, And there are so
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: many questions that you just kind of alluded to and
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: reasons for why we should sort of be asking questions
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: about what that is doing to our kids. One of
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: the things that I think is unique about social media
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: and technology in general is how quickly it moves. Things
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: just move really quickly, And I think that when it
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: comes to our kids and the impact on our kids,
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: it would be who of us to not move really quickly.
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: It would be who of us to take a minute,
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: pump the brakes and do some real deep thought about
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: how we want our children to be showing up on
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: social media and whether or not it's actually good for
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: them psychologically, emotionally, and whether or not it's actually safe
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: like in the real you know, in every implication of
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: the world, like sometimes it is not safe to share
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: so much of your child on social media with strangers.
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: You know first there might be a negative psychological impact
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: on kids I really wanted to find I was like, oh,
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: I'm going to get some good media research on this.
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: But as the uncharted part of Sarah Adams's TikTok name suggests,
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: there kind of isn't a ton of good research out
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: there about the way that being used for content by
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: your parents would impact children. And that's partly because it's
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: just So Morgan sung over at NBC. She's one of
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: my favorite Internet reporters, and she's really been following this
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: beat of young people who have been kind of turned
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: into content by their parents. So Morgan spoke to Lindsay Cooley,
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: who was a licensed clinical child psychologist, who said that
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: because social media is so relatively new, there is not
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: really a lot of clinical research on the long term
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: effects of what she calls growing up online. But lately,
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: some kids who did grow up with parents who shared
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: every aspect of their lives on social media are starting
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: to speak out. Morgan Soong talked to Cam, whose mom
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: used to make content about their life. Cam said that
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: their mom sharing every single detail of their life had
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: a real negative impact on their mental health, and eventually
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: they kind of stopped being open with their mom about
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: whatever they were going through because they knew this is
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: just going to wind up being shared on the internet
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: with her followers. Cam is immunal, compromised, and would spend
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: a lot of time ill or sick, and rather than
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: like being there for them, Cam says that their mom,
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: which is be filming these filming that's for content. So
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: at a time, at times in their life where they
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: were sick or stressed or going through something difficult, their
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: mom would be there with a camera in.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: Their face, right right.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: And I think that's the way you phrased it of
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: like you know, using kids for content, of like then
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: you become something like a tool to get clicks as
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: opposed to like a child that needs care.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: And needs help and needs respect.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: And how damaging that absolutely would be if you start
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: to feel like, oh, it's just like my tears are
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: just a way for you to film something and get
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: people to watch it. Like what would that do to you?
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: Like that's very damaging? I think, yeah.
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: And it's actually as an adult, like speaking of that
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: sort of distinction between my social media life or my
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: digital life and my real life, I don't really share
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: a lot of my like real life on social media,
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: and in part it's because of that tension that you
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: just named. If I have something in my life that
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: is really truly meaningful to me, I am really uncomfortable
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: with the idea of that being content, of that being
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: something to generate clicks, of that being something that's going
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: to have a number attached to it, like, oh, three
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: hundred people liked that my grandfather passed away or whatever.
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: Like I'm I really am not comfortable with that personally,
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: and so I tend to keep big or meaningful real
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: life moments off of social media because of that, because
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: I don't like the idea, and I'm like, no shade
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: to anybody who doesn't feel that way, this is just
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: how it feels for me. It just doesn't feel right,
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: and I think for me it feels like it is
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: does a disservice to how meaningful those moments truly are
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: in my life. I don't want to see Mark Zuckerberg's
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: engagement metric on the back end of something that was
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: like meaningful to me in my real life. That seems
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: to cheapen it. That feels a little bit cheap.
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: To me, I guess, yeah, And it is interesting because again,
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: we are adults, and if you want to post that
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: content and you're contenting to yeah, you're an adult, so
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: you can consent to it.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: Then that's one thing.
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: It still feels strange because that's a whole separate podcast,
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: but kind of the like, oh, here's this sad thing.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: I have to like it because otherwise they're going to
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: be mad I didn't like it, Like there's like this
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: kind of social dynamic around it that feels odd because
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: then you're like, well, I'm liking this thing that's really sad,
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: but if I don't do it. But I do think that,
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: and please don't come at me, listeners, but I do
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: think like this. In the same way people sometimes use
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: like pets or puppies to be like, oh.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: Look how cute. Click on this content.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: Here they are people are using their kids like that,
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: like see here's my life. Here's this like view of
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: my life, and like, oh, what did my kid do
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: today to.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: Get these clicks?
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: And if that is this is like, oh, my kid
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: is very sick and I am going through a hard time. Please,
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: you know, give me these likes, give me this engagement.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: It does become pretty murky, right.
• 20:12
  Speaker 4: You know, it's interesting too as we were talking about
• 20:14
  Speaker 4: the levels, like you're talking about social media etiquette, which
• 20:18
  Speaker 4: has been a conversation like how how do you go
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: from this? But also how social media has grown, Like
• 20:23
  Speaker 4: when you think of the initial Facebook, it was literally
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: to connect with college friends for me, or your past
• 20:29
  Speaker 4: friends or high school friends that you haven't seen, so
• 20:32
  Speaker 4: you may be updating so I might get a picture
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: of my old high school friend.
• 20:36
  Speaker 5: Who had a child, and oh, how cute.
• 20:38
  Speaker 4: And it wasn't necessarily about getting likes and looks. It's
• 20:42
  Speaker 4: just hey, I'm updating you about my life, even to
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: the point that like wedding announcements, funeral announcements were done
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: on Facebook. I'm on Facebook still to remember people's birthdays
• 20:51
  Speaker 4: and to get event invites, because a lot of people
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: used to use that as the way of getting invitations
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: or birthday parties or even sometimes which is really odd.
• 21:01
  Speaker 4: But the level that we have grown to is this
• 21:05
  Speaker 4: genre of TikTok is not a thing You can do
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: private and you can do small content, but it really
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: is a race to see what can go viral and
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: what can make money and what can get sponsorships. And
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: it's changed vastly from what an elder millennial like myself
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: knew it as to what it is today. But because
• 21:26
  Speaker 4: people are learning things so fast or getting access to
• 21:30
  Speaker 4: things so quickly, the etiquette has been kind of lost
• 21:33
  Speaker 4: or lost in translation perhaps, and it's become a point
• 21:37
  Speaker 4: that for the gen zers, and I guess newer millennials,
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: what are those younger millennials, baby millennials have seen this
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: as a norm and didn't realize until maybe just recently
• 21:49
  Speaker 4: as the younger generators who've been on social media all
• 21:52
  Speaker 4: of their lives since their birth have started to call
• 21:55
  Speaker 4: it out that this was normal and a competition and
• 21:58
  Speaker 4: a way of possibly making a live and it's just
• 22:00
  Speaker 4: kind of made this whole culture completely different from what
• 22:05
  Speaker 4: it was even three years ago.
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: Oh my god, that's such an insightful point. And I
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: do think it is like it is not just human nature.
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: It is a little bit, it's some of it, but
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: it's also exactly what you said, I think. I think
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: it's algorithmically generated platforms where whatever is extreme or over
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: the top or whatever gets more attention, and platforms like
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: TikTok where that is the currency is like that that's
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: what gets engagement, is that attention and so you have people,
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: so that's that's like its own thing. When you add
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: in kids to the mix that it just kind of
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: has the potential to really be so fraud Like I
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: remember it was some YouTuber I don't know her name offhand,
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: but she was kind of like quote unquote canceled because
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: she was known for being like a like a YouTuber
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: who showed her family and her family pet passed away.
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: And so she was making a YouTube video about how
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: her family pet passed away, and I guess she accidentally
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: uploaded the unedited footage where her child was very like
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: genuinely authentically upset and crying, and the parent was, rather
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: than consoling this child, trying to tell the child to
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: contort his face so that it would be really so
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: it would be like a really extreme picture of them crying,
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: because she knew that if you use that image of
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: an extreme close up of like a distorted face who's
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: experiencing extreme emotion, if you use that for the thumbnail
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: on YouTube, it gets more engagement. If you ever looked
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: at YouTube videos and you're wondering, why do all the
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: thumbnails have people making really weird over the top faces
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: that nobody really makes in real life. It's because they
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: have figured out that the algorithm rewards videos that include
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: faces like that. And so while this child is seeing
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: a genuine response emotionally to losing their pet, mom is like, Oh,
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: make sure that you really give me a good cry
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: face so that my YouTube video backus performs well. And
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: so I think it's not just our nature as humans,
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: it is also platforms that are prompting people into behavior
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: that they would not otherwise probably do if not for
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: the way that platforms kind of encourage us to do this.
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: Does that make sense?
• 24:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I think again, like the squeaky will
• 24:29
  Speaker 4: gets the oil type of thing where you see the
• 24:32
  Speaker 4: most dramatic or the most over the top. Like one
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: of the things that's really thriving on TikTok is people
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: calling out other people for cheating or thinking they're cheating.
• 24:41
  Speaker 4: If your so and so I just saw your husband
• 24:44
  Speaker 4: here talking to this girl like that's been a big
• 24:46
  Speaker 4: thing and it shouldn't be as before, Like there's a
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: part of this like yes, let the little women know
• 24:51
  Speaker 4: so they can get out, but it's also purely for entertainment,
• 24:55
  Speaker 4: for the numbers, for the likes. And then as we
• 24:58
  Speaker 4: see with these children more and more shocking things that
• 25:01
  Speaker 4: people think is okay. I know a YouTuber as you
• 25:04
  Speaker 4: were talking about another YouTuber family. We talked about this recently. Actually,
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: in one of the episodes you came on, the couple
• 25:10
  Speaker 4: adopted the child just for the sake of saying, we're
• 25:13
  Speaker 4: good people and adopted this child. Come on this journey
• 25:16
  Speaker 4: with us. And then all of a sudden, the child
• 25:17
  Speaker 4: disappeared and I'm good, Look what the hell just happened?
• 25:20
  Speaker 4: What did you do to this child? And it's the
• 25:22
  Speaker 4: same way as we've seen several the couple who did
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: the experiment with their two young boys saying, hey, we're
• 25:31
  Speaker 4: going to say that one of your brothers died, your
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: pretend brother died. Just go along with it so we
• 25:35
  Speaker 4: can make money. And this was a whole experiment on
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: the kids for entertainment. The audience is supposed to know
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: that this is a joke. We're just testing the kids.
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: Let's see how the kids react. And it was so
• 25:47
  Speaker 4: traumatizing to watch these kids pretending like they're lying but
• 25:52
  Speaker 4: questioning why we're doing this, and then having it filmed
• 25:55
  Speaker 4: and everybody saying, what are you doing? This is so
• 25:58
  Speaker 4: mentally damaging to your child, but you're doing this for
• 26:01
  Speaker 4: the sake of TikTok to show what.
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: So the example that you brought up earlier, the family,
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: the YouTube family that adopted a child, they're gonna, We're
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: gonna return to them. They make a little surprised guest
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: appearance in this episode. I think you're right. I think
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: that there is I honestly think it goes back to
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: something that you said, Sam. I think it's a situation
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: where because the Internet has moved so quickly, like from
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: where it was when I was updating my MySpace profile
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: in my dorm room in college to today, that wasn't
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: that long I'm old, but I'm not that old, right,
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: that wasn't that long ago, And where we were then
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: and where we are now are completely different. So it's
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: moved so quickly, and I think it's a situation where
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: not like the cultural norms around what is and is
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: not acceptable, healthy, okay, to do a good idea, to
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: do whatever, those have not kept up how quickly the
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: technology has moved, and so we now can film our
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: kids inside of our house and quickly uploaded to TikTok
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: or YouTube and a million views. Our society has perhaps
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: not progressed to a place where it's like, but should
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: we And I would argue that our laws have also
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: not kept up with that, And so I do think
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: there's something about the speed with which the Internet has
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: changed and become so ubiquitous in our lives that we
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: have not pumped the brakes and allowed for cultural norms,
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: societal norms, the law to all catch up to where
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: we are right now, and especially the fact that kids
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: are involved. We absolutely should be taking the time to
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: be a little bit more introspective and slowed down a
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: little bit, to have a cultural reset about what is
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: it is not okay when it comes to filming children
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: for strangers online right, And it.
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: Kind of always reminds me of the thing that I
• 27:51
  Speaker 4: had to tell kids as Snapchat and all those different
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: things were existing, again reminding them you may think it's
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: not on the internet, but it's on the internet, So
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: just as a reminder, but also the government was very
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: quick to use things like this to go after the
• 28:08
  Speaker 4: marginalized communities, and that's a whole different conversation, I know,
• 28:11
  Speaker 4: but having to try to explain to both parents and
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: two children, like, hey, you posting this picture of your
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: half naked child is actually could be considered child porn,
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: and you can be arrested on a felony and then
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: being completely shocked and then having also letting the kids know, Hey,
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: you just sending it yourself, even though you're doing it
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: with your quote unquote consent. As a minor, you don't
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: have the ability to consent. But it's only going after
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: specific things and specific morality rather than what the root
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: of the problem is with the social media.
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: Oh my god, Sam, this is kind of a non sequitor.
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: I had the like the most like weird conversation with
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: a stranger on TikTok. It was for whatever reason, I
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: get surfaced a lot of content about hallucinogens, like hallucinogen drugs.
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: TikTok thinks I'm very interested in like expanding my mind.
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: And there was a woman who is a woman of
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: looks like a woman of color to me talking about
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: how she enjoys using mushrooms and it's like, oh, like,
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: come follow me from my beautiful day on mushrooms, and
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: it did look like a beautiful day. Like she's at
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: the beach, She's like going for a swim. Looks fantastic.
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: Then she goes to her car, and it like She's like, oh,
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: I had to drive home, and I was like, honey,
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: this is a video. You're a woman of color and
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: this is a video of you admitting to a crime.
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: I'm like, this is not me judging you or me
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: saying this, but it is me knowing that. Like I've
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: seen people. I've seen people who are going through like
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: contentious marital situations to get CPS called on them. Like
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: I've heard horror stories of people who just uploaded stuff
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: to the Internet without thinking about it, and then they
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: lost a job, they lost a scholarship, like the courts
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: got involved, and somebody else was like, why is that
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: the first thing that you jumped to, And I was like,
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: I understand that, Like it sucks, and I like, I
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: don't want to be the person to have to tell
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: you this and like rain out of your parade from
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: you your nice day that you were trying to show
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: with the internet. But I want to be the person
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: that tells you the truth. And the truth is that
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: especially for people of color, you, I mean, nobody should
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: have been admitting to a crime on video. That's just
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: like end that there. Do what you're gonna do if
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: you're not hurting anybody whatever, but like be smart about it, Like,
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: don't have this new era of social media where we
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: don't necessarily have the cultural norms firmly established anymore, the guardrails,
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: if you know what I mean. Don't let that false
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: feeling of freedom make you think that we actually do
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: have freedom online, especially if you're marginalized. I would that
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: is just like a rule of thumb, don't admit to
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: crimes on the internet. That's just like, I don't care
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: how much engagement it gets you.
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: That's just an overall But as you're saying for the
• 30:49
  Speaker 4: person who's like, why do you have to go to
• 30:50
  Speaker 4: that like pessimistic view? And I know I'm always joking
• 30:53
  Speaker 4: about the fact that I'm pessimistic, But the reality is
• 30:55
  Speaker 4: it's really privileged for someone to not have to even
• 30:58
  Speaker 4: worry about it.
• 30:58
  Speaker 5: That's the problem.
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: The problem about this is I have been on this
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: side of where I see police officers, I see court
• 31:05
  Speaker 4: systems actually go after specific individuals because they've profiled them
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: from jump and then find the social media accounts and
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: use every bit they can from that because they're profiling
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: once again, and that I know we use that as
• 31:19
  Speaker 4: generalized terms in the bigger picture, but it happens on
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: social media as well as well as the sact that
• 31:24
  Speaker 4: there was a perfect example of this dude who's really big.
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: TikToker got really big because he was funny. Everybody loved him,
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: thought he was just hilarious. He just cuts into a
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: video and then tells a random fact that was his
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: whole thing, and then people found and dug into his
• 31:42
  Speaker 4: earlier post where he brings his child, where the child
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: says all these homophobic and racist comments, which obviously was
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: taught by him, and he's encouraging it, and everybody's getting
• 31:54
  Speaker 4: pissed at both the child and him, and this is
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: what he's done, not realizing that he was going to
• 31:58
  Speaker 4: blow up.
• 31:59
  Speaker 5: But that's the consequence.
• 32:00
  Speaker 4: It's like, not only have you ruined your own reputation,
• 32:03
  Speaker 4: you've already ruined your child.
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: Oh my god. And it's like I could only see
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: that as like a parenting fail. If your kid heard
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: you using slurs and repeated that and you knew that
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: was behavior that they were exhibiting, that is one thing.
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: Then being like I should film this for the Internet
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: because it's funny. That is I guess that's what I'm
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: saying I'm not being very eloquent about it, but I
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: do think that we are in this point where I
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: don't know that people universally understand that not every moment
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: is okay to be shared on the internet. And you know,
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: I would hope for that parent in that situation to
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: be like, we need to have a conversation about what
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: is and it's not okay to say. The fact that
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: this parent was like, Ooh, get the camera, this is
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: going to be great put this on the internet. That
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: really tells me that I think that we are in
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: a place where perhaps people are not asking the question
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: of should I be filming this? What are the consequences?
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: This is because for my kid, like I think we
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: just need to have a little bit more introspection about
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: what we share to the internet.
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: For strangers, absolutely, and again it is this layer of
• 33:10
  Speaker 4: safety that people think, because they don't see people's reaction,
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: they just record it and move on with their day
• 33:16
  Speaker 4: until the consequences happened, that they're safe to do this.
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: And maybe they're thinking they're being relatable or maybe they're
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: trauma bonding with people, which is in itself like why
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: are you doing this? And it's doing at the expense
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: of a child, thinking maybe I don't know if it's
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: legitimate or if it's a ruse saying that I'm just.
• 33:32
  Speaker 5: Trying to teach you. I'm just trying to.
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: Share our you know, our downfalls, and I'm trying to
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: be real. But it's again at the expense of a
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: child's emotions and trauma.
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: So that exact thing is the reason why I wanted
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: to talk about this because I had a moment where
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: I saw this video on TikTok, and I have to say,
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: like I was personally triggered by this, this TikTok that
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: I saw, and it was this video of a black
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: mom who who was washing her black child's like braids, right,
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: and so this so she had a camera set up
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: where she was holding her child over the sink to
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: like scrub her scalp. And this little girl was like
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: maybe she's like seven or eight. She is balling her
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: eyes out, she is so upset. Right, And so I'm
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: a black woman, I have braids now if I have braids,
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: For most of my life when I was a kid,
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: like a lot of black women, my hair has been
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: something that is like a complicated thing, like a lot
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: of Black women have complicated feelings about their hair, and
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: I have many a memory of crying while getting my
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: hair done, crying while getting my braids taken, you know,
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: taken out or put in, and I remember quite viscerally
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: what a vulnerable position that I was in in those times.
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: I'm not saying that like moms shouldn't do their kids
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: hair if they cry, but I'm saying I remember that
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: being an emotional experience for me that I was very
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: vulnerable in. And I think a lot of black women
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: know what I'm talking about. And so this child is
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: sobbing while this is happening. The mom is like, everybody,
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: millions of people are going to see how you're acting
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: right now. And the little kid is like, what do
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: you mean? And she's like, I'm filming this, And a
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: little girl starts crying even more and she's like, why
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: are you filming this? And her mom is like, I'm
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: filming it for a hair tutorial. And even though this
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: is a little kid, she's pretty, she's pretty sharp. She says,
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: why don't you film a hair tutorial on your own head?
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: And it just broke my like something about watching that
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: video of like I remember what it was like to
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: be in distress. Now, I'm not saying that was like
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: a traumatic experience for her. Kids cry for all kinds
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: of reasons all the time, right, we were all kids once,
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: we remember, but she's clearly in distress, even if it's
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: temporary distress. And so her mom talking to the camera
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: in this moment and being like millions people are going
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: to see this in the moment really just made me sad.
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: And the mom was saying like, oh well, like in
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: the comments of this TikTok, she was saying like, well,
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: I want to show other black moms out there how
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: you deal with a stressful hair water and other people
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: who were supporting her were saying like, maybe she's looking
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: for a community of moms and wants to build community
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: in solidar our young line. I could sort of see that,
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: But ultimately, the number one responsibility of a parent should
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: be to create a safe environment for your kid and
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: all of this other stuff, like I can understand maybe
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: sort of kind of wanting to demonstrate like, well, here's
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: how I, as a black mom get through a tough
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: hair washing day, But those are strangers. Your responsibility when
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: your child is in distress is to provide a safe
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: environment for that child who cares about these strangers in
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: your head that you are thinking about entertaining or whatever
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: via this content. And that's kind of what I'm talking about, Like,
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: how have we reached a point where folks have kind
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: of forgotten that your number one responsibility is to your
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: child and to create a safe environment for that child,
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: even if that means that this community of fictional moms
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: looking for support might have to get at someplace else.
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: Right, And I know, as you said at the beginning,
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: there hasn't been a lot of research in this. I
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: know I read one article about how things like this
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: does a road like the trust a kid has in
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: their parents, because if it's like they can kind of sense, oh, well,
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: they're doing this for some other reason, or there might
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: be a trick behind this, or they might be trying
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: to manipulate an emotion out of me for someone else.
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: But also, something that I wanted to go back to
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: that you wrote about was this idea of.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: Feeling like there's a invisible audience.
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, this I found this fascinating. So Lindsay Cooley, the
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: licensed clinical child psychologist that spoke to Morgan Sung at NBC.
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: Coolly said that adults whose formative years were shared online
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: may never grow out of experiencing what she described as
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: the invisible audience. We've all kind of probably felt that
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: the invisible audience is this kind of adolescent ideal that
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: everybody is paying attention to you and like scrutinizing your
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: behavior at all times. Now, most of us probably felt
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: that way at one time or another in our lives,
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: but we usually grow out of it as we mature
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: and become, you know, more self aware and get a
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: deeper sense of self. Lindsay Cooley says that kids who
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: are always being filmed for content might have a harder
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: time breaking out of that mindset because they essentially grew
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: up on a stage. They grew up knowing that they
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: had to perform and turn it on. And so if
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: that is your everyday lived experience, you might have a
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: much harder time growing out of that phase when you
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: think that everybody's looking at you, when you are feeling
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: like everybody is scrutinizing you and feeling like you're being
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: perceived with eyes on you all the time. And really
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: I can kind of understand that, like I can understand
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: why for kids who who are constantly on the stage
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: of the internet. Why that would then be a hard
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: thing to kind of break out of.
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's another issue here is the issue of privacy.
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: And as we also mentioned at the top, these parasocial
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: relationships that people can form with children who again probably
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: never consented to any.
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: Of this, right, Yeah, that's something that I find really interesting.
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: I guess I'll say, is this the way that adults
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: on the internet can form these parasocial relationships with kids
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: they don't even know, you know, And I the one
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: had I kind of get it right, Like they've been
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: let in on these very intimate relationships with these kids,
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: and so I can understand forming a bond, right, and
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: how that line of what is and is not appropriate
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: and what you are and are not entitled to can
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: become blurred. There was this mom influencer on TikTok recently
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: who decided that she was going to stop showing her
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: kids on social media after sort of providing quite a
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: bit of content solely about her kids, and her followers
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: were upset, but they weren't just thought. They weren't like cool,
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: as your kids do what you feel is best. They
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: were not happy about that, and they felt really entitled
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: to see and interact with these kids they don't even know, right,
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: And so I remember this was around Christmas time when
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: this influencer announced that and one of her followers made
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: a video that was like, can we at least see
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: the children for Christmas? Like I just want to see
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: them for Christmas? And how they could not accept that
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: they were not going to be able to see and
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: interact with kids that they didn't know. And it might
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: I don't feel like all of these people have bad
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: intentions or anything, but it is absolutely not healthy for
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: an adult stranger to feel entitled to see kids that
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: they don't even know, Like, that's just not healthy, you know.
• 40:41
  Speaker 4: Of course I have to go real dark with it,
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: as you're being very kind and be like these are
• 40:46
  Speaker 4: not They just really like these kids and they think
• 40:48
  Speaker 4: the relationship is adorable. But here's the prime example of
• 40:53
  Speaker 4: where we can talk about grooming and what happens when
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: these relationships are these young kids become sexualized by the
• 41:03
  Speaker 4: audience or by the followers and not necessarily being done
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: by the parents that they may be completely innocent of it,
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: thinking that they're playing cute little dress up matching mommy
• 41:12
  Speaker 4: type of look which is often a thing, but this
• 41:16
  Speaker 4: becomes a real dangerous road of grooming and a sexualization
• 41:21
  Speaker 4: of young children.
• 41:22
  Speaker 5: Just I know there was one specific.
• 41:25
  Speaker 4: Woman who went through a young girl's accounts, meaning they
• 41:30
  Speaker 4: were probably really young, maybe with a parent, showing what
• 41:33
  Speaker 4: kind of followers these accounts had, and they for typically
• 41:37
  Speaker 4: for a more example, like middle aged men commenting about
• 41:40
  Speaker 4: how beautiful they are and how all these things are,
• 41:42
  Speaker 4: like how good they looked in this outfit or all
• 41:44
  Speaker 4: these things, and how concerning it is that the parents
• 41:47
  Speaker 4: aren't realizing that compliment is not cute. It's not a
• 41:51
  Speaker 4: cute compliment and you shouldn't sit there and like them
• 41:54
  Speaker 4: and say thanks for supporting my child, which has been
• 41:57
  Speaker 4: the response. And it is so dangerous is when you
• 42:01
  Speaker 4: see that this is becoming normal exactly.
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: So, I do think that there are people out there
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: that are just like, oh, I just love this baby,
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: and I have slipped into an unhealthy fixation on this baby.
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: Perhaps not badly intentioned, yes, but you are so right
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: that that that there are people for whom they do
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: have bad intentions and it is about sexualization and grooming
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: and it's gross, like it like what I'm what I
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: want to talk about today is like just the tip
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: of the iceberg with how dangerous and gross this stuff
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: can get, because truly it's just like very dark. There
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: is a trend called role playing. No not dungeons and Dragons,
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: role playing like that. This is what people Annie, I
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: bet you were like playing what was up? So this
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: is a this is a trend that I actually have
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: not heard of until I researched for this episode, where
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: people on the internet will steal photos of other people
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: from social media and make new fake accounts of these
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: people with like made up stories and identities. Now, sometimes
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: this can be like mostly harmless, other than the fact that, like,
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: it's not cool to be taking pictures of kids from
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: the internet, but like some people are doing this just
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: and it's not it's not necessarily harmful. But in other cases,
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: some of the backstories and like fictional situations involving the
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: identity of children and the pictures that they are using
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: are sexual. And so there's this influencer Katie Rose Pritchard.
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: She told Good Morning America that one day that she
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: discovered all these social media accounts made for each one
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: of her kids, but they were actually strangers pretending to
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: be her like very young toddler children typing in like
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: baby voice in captions on Instagram. She told Good Morning
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: America that she noticed that among these role playing posts
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: on social media, they used hashtags like kid RP or
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: baby RP to indicate that's what it is, and that
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: there's like a massive community of people doing this, some
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: of whom more describing obviously sexualized fictional situations involving her toddlers,
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: and probably unsurprising, she was enraged and horrified, and I think,
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: you know, there's so many different avenues to this, but
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: one is that it's obviously a social media platform accountability issue.
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: Katie Rose Pritchard said that she reached out to Instagram
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: to have this content taken down, and that at first
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: Instagram told her that people making fake accounts of her
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: kids and putting them in these sexual fictional situations was
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: not against their community guidelines, but eventually she kept having
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: her followers report the content and Instagram did eventually take
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: it down. So she decided that she was going to
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: stop posting pictures of her kids on social media, even
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: though she was an influencer, and this had resulted in
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: brand deals and partnerships and all of that, but that
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: it just wasn't worth it, because she was like, even
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: though Instagram eventually did the right thing and took these
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: pictures of my kids down, who knows where they could be,
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: She was like, I'll never know, Oh how far their
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: pictures traveled. What dark corners on the of the Internet
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: her kids' images are on and that is really scary.
• 45:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and you know, just to add a wrench, and
• 45:12
  Speaker 4: this whole thing is with the ideas of deep fakes
• 45:15
  Speaker 4: and AI technology which takes straight from content from the Internet,
• 45:20
  Speaker 4: there are so many disturbing things that's out there just
• 45:23
  Speaker 4: knowing half of that and that being faked and what
• 45:25
  Speaker 4: it's being used for. And again, there's no laws to
• 45:29
  Speaker 4: truly stop this. This is kind of like the freedom
• 45:33
  Speaker 4: of speech. As long as you're not violating that child
• 45:36
  Speaker 4: and you're doing images that resemble and say this is
• 45:40
  Speaker 4: not truly them, all you have to do is alter
• 45:41
  Speaker 4: something and they can escape.
• 45:43
  Speaker 5: The lag because there is no law for it.
• 45:46
  Speaker 4: And with the realization that once you put it on
• 45:47
  Speaker 4: the Internet, there's no ownership, true ownership, as much as
• 45:51
  Speaker 4: you would like to think there is, there's no true
• 45:53
  Speaker 4: ownership to the content that you are posting.
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah to your point about deep fakes, mom unstarted on
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: her TikTok has talked about again it's so dark that
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: I hate to even go there, but like there are
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: marketplaces for deep fakes. People have been like, here's an
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: image of a person, not always an adult, sometimes it's
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: a child. I would like to see digitally manipulated, like
• 46:18
  Speaker 3: AI generated images of this child in sexual situations. That
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: is a thing that happens. And I know that it
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: is dark, and it's like, on the one hand, you
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: feel awful when someone's like posting a cute picture of
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: their kid, being like, well, did you know that this
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: could own wind up on a marketplace? All the dark
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: side of the Internet. But I have to say the truth.
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: It's like, what is happening? And I think it's a
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: reason why more and more influencers are and people in
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: general are keeping their kids off of the Internet. Like
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: I don't have kids, but if I was a parent,
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: I don't think I would put my kids on social media.
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: I just I think that with all that I now know,
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: and I didn't always know this, I know this from
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: research from now that I know all the different really
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: dark up gross corners of the Internet out there. I
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: just feel like it would be a safer bet to
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: not Like, I don't know what it would give me
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: to introduce that into my kid's life. And this, you know,
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: this is a growing thing these days. The influencer that
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: I was just talking about, she wrote on Instagram. I
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: can be angry at Instagram all day long and nothing
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: will change until we change. Instagram is not to blame
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: for the exploitation of my children. I am. They have
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: no responsibility and usually come back with we have no
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: control over over what our users posts. They simply do
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: not care. And it's I think that Instagram is really
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: abdicating responsibility here. But on the other hand, Katie is
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: not wrong about this, like it really if platforms aren't
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: going to do anything to keep young people safe online,
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: they should. In an absence of them being lee and
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: doing what they're supposed to be doing to keep kids safe,
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: we have no choice but to act. And I know
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: that that is like, it should not be that way.
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: But if platforms are going to allow the kind of
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: dark stuff involving kids that they do allow, we have
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: to be the ones who are making good decisions to
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: keep our kids safe.
• 48:18
  Speaker 4: Right well, obviously, as you said at the very beginning,
• 48:21
  Speaker 4: as a parent, your first responsibility is the safety of
• 48:25
  Speaker 4: your child. It should be, and that's that's kind of
• 48:28
  Speaker 4: the intent to begin with. And so even though yes,
• 48:32
  Speaker 4: you may not be doing any of these dark and
• 48:34
  Speaker 4: despicable things, you're like, I've I keep talking about it,
• 48:37
  Speaker 4: but like, I have had nightmares of the darkness that
• 48:41
  Speaker 4: happens to children, unfortunately because of the things that I
• 48:45
  Speaker 4: have witnessed personally, Like, that's just a thing that will
• 48:48
  Speaker 4: always be ingrained in my head. It's terrifying as awful,
• 48:52
  Speaker 4: and I hate that that's a part of my psyche
• 48:55
  Speaker 4: and that that's part of the thing that I share
• 48:57
  Speaker 4: with people. But it is really naive to believe that
• 49:02
  Speaker 4: everything is sunshine and puppy dogs, because I would love that,
• 49:06
  Speaker 4: that would be amazing. That's why I can't watch dark
• 49:09
  Speaker 4: things because I don't want to live in that world.
• 49:12
  Speaker 4: But I've seen it, and you know, as you've researched
• 49:15
  Speaker 4: more things, it gets uglier and uglier. And as Instagram
• 49:19
  Speaker 4: should be held responsible for some things, it is also
• 49:22
  Speaker 4: that again the parents' responsibility at the very jump for
• 49:25
  Speaker 4: to protect a child, and unlike it sounds like this
• 49:31
  Speaker 4: one influencer did an amazing job and trying to backtrack
• 49:34
  Speaker 4: because you don't think about that. It's an amazing it's
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: a great thing to not have to think about that,
• 49:39
  Speaker 4: but then when show face with it, to realize you
• 49:41
  Speaker 4: need to do some damage control. But there's those out
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: there who as long as they get the money, as
• 49:46
  Speaker 4: dark as that seems, it doesn't seem to care, and
• 49:48
  Speaker 4: there's no law to protect the children, it seems exactly.
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: So this is something that really bombs me out, grosses
• 49:55
  Speaker 3: me out because you might be thinking, like, surely parents
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: are not knowingly making money off of their kids content
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: being served up to adult creeps. But I'm sorry to
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: report that that is what is happening with some of these,
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: like mom run accounts. Sarah of mom on Chargage told
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: me that she sees these mom run accounts of young
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: girls a sensibly a platform to share their their daughters
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: like modeling pictures or like gymnastics pictures. But when you
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: click in, as you were saying, the people who are
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: following that page are grown men. The people who are
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: saving the images. So if you post something on TikTok
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: or post something onto Instagram so you can see who
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: saves it. The people saving that are grown men, and
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: when you click into these profiles of the people following,
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: oftentimes it's like not it doesn't take you know, a
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: detective to see like, okay, this is an image of
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: a grown man. Who are they following accounts like hot
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: young bikini girls things like that, Like it's pretty clear
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: what's going on. And then these men will leave comments
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: on pictures of their kids that are like wow, what
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: a hot picture, and mom will go in and like
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: that comment right, And so it's sort of this weird
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: thing where it's done under this kind of like plausible
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: deniability of like oh, it's just a modeling page, like
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: you're the one sexualizing my kid, but come on, like
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: you know what this is. I've even seen some of
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: these accounts go so far as to sell images of
• 51:20
  Speaker 3: like you want to buy a photo set of my
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: daughter's gymnastic pictures or even buy their used clothing, like
• 51:27
  Speaker 3: we know, like we all see what's happening. They can
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: they can hide behind this is a modeling thing. You know,
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: this is you know, whatever, it's clear what's going on.
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: You are making money from exploiting your kid, and that
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: is just what's happening. I think at the very least,
• 51:43
  Speaker 3: let's just call it what it is. Don't dance around it,
• 51:46
  Speaker 3: don't use this this plausible deniability. Everyone knows what's going on.
• 51:50
  Speaker 3: Cut the crab. You know.
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: We recently did an episode on YouTube and this is
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: a very similar situation happening where there are videos of
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: young kids, mostly young girls, and getting several comments like
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: this from grown men and uh as. We've been alluding
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: to this whole time. There aren't specific laws in place
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: to protect kids from this.
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: Correct, that's right, And so when you think about it,
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: it's kind of weird that there's not right. Like when
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: it comes to kids making money off of their labor,
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: we have all kinds of like rules and policies and
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: regulations in place here in the United States. You know,
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: media companies that work with kids for like films or
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: commercials or modeling or whatever, they have very strict labor
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: laws like I used to do, like child modeling and
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: child acting when I was a kid. Like, they have
• 52:55
  Speaker 3: very very specific labor laws. But the Fair Labor State
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: and Act, a nineteen thirty eight law that addresses excessive
• 53:03
  Speaker 3: child labor, and the California Kogan Act, which protects child actors.
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: Neither of those have been updated to include children online,
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: like the children of influencers, children who are being used
• 53:15
  Speaker 3: as content, and so it is definitely a situation where
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: our technology has advanced quicker than our laws have because
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: they're currently zero laws that in the United States that
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: regulate how children work on social media and how they
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: can appear in ads on social media that generate money,
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: but that actually might be changing soon. Morgan Sung reported
• 53:35
  Speaker 3: that an eighteen year old college student named Chris McCarty
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: wanted to advocate for kids' rights to privacy after learning
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: about that influencer Mika Stealfer, the one who you might
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: recall we were just talking about, she wanted to adopt
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: a special needs child. She did adopt that child, extensively
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: shared intimate content about the health needs of her adopted
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: child before deciding that those medical needs were too much
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: and having him quote rehomed. As she put it, well,
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: that inspired Chris McCarty to start advocating for the way
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: that kids are used online and like advocating for protections
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: for these kids. McCarty started the site Quit Clicking Kids,
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: which is described as an advocacy and education site to
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: combat the monetization of children on social media, and when
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: Chris was a senior, they cold emailed like a bunch
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: of lawmakers and eventually ended up working with Representative Emily
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: Wicks to craft HB sixteen twenty seven, which is which
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: is a bill that would protect quote the interests of
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: minor children featured on for profit family vlogs by requiring
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: the parents of kid influencers to set aside part of
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: that revenue from their content into a separate fund so
• 54:42
  Speaker 3: that their kids could access them into adulthood. And it
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: would also grant the children of influencers the right to
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: request the permanent deletion of their likenesses, names, or photos
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: from any Internet platform or network that provided compensation to
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: the individual's parent or parents in exchange for that content,
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: and so platforms under this new legislation, platforms would have
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: to take reasonable steps to permanently delete video segments of
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: such children. That was one of the things that like
• 55:08
  Speaker 3: in researching for this episode and reading the accounts of
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: young people who were the used solely like they were
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: the sole focus of their parents' content. One of the
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: things that they say is I can't delete it from me.
• 55:21
  Speaker 3: I had no choice in the matter. I was not
• 55:23
  Speaker 3: able to consent. And now when you google my name,
• 55:26
  Speaker 3: all this stuff, intimate stuff comes up about me, intimate
• 55:29
  Speaker 3: stuff about my health, my body, my life all comes up,
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: and there is no way to remove it. And so
• 55:35
  Speaker 3: I don't know how this legislation will shake out. I'll
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: keep you posted, but I do think it's time that
• 55:42
  Speaker 3: we really had our laws and our norms catch up
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: with where we are technologically. And I think, you know,
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: I think it's time.
• 55:51
  Speaker 4: You would think that we would have learned through the
• 55:53
  Speaker 4: child actors stuff, of all the young actresses that had
• 55:58
  Speaker 4: either the money stolen or gone through so much abuse,
• 56:00
  Speaker 4: all those things that you would you would have thought, yeah,
• 56:03
  Speaker 4: we would learn from those mistakes because some of these
• 56:06
  Speaker 4: young kids making multi millions of dollars, So like you
• 56:10
  Speaker 4: would think that with that kind of revenue, which is
• 56:12
  Speaker 4: which is rare, But those are the ones who are
• 56:14
  Speaker 4: getting the money. Are the younger kids at this point
• 56:17
  Speaker 4: in time, that we would actually find a way by
• 56:20
  Speaker 4: now that would protect these kids, because inevitably they're the
• 56:25
  Speaker 4: ones who kind of bring it to bring it to
• 56:29
  Speaker 4: as it is, like we're not it's not the older
• 56:31
  Speaker 4: people who are creating these new things and new new
• 56:34
  Speaker 4: trends and new ways of communicating. Is the younger kids
• 56:38
  Speaker 4: who are doing this and learning how to do it
• 56:42
  Speaker 4: better and or being used for it, Like it's one
• 56:45
  Speaker 4: of those things that like it should be for them,
• 56:48
  Speaker 4: So why wouldn't it automatically protect them?
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: Exactly? Like I love c kids on the Internet as
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: much as anybody else in a healthy way. But like
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: corn Kid, I don't know if you guys remember corn Kid.
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: He was just like a door, a little kid who
• 57:01
  Speaker 3: was interviewed at a state bear eating corn and he
• 57:03
  Speaker 3: was like when I had it with butter, everything changed
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: and he was like an overnight sensation. And I remember
• 57:08
  Speaker 3: thinking like, oh, what happened to corn Kid? How's he doing?
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: And Corn Kid is quote retired, and I just loved that.
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: You know, somebody in his life was like, hey, this
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: you We've had this overnight unexpected viral fame, but you
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: can retire. You know, this doesn't have to be something
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: that you know, do. This doesn't have to be something
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: I think I think I did see that he was
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: on cameo, But this doesn't have to be something that
• 57:32
  Speaker 3: you you know, make your entire identity and You're just
• 57:37
  Speaker 3: a kid. You don't you don't have to, you know,
• 57:39
  Speaker 3: decide to go into internet, social media stardom, entertaining strangers
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: because you had this one viral moment. And so I
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: really that really hurtened me to see that somebody in
• 57:48
  Speaker 3: his life gave him a space and the language of
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: being like, oh, yeah, I'm retired as corn kid, uh
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: to make a choice for himself and protect his protect
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: his identity, protectic piece. Because I do think, like, yeah,
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: the Internet is forever, and I really feel for these
• 58:07
  Speaker 3: kids who don't get a choice in becoming these Internet
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: stars and have to live with it for life. And
• 58:17
  Speaker 3: I think, you know, I do think the tide is
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: turning a little bit. I think that we're seeing more
• 58:20
  Speaker 3: and more one more and more children who were used
• 58:24
  Speaker 3: in this way as content speaking up about what that
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: experience was like for them. And I think we're seeing
• 58:29
  Speaker 3: more and more influencers stop showing their kids on social
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: media or do so in ways that are a little
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: bit more thoughtful. Right, So you'll see influencers not showing
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: their kids' face or including their kids and their content,
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: but just showing their hands the back of their head
• 58:43
  Speaker 3: so that it's not just you know, performing on command
• 58:48
  Speaker 3: for the entertainment and monetization of your platform, right, And do.
• 58:54
  Speaker 4: You know, I think people took a page out of
• 58:57
  Speaker 4: the big celebrities who realize who lived in the limelight.
• 59:00
  Speaker 4: We're like, we're not putting our children through that and
• 59:03
  Speaker 4: go through everything to try to cover at least like
• 59:06
  Speaker 4: protect their identities.
• 59:07
  Speaker 5: And I've done so much.
• 59:08
  Speaker 4: Better recently, I mean not some, but you know, and
• 59:12
  Speaker 4: that they're learning this could be really damaging, like you said,
• 59:14
  Speaker 4: and that Quaran kid so cute. He literally I think
• 59:18
  Speaker 4: they asked him much later after everything went viral, like
• 59:21
  Speaker 4: what do your friends think of that?
• 59:22
  Speaker 5: And they're like, my friends don't know. They don't know
• 59:24
  Speaker 5: anything about.
• 59:25
  Speaker 4: This because the parents did such a great job in
• 59:27
  Speaker 4: keeping them isolated away from all of that because they
• 59:30
  Speaker 4: didn't want him to be scrutinized, made fun of or
• 59:33
  Speaker 4: any of that. Because so many of them because he
• 59:35
  Speaker 4: kind of I guess is it a meme?
• 59:36
  Speaker 5: Was the amazing gifts?
• 59:37
  Speaker 4: Maybe eventually became that that so many of those goods
• 59:41
  Speaker 4: who were gifts or memes were really humiliated as adults.
• 59:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Like I think it was BuzzFeed doing a series
• 59:49
  Speaker 3: of what happened after these people became memes. They actually
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: have a really good one. If you remember the girl
• 59:55
  Speaker 3: this is going to maybe date me and people who
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: are younger going to be like what the talking about
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: girl who was photographed with pigtails and headgear holding goosebumps
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: books if she is a very her story is very fascinating.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: But yeah, it's like these these people that we see
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 3: on the Internet, and because we're engaging with them through
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: a screen, we can kind of forget that they're real
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 3: people who have to go on to live real lives
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: in the real world. They don't just exist frozen in
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: time in this meme where we first encountered them. They
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: are real people, yes, her.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: Well, as always, this has been so informative, Bridget, thanks
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: for bringing it to our attention. Thanks for making the
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: time to come on, and I'm sure we'll update on
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: this one because clearly we all have a lot of
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: thoughts about this, so I would love to come back
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: to this one.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: Well, where can the good listeners find you?
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 3: Well, you can find me over at my own podcast.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: There are no girls on the Internet. The episode that
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 3: we did with mom uncharted souoney interesting. She's just a
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 3: really interesting person. I would definitely recommend checking it out.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 3: Follow me on Twitter at Bridget Marie, on Instagram at
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 3: Bridget Marie and DC, or on TikTok at Bridget Mixed Podcasts.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: Yes, love it, love it. Go check all of those
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: things out if you haven't already. Listeners, Uh and yes,
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: thank you again, Bridget. Can't wait to do this again
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: next month. Update on the food as well.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe we'll do it from Mexico City, but you
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 3: all come visit.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: Oh, I would.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 3: Love do it.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 5: I just heard an invitation. I'm coming come.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: The bags are getting packed, the bags are getting started
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: in Mexico.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: Oh, I can't wait.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 3: Well.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: Listeners, if you would like to contact us that you
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: can our emails, Stuff Medium, Mo and stuff at iHeartMedia
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: dot com.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: You can find us on.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: Twitter at MAMSA Podcasts, or Instagram and TikTok at stuff
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: I Ever told You.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: Thanks as always to our super producer Christina the best,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: the best, and thanks to you for listening Stuff I
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: Never told you the protection.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 3: iHeartRadio.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: For more podcast to my Heart Radio.
• 1:02:00
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• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: you listen to favorite ships