That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column. You can think of this as a government regulation issue, but alternatively you could frame it as the government enforcing individual property rights that currently are absent. Here is one excerpt:
More and more children, by which I mean minors below legal working age, are producing content as online influencers. A lot of Instagram or YouTube or TikTok accounts feature such children, and they can be cute, endearing or (depending on your mood) annoying — as well as profitable. By one estimate, the most successful children working in this area — called “kidfluencers” — can generate more than $20 million a year in revenue…
Legally, these children have no claim to the income their sites generate. Thankfully, many parents are loving and generous. But not all. There is no data on how social media earnings are distributed within the family, but the long history of child movie and TV stars indicates that many receive little or nothing.
But change is afoot, and this is mostly a good thing:
Enter the state of Illinois, where a recently passed law gives successful child social media stars a right to some percentage of the earnings they generate, to be held in a trust in their name until they turn 18. Such legislation has precedent. In the early days of Hollywood, California passed the Coogan Law, which gives child actors a right to a certain percentage of earnings, which employers have to place in trust accounts. New York has passed similar legislation.
The social media case is tougher to enforce, because often the parents themselves are the de facto employer and there is no contract specifying terms. And how is the relative contribution of the child to the family income to be assessed? (Time spent onscreen? Cuteness? What if the social media presence leads to a book contract or podcast?) Nonetheless, the law sends a clear signal that the children do have some rights to the generated income, and grown children can sue their parents if the money is not passed along.
Note however that: “It is neither practical nor desirable for the state to insert itself into family decision-making on a regular basis.” So we should expect only limited gains from such legislation. Furthermore, unlike with child stars in the movies and on TV, there is no real paper trail of contracts and transactions. On the upside, those superior property rights for “kidfluencer” income might get some kids to want to work more, rather than less.
Not everyone will like that outcome of course.
I thank Anecdotal, and also A., for pointers on this issue.
The post Should child influencers have stronger rights to the income they generate? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
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