‘There are crazy people out there’: Mommy vloggers balance privacy and publicity

Twin baby girls sit in matching Gap hoodies and suck on pacifiers as their mother tackles their wispy golden hair, tying up a tiny bun on each of their heads. At one and a half, their locks just barely brush their shoulders.

The pair, Scout and Violet, stare directly into my eyes, or more accurately, right at the camera lens. I’m seeing this 60-second glimpse into their life through a video posted to TikTok by their mother, Maia Knight.

“I have watched these babies grow up,” comments one TikTok user. “[They’re] freaking adorable, and getting big so fast I wish they would slow down,” comments another, topping off the remark with three red hearts.

The twins have been gushed over by fans all over the world since they were just a few months old. These people are often perfect strangers and just a few of the 1.6 billion TikTok users worldwide.

Knight launched her TikTok account in June of 2021, three months after she gave birth to her twins. She first documented the struggles of being a single mother and evolved into producing paid content for companies such as Home Chef, Amazon Essentials and the drinkware company BruMate, with her twins making regular appearances. Her videos now boast over 1 billion total likes, with a follower count of 8.1 million.

Knight’s content is not unique. “Mommy vloggers” or “momfluencers” have exploded online, amassing millions of followers and paid advertising to boot, making their children online celebrities in the process.

Mommy vloggers have come under fire for years, with many critics targeting what they say is the exploitation of minors. Some mommy vloggers have also been accused of child abuse.

Most recently, Ruby Franke, the mother behind the now-defunct YouTube channel “8 Passengers” was arrested on two counts of aggravated child abuse in late August after her son was found malnourished with duct tape around his ankles, police said.

Some advocates against mommy vlogging, such as mother and content creator Bailey McPherson, argue showing children in videos is unethical in any situation, as children are unable to consent to their image or personal details being shared online.

McPherson says she is also concerned social media content is easily accessed by predators, potentially putting children in harm’s way as they gain popularity. “Obviously we have the danger of child pornography, which I rejected for a while,” she said.

Knight began covering her twins’ faces in her videos in December 2022 and deleting old footage from her account. “I am making a choice for my daughters, to protect them,” she said in a video posted to her TikTok late last year. “I am not taking a big stance about showing your kids or not online – I’m just doing what’s best for me and my daughters.”

Knight did not respond to requests for comment.

What used to be a flourishing TikTok feed spotlighting Scout and Violet is now just a handful of videos that still expose their faces. Many fans have praised the decision, commenting on her recent videos they will miss seeing the girls, but support a mother doing what she thinks is best for her now-toddlers.

Others demand answers. “Why r u [sic] not letting us see the girls that’s why I watch this,” commented one user.

Other “momfluencers” have chosen to take a similar route and remove their kids’ online presence. McPherson says she came to see a dangerous side of posting children online after an anonymous person filed a Child Protective Services report against her and her husband alleging neglect and sexual conduct around her then-2-year-old daughter, Noah.

McPherson says she downloaded the app in April 2020, right around the time her daughter was born. She was a first-time mother who was feeling bored and in need of community, which she says she found on “MomTok,” an online niche for mothers to discuss and share tips about raising children. Topics include breastfeeding, sensory activity ideas and nap time hacks – the digital version of the proverbial village.

Many mothers have shared that the community has become a make-shift support group, allowing them to flock to the internet to seek advice on combating the isolation of being a stay-at-home mom or raising a child with disabilities.

McPherson, who used to make MomTok videos with her daughter on-screen, fit right in with the clique. “I would definitely describe my content in the beginning as more of a mom vlogger,” she said.

That all changed the day she received the call that an unnamed individual had filed a CPS report – first to the wrong county – alleging she was abusing her toddler, which she credits to her “trolls.”

“[The report] is crazy, obviously it came from nothing,” she said. “Any information you give the internet they can take and twist and use to their advantage.”

Immediately following the incident, McPherson threw herself into damage control, deducing that having her daughter’s face posted online had led to the viperous reaction. “I deleted everything I could get my hands on,” she said. “The internet will never see her face again.”

McPherson posted a video about the incident to her TikTok account and says she now considers herself to be an advocate against using children in social media content. “I do think the only way to go about it now is totally just taking your kids off,” she said.

Since sharing her experience last year, she has gained thousands of new followers, for a total of just over 370,000.

While her engagement has increased since making the switch, McPherson can see why some moms might be afraid to give it up. “I still feel the shift in the ability to make content,” she said. “When you’re a stay-at-home mom and your only outlet is social media but you have a kid on your hip 24/7, I see a lot of reasons why moms – not maliciously – put their kids in their content.”

McPherson feels she can be a personality outside of her child. “Now it’s just me: I speak my mind, I talk about marriage a lot, cleaning content, household content, cooking,” she said. “It is a struggle, but [being a creator] is more enjoyable now because I get to express who I am as a person and not who my child is.”

On the other side of the debate, some mom vloggers feel there’s an ethical way to make content with their child.

Mommy vlogger Brittany Wilson-DeMarco chooses to show her son, Lochlan, on her TikTok account. Like McPherson, she downloaded the app near the birth of her child. “I was pregnant at the time so naturally my FYP just kind of went into MomTok,” she said. “I started meeting people, I learned a lot of things. I was a first-time mom, I had no idea what the hell I was doing.”

McPherson and Wilson-DeMarco had similar beginnings on the app: boredom-induced curiosity that led to posting content with their newborns and seeking advice from other mothers.

Wilson-DeMarco’s feed consists of little bits of her life – she shares videos of herself making dinner for her toddler, taking her son on day trips and the occasional sponsored advertisement to share with her more than 96,900 followers.

She says being a content creator has been incredibly rewarding. “Moms have reached out to me and been like, ‘Thank you for sharing this. We want to try this career.’”

But when she started gaining traction and seeing an increase in viewership, Wilson-DeMarco says she reconsidered the safety of putting her son online. “I definitely toned it way down after I was like, ‘Okay, this [account] is going to be something, I definitely need to back off with him being the focal point of all of my content,’” she said.

However, Wilson-DeMarco argues her son might just thank her for keeping a digital scrapbook of some of his precious moments. “I think that he would be really excited to see [these videos] someday when he’s older,” she said. “Trips that we’ve gone on or things that we take him to. I think he would be like, ‘Oh my god, this is so cool to see.’”

Ultimately, she decided to delete some older videos, like one with her son in the bathtub, but continue to create content with Lochlan. Wilson-DeMarco says one of her top priorities is using good judgment. This includes only posting locations she and her son have visited after the fact and disguising distinguishable markers that might alert someone to where they live.

“The chances of anything happening? Very slim, in my opinion,” said Wilson-DeMarco. “But there are crazy people out there and it’s not [difficult] in this day and age to find out what state someone’s in and go from there.”

Wilson-DeMarco also stressed being cognizant of knowing how far is too far when it comes to content creation, stressing the obsession with Knight’s children is “really, really weird.”

“I’ve even done some brand deals that have involved taking pictures of my son with a toy,” she said. “I think that’s fine. But I think that it gets to a certain point where if that’s all you’re bringing to the table, I think you need to take a step back and question like, are you exploiting your child?”

Wilson-DeMarco has also shared business strategies, social media ideas and marketing approaches on her page, being sure not to make her TikTok account too centered on her son, she said. “My camera is not constantly in his face all day,” she said, adding “Each child is our own, and we have to just use our own discretion.”

This idea counters McPherson’s perspective. She said children deserve to consent to all things, likening using their image on social media to piercing their ears or baptizing them without consent.

While McPherson took her daughter off the app after a specific incident, she points to other potential harms such as strangers forming parasocial relationships with children online and children’s images being used for sexual purposes. “I get tagged in videos all the time of people finding Pinterest boards of mom vloggers’ specific children and content that is clearly being used for dangerous reasons,” she said. “You can’t deny the dangers anymore.”

Especially haunting, she said, is the advent of deep fakes, which are digitally altered videos that can make someone appear as though they are someone else. AI tools have already been used to make pornographic videos – something McPherson worries is a serious danger to children online.

Looking deeper, psychologist and USC professor Dr. Immordino-Yang says children face cognitive and developmental risks associated with being the center of online content. Namely, that their online personalities are difficult to live up to.

“Before kids even curate their own self-image online, parents are doing it for them because there is something cute or interesting or remarkable about that child,” Immordino-Yang said. “And then your child has to grow into that image.”

Immordino-Yang described how children are always changing, growing and “screwing up and fixing it again.” An online archive of their lives, however, might cement them in place.

“It makes you self-conscious,” she said. “You can’t help but define yourself and understand yourself relative to those moments that have been immortalized in public. It’s changing the flexibility to start anew … the ability to decide who you are and grow into new identities over time.”

She explained parents could be implicitly instilling negative values in their children, by placing their children’s worth on their ability to make content and impress others.

For now, the ethical debate around using minors in social media content is up to parents: those for, against and those who find themselves somewhere in between. Few kids from these channels have spoken out for either side, as most are still young children. However, an anonymous Reddit user posted in a channel nearly a year ago claiming to be one such child and alleging their lack of privacy and paranoia around being filmed, saying “It ruined my life.”

Constant filming, Immordino-Yang said, could undermine an individual’s ability to feel safe or at ease. “We need the space to be ourselves and not be in view, to not be always watched, to not be judged,” she said. “To just be.”