Weather 
- Mommy influencers are shamelessly exploiting their kids’ most private, distressing moments for online content.
- Author Fortesa Latifi’s new book reveals sick or sad children’s content often earns parents the most money.
- Past scandals, like the Stauffer family’s adoption reversal, highlight the ethical minefield of child exploitation.
“Something’s off with our son, something’s office with our son,” Jamie Otis cried, while holding her limp, dazed 2-year-old, Hendrix, and calling to her husband, Doug, for help. “He’s gonna seize, I think. Call 911.”
It was 2022, and Hendrix had had a febrile seizure — frightening convulsions triggered by fever in young children. Otis, a reality TV regular-turned-influencer, was frantic, wondering if they should drive the 27 miles to the hospital or call an ambulance.
It was terrifying. And Otis’s 1 million Instagram followers saw every second of it.
“This was just moments before my baby became unresponsive, stopped breathing and his lips turned blue,” she wrote in the caption of her posted video.
For some mommy influencers, everything is content — no matter if their children are ill, embarrassed or potentially exploited.
It’s a fact that Fortesa Latifi, author of the new book, “Like, Follow, Subscribe: Influencer Kids and the Cost of a Childhood Online,” takes issue with.
“The child was obviously in extreme distress,” she told The Post of Otis’ son. “Not only did they film it, but they uploaded it. And then not only did they upload it, but they pinned it to her profile. And I think just as a parent myself, it’s really difficult for me to understand.”
She added, “It’s just things that I don’t think should be for public consumption.”
Otis, however, disagrees. A nurse, she told The Post she initially recorded the seizure to show her child’s doctor, a common practice, and posted it to educate and inform other parents. She said it hasn’t been a post that’s performed particularly well, but that she’s kept it pinned to help people.
Latifi notes that unwell children do typically perform well online.
“Several parent influencers told me that the content that does best of their kids is when their child is sick or sad or injured,” she told The Post.
Julie Jeppson, a single Mormon mom-of-eight who has a YouTube channel, “TheBigFamilyJewels,” with 214,000 followers, says in the book that, “The videos that got the most eyes on them are the ones that had the bloody noses, or the broken arms, or the emergency room visit, or whatever.”
And a large following and popular posts reap big rewards.
“The amount of money in the mom influencer and family vlogging world is almost unbelievable,” Latifi writes, noting that the creator economy as a whole is expected to reach $500 trillion by 2027. YouTube creators with 10 million subscribers can rake in $8 million a year between ads and sponsored content. Those with just 500,000 subscribers might make $6,000 a month from ad revenue, plus additional revenue from sponsors.
It’s money that can change lives and even lift some out of poverty, and Latifi is somewhat sympathetic to her subjects.
“With so few career choices that are compatible with the demands of pregnancy and motherhood, is it any wonder that influencing and vlogging becomes so attractive?” she writes.
But the path can be irksome — or much worse — for children. Mormon mommy blogger Shannon Bird tells Latifi of bribing her kids with a visit to Disneyland to get them to do sponsored posts.
“I’m like, ‘You guys can this for me. I literally spend sixty hours a week driving you to sports, you guys can do one photoshoot,’ ” Bird says in the book. “This is how we’re paying for you college.”
Bird says she deleted her blog because some of its content led to one of her kids being bullied, but she still has an Instagram profile. She tells Latifi that she recently had second thoughts about doing a sponsored post for melatonin gummies, fearful that it would seem as though she were drugging her kids.
But she went ahead with the melatonin post, as the $12,500 it paid was exactly what she needed to fund her boob job.
“Of course, all the mean comments came in,” says Bird, who typically makes $3,000 to $5,000 a month on Instagram, but has garnered as much as $19,000 a month. “But I’m like, Free boobs, free boobs.” (The Post has reached out to Bird for comment.)
Like posts with sick kids, those involving dead pets can also do quite well.
In 2021, YouTube star Jordan Cheyenne drew outrage when she accidentally posted a video where she coached her 8-year-old son to cry after learning that their puppy was seriously ill and could die.
“Act like you’re crying,” she told the boy, who screamed, “Mom, I’m actually seriously crying.”
A teen named Rachel tells Latifi that her vlogger mom has no shame about filming any family moment — even shooting the funeral they had when a beloved bird died.
“I was crying, and all she did was shove a camera in everyone’s face and wave in front of the camera in a chipper voice, saying, ‘Bye, bye!’ ” the girl said.
“It’s all good,” Rachel tells Latifi. “It’s life. Well, it’s my life.”
For the eldest daughter of Aubree Jones, a mom with 1.1 million Instagram followers, life included cringe-worthy sponsored posts with Jones assembling menstruation products for the girl’s first period.
Latifi notes that Jones is hardly the only one doing such posts. “In the world of mom influencers and family vloggers, anything can be made into sponsored content — first menstrual cycles, medical diagnoses, potty-training routines,” she writes. “Nothing is too personal.” (The Post has reached out to Jones for comment.)
Some families are even making major lifestyle choices to stay on the influencer gravy train.
Bridie Hamilton, an academic who wrote a thesis on the ethics of parenting and influencing, has noted that homeschooling and frequent relocations seem to be common amongst influencers and vloggers. No formal school means more time to create content.
Latifi also notes that conservative families are more likely to homeschool, and they’re also a segment that tends to be popular in the world of family vlogging and influencing. But there are also practical matters.
“It is much easier to have your children stay home and homeschool so that you don’t have to be constantly pulling them out of school for brand trips, or for the work that they have to do,” she said. “I mean, you can finish homeschooling in a few hours and then you can turn to content, you know, as opposed to going to school for eight hours a day.“
For influencer kids who do attend traditional school, there can be some awkward moments. Latifi writes of Alessi Luyendyk, age 5 and the daughter of onetime “Bachelor” star Arie Luyendyk and his wife, Lauren Luyendyk. The parents began posting about Alessi when she was in the womb. By the time Alessi started preschool, she was regularly recognized in public.
On a podcast, the couple recalled an awkward moment at school dropoff, with a dad saying, “Oh my god, is that Alessi? Is that Alessi?” and moms chattering about the little kid.
Large families can also be more conducive to social media stardom.
“I hate to say this, but over the years, I’ve known people who have had more children because those brand deals are really lucrative,” Clarissa Laskey, a former influencer who now manages social media stars, says in the book. Having a fourth or fifth kid can really pay off, as “there’s so much money in the baby world.”
In 2017, Ohio family vloggers Myka and James Stauffer added to their brood, which included four biological children at the time, by adopting a 2-year-old boy with special needs, Huxley, from China. They featured him prominently in their content but then, in 2020, announced that they were dissolving the adoption and placing Huxley in a new home as they were unable to meet his medical needs. The move drew fervent backlash and was the subject of an HBO documentary.
Another major kiddie influencer scandal involved Wren Eleanor, a toddler whose TikTok account had some 17 million followers. In 2022, controversy erupted when critics asserted that Wren’s mother, Jacquelyn, was posting content — like the then-3-year-old eating a large hot dog or playing with a tampon — that was sexually suggestive and exploitative. The firestorm led many parents to remove their kids from social media, and Wren’s videos are no longer on social media.
But, of course, many others have kept their kids online. Andrew Garza, whose 9-year-old twins, Haven and Koti, have 5.3 million followers on TikTok, tells Latifi that she tries not to think about sexual predators watching her daughters’ content and notes that there are sickos both on and offline.
“I do my best to just always keep them safe and protected,” Garza says. “And there’s only so much we can control in this world.”
Latifi notes that just a handful of states have regulations around family vlogging and influencing. In 2023, Illinois was the first state to pass a law saying that children were entitled to a percentage of the earnings from their appearing online.
But, Shari Franke, whose mother, Ruby Franke, was a phenomenally popular vlogger later convicted of child abuse, has said it’s not about the money.
“Pedophiles stalk the internet, specifically seeking out child influencers,” she said in a public statement issued as Utah considered its own protections for kids. “Parents are aware of these predators and choose to post their children anyway. If I could go back and do it all again, I’d rather have an empty bank account and not have my childhood plastered all over the internet.”
