MinnPost’s timely reporting is available for free, all year round. But our work isn’t free to produce. Support our nonprofit newsroom with a tax-deductible donation today.
MinnPost’s top stories delivered straight to your inbox Monday through Saturday.
Daily Newsletter | MinnPost’s top stories delivered to your inbox Monday through Saturday.
Minnesota would be the second state in the U.S. to regulate a social media phenomenon known by various names — mommy run accounts, sharenting and kidfluencers — if a bill that easily passed the state House Wednesday wins approval in the Senate.
House File 3488 would ban making money off of social media accounts that feature children under the age of 14. It passed the House 103-26. A similar version is in the Senate, sponsored by Sen. Erin Maye Quade, DFL-Apple Valley. If it becomes law, it would take effect in July 2025.
Many of the sites are slice-of-life serials, often with parenting advice included. Profits come from subscriptions, advertising and more-likely compensation by companies that supply products that are featured on the sites. All raise privacy concerns for children who don’t choose to be featured on videos that include their births and milestones. But some — as reported in a New York Times investigation — include sexualized images of young girls.
In addition to the under-14 ban, the bill sponsored by Rep. Zack Stephenson, DFL-Coon Rapids, would require that a share of the money earned from accounts featuring children 14 and older be set aside for that child. Money earned would need to be set aside in a trust account — something required in most states for child actors and models.
So as to not include incidental or occasional appearances by those under 14 in social media videos that could make money, the under-14-minor would have to appear in 30% of the videos produced. The bill leaves in place the exceptions for child actors and models contained in state child labor law. It also does not cover teens ages 14 to 17 who by then could have their own social media accounts and produce photos and videos of other teens their age.
As first introduced in February, the bill only created the need for trust accounts. Stephenson said it follows the logic of laws, first passed in California, that responded to parents keeping all profits made by child actors. The California law followed a scandal involving silent film child star Jackie Coogan who ended up impoverished after his parents left with his film earnings.
But the New York Times investigation into sexual exploitation of children led the sponsors to adjust the bill, to ban any moneymaking from content featuring children under 14.
During House floor debate Wednesday, Stephenson read from the Times investigation, citing examples of sites run by parents that show their daughters in dresses, leotards and bathing suits and that had clientele of convicted pedophiles.
“But what often starts as a parent’s effort to jump-start a child’s modeling career, or win favors from clothing brands, can quickly descend into a dark underworld dominated by adult men, many of whom openly admit on other platforms to being sexually attracted to children,” the Times reported.
Rep. Dawn Gillman, R-Dassel, said she knows three families who make all of their income from social media sites that show family life. One, she said, takes in income of $100,000 a month.
“They have retired their husbands from their big-time jobs … solely being online,” Gillman said. “And their children are a part of this business.” She said she worried about the burden placed on these families to keep records of how much time each child was featured, what profits resulted and how much to place in each trust account.
“They are compensating their children and their family by affording the life they have right now through their business,” Gillman said.
Stephenson acknowledged that lots of money can be made from the accounts but said many viewers come for the cute kids, not the parents.
“There’s all sorts of stories out there about what that looks like for the kids, how their daily life is impacted,” he said. “Even setting aside the sexualization, the work of content creation is work. It is my belief that if a child is engaged in that work, some of that money is theirs and shouldn’t just be taken away by the parents.”
Rep. Walter Hudson, R-Albertville, said he thinks the bill should be targeted on those who profit from sexualizing their children, something not mentioned specifically in the bill.
“We hear the horrific stories of sexual exploitation of children, but then we’re presented with language that doesn’t address that directly, at all,” he said.
Hudson also termed the sections that allow children to sue parents who failed to set aside money in trust accounts “an odd thing to try to facilitate and encourage.”
“The more I look into the details of this bill, the more arbitrary it feels and the more it feels as though what we’re actually accomplishing is just making ourselves feel good for having ‘done something,’” Hudson said.
Stephenson responded, saying his attempts to find language that stopped some content but allowed other content raised First Amendment issues. It would have been challenging — impossible even — to craft a law that only carved out videos and images that met a definition of sexualized or sexual exploitation, so he and Maye Quade decided to try to ban all profit-making from social media images and videos of children under 14.
“You have to take a more content-neutral approach to survive that First Amendment scrutiny,” he said.
Similar language is in a House Labor omnibus bill, something Stephenson said was done to increase the chances of the bill language passing. And while it is also in a Senate omnibus bill, he said he hopes the Senate takes it up as a separate issue as in HF 3488.
The bills give the attorney general the authority to enforce the prohibition on profiting from content featuring children under age 14. They also require the content creator, the account owner or another adult with control of the account to take down any images or video featuring a child if that person makes a request — either while still a minor or after they reach adulthood.
One section contains seemingly contradictory language. It first bans profiting from content featuring children under age 14 but then requires that 100% of the money made must go to the child. Maye Quade said that is included as an extra penalty for parents who violate the prohibition and to perhaps serve as a disincentive for doing so.
Peter CallaghanPeter Callaghan covers state government for MinnPost. Follow him on Twitter @CallaghanPeter or email him at pcallaghan@minnpost.com.
As a nonprofit newsroom, MinnPost relies on donations from readers like you. Start a monthly gift today to keep our in-depth journalism free for all to access.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
This article first appeared on MinnPost and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
We’ve recently sent you an authentication link. Please, check your inbox!
Enter the code you received via email to sign in, or sign in using a password.
