Child influencers exploited by their parents

Eva Diana Kidisyuk (known online as Kids Diana Show) is one of the most famous cases of children who became internet stars in the unprecedented role of baby influencers, pushed by the big brands of the industry (who need them to break into the market of minors) and by the greed of their parents. Diana became famous when she was very small, About 1 2-years, because her parents started posting videos on YouTube in which she was playing with toys or doing little skits. All sponsored. Today, Diana's channel, born in Kiev, Ukraine, and now residing in Dubai, has over 130 million members and over 120 billion viewsaccumulated over the years.

According to the calculations of the market research company eMarketer In just one year, in 2025, Diana's YouTube channel earned around 8 million euros in advertising, all collected by the children's parents, money to which we must add:

• toy sponsorships
• the product line “Love, Diana”
• music and content on other platforms

 

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Ryan kaji He became extremely popular in the United States, still at the age of ten, as a junk food influencer. Millions of fans on social media, millions of views of videos that regularly go viral, millions in revenue. On the other hand, the factor of junk food In America, it's worth around six billion dollars a year. And never mind if youth obesity is considered a true national health emergency in America.

Americans are true specialists in the art of waste, fueled by the apparent contradiction of consumerism and the parallel rush to health. Apparently, it's all part of a single business. This is true, for example, with compulsive shopping: first they trick you into buying, buy, buy, even things that are useless, and then when you finally find out you're sick, they treat you in a clinic. At the cost of tens of thousands of dollars. You have heart problems for a bad nutritionAnother trip to the clinic, where at the coffee shop, patients following open-heart surgery are treated as if they were in a Miami hotel, with a breakfast of eggs and bacon. Junk food, whose sales are fueled by online child exploitation, is part of this vicious cycle: first I make you sick, and then I offer you expensive treatments.

Baby influencers in Italy

The phenomenon of baby influencers is one of the darkest sides of the social media universe, and takes on the characteristics of a form of child slavery, where, regardless of the influencers' earnings, the real business, driving the entire supply chain, are large brands of products that are certainly not recommended for health, especially that of children.

Il New York Times published an investigation with a very significant title: «Who are the mini-influencers who make your children gain weight?» And he cites a survey by New York University, published in the magazine Pediatrics which explains well the functioning and damages of this new phenomenon. Given that YouTube It is a channel seen by about 40 percent of children, and has therefore become a valuable tool for conveying advertising messages aimed at minors, the American researchers did some field tests, taking a close look at the contents of 418 videos posted online featuring the face of a mini-influencer aged between 8 and 14.

The phenomenon of baby influencers has also spread to Italy. Leonardo is a 12-year-old boy from Modena with a YouTube channel called Leo Toys, which has nearly 600 subscribers. Leonardo's videos, like his gameplay, have sponsors like Netflix, Mattel, and Warner Bros. Alyssa and Daniel are not yet ten years old, but their stories on the YouTube channel Silvia and Kids, collect millions of views every night from very young people who glue themselves to their smartphones before going to bed to follow the new adventures of the two minors.

According to a statistic collected by Save the Children336 minors, between the ages of 7 and 15, have had work experience. Of these, approximately 6 percent have worked online, creating content for social media or video games, particularly promoting junk food, smartphones, and e-cigarettes.

Kid influencers on YouTube

Nearly half of the children promoted food and drink brands that in 90 percent of cases they are unhealthy, and therefore harmful to children's health. Sugary drinks and sweets, foods high in carbohydrates and fats. These videos have already been viewed over a billion times. And just one video, the McDonald's Happy Meal, has had almost one hundred million views. These numbers explain why baby influencers then get... stratospheric revenues, from web star.

At the end of this whole process, we reach the end of the line: wasted health. Twenty percent of American children and teenagers between the ages of 2 and 19 are obese. It was just 5,5 percent in 1970. And in Italy, too, we must contend with this phenomenon of poor nutrition, driven by advertising and influencers. One in ten children is obese, and two in ten are overweight. Unfortunately, the habit of eating junk food comes at a high price.To the delight of those who make a lot of money from it. While everywhere, starting with that phantom world that gathers around the World Health Organization, they do nothing but preach healthy eating from childhood onwards.

The market conditioned by baby influencers

According to a survey by Trend Online, 86 percent of the generation Millennials (born between the early 1980s and the mid-1990s), one of the most active on the shopping market, says its choices are influenced by baby influencers. These money-making machines almost always have their families behind them, with parents They act as agents for their minor children and handle all the commercial aspects of their online activity. They are themselves passionate about posting their children's images on their social media profiles.

The phenomenon of sharenting

Child influencers have many strings to their bow, and these make them highly sought-after in the advertising market. They address potential consumers, including minors, with direct, explicit language, speaking as if they were playing. Through the platforms most popular with young people (YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok), baby influencersThey become the darlings of their peers, who are overwhelmed by the bombardment of messages aimed at encouraging the purchase of products that, precisely because of their unhealthy characteristics, are difficult to sell.

The European Union, including Italy, has set the minimum age for registering on a social media platform at 14, but this hypocritical ban is not enough to stem the phenomenon of baby influencers, also because the first to circumvent the law are the parents of children who seek and find on social media the compasses of their lifestyles and related consumption. A European study, dating back to 2021, shows that 80 percent of children have a significant presence on social media already at the age of two, while the phenomenon of sharenting (the constant sharing of posts with images of one's children on social media) concerns 63 percent of parents and mainly children aged zero to three.

Ethical problems

The ethical questions, and not only, on the activity of the baby influencers, they pass secondary to the chain of interests that underpin their activity. The contradiction is evident: minors are theoretically prohibited from registering on social media platforms, yet they can roam around as authors of videos and posts paid for by advertising companies. Privacy These children are trampled on every minute, and no one says a word. The pressure they are subjected to, to continuously produce likes, is impressive and causes psychological problems that are difficult to eliminate. In the Wild West of baby influencers It's difficult to even think of any law that could contain and regulate the phenomenon. In America, for example, there are very strict rules for the work of minors, even just as extras, on film sets and in fiction, but there is nothing on the horizon for the baby influencer. The technology Without rules it also produces this: a childhood monetized and enslaved by the dictatorship of the market.