Illinois has officially passed the nation’s first legislation aimed at protecting child influencers, in a move advocates say is long overdue and may serve as a model for other states to follow suit.
The bill was passed through the Illinois Senate unanimously in March and was signed into law On August 11. The Illinois law will “entitle influencers under the age of 16 to a percentage of earnings based on how often they appear on video blogs or online content,” AP reports. The money must be held in a trust which the child can access when they turn 18. Currently, there are no laws that protect child influencers, or children whose parents post them online for monetary gain.
“The internet provides more opportunities for children to display their creativity than ever before,” Alex Gough, a spokesperson for Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker said in a statement to Teen Vogue. “In the event that minors are able to profit from that creativity, they deserve to be shielded from parents who would attempt to take advantage of their child’s talents and use them for their own financial gain.”
Not only is the law aiming to protect children and teenagers, but a teen set it into motion. Shreya Nallamothu, 16, started thinking about the lack of legal protections for child influencers when she was assigned an independent study project in school. Her advisor suggested she reach out to legislators and she did.
“I was like, I’m just going to shoot my shot,” Nallamothu said. “I don’t really know what I’m doing, but we’re going to see where this ends up.”
She connected with state Sen. David Koehler who went on to introduce the legislation. Sen. Koehler told Teen Vogue his legislative assistant brought Nallamothu’s letter to his attention and noted that the issue generated excitement among his staff. “The younger the staff member, the more important this was to them,” he said. “I wasn’t really aware of [this issue] until it was brought to my attention.” But once it was, Koehler dove in, speaking to legal and policy staff members to draft the legislation.
The law is focused on the monetary aspects of child influencers or children whose parents are influencers, guaranteeing a portion of earnings held in a trust (or a legal pathway to sue if they aren’t). “Child influencing… is work at the end of the day,” Nallamothu said. “It’s labor and they deserve to be compensated for their labor.” Though earlier iterations of the Illinois legislation included the option to request deletion of content that was posted of them as minors, Koehler said it was taken out because “there was really no way of enforcing it” though he’s spoken to other lawmakers in the state and hopes to return to the issue of what European countries have dubbed the “right to be forgotten.”
Activists have been pushing for an expansion of child entertainer laws to include child influencers. The call for legislation has not only centered around finances, but privacy. Cam, 24, grew up with a social media presence they didn’t consent to. They say details of their life, including their first menstrual cycle and photos of them in the hospital following a car crash, were posted to their mother’s 10,000 Facebook followers. In a previous interview with Teen Vogue, Cam said “It’s easier to tell you what my mom didn’t post.”
Cam testified in support of Washington State’s HB 1627, which would allow children of influencers to request the deletion of content featuring them “from any internet platform or network that provided compensation to the individual’s parent or parents in exchange for that content.” In Cam’s testimony, they said, “when I was 9 years old, the intimate details of my first period were shared online... I plead [with] you to be the voice for this generation of children because I know firsthand what it’s like to not have a choice when a digital footprint you didn’t create follows you around the rest of your life.”
The Washington bill is stalled in committee, with no forward movement since February. Though the Illinois legislation does not cover privacy concerns or the “right to be deleted”, Cam hopes it causes a “ripple effect” in the protection of child influencers. “I’ve seen [news outlets] talking about this and saying Illinois has the potential to become a ‘role model state’ because this isn’t a law in any other state,” Cam said. “It gives me hope that it’ll potentially even become a federal [law] one day.”
With the signing of SB1782, Illinois has made history as the first state to pass legislation protecting child influencers and children who are featured in social media content that generates profit. And state Sen. Koehler, who introduced the bill, doesn’t think the progress will end here. “I think you’ll see other states following us on this.”
