Dave & Dujanovic: Utah proposal to bring new protections for ‘Kidfluencers’

SALT LAKE CITY — A Utah law maker wants to protect kids by mandating parents give a cut of the money they make from filming their children on social media. 

More and more families are earning money through social media. Often this includes posting vlogs of their children and getting advertisers to sponsor their videos. 

But should something be in place to protect kids in these videos? Should they be treated like child actors and receive a cut of the money? Some families might look at it more like a family business, where every has to contribute.

Representative Doug Owens, has put forward a piece of legislation that protect kids and makes sure these ‘Kidfluencers’ are getting compensated too, not just their parents.

“The kids lives are upended to produce content for the parents and they get to be adults and they have parents have made a lot of money and don’t have anything to share with the kids,” said Owens. “Really, it comes out of the typical film production scenario where child actors … work on film sets or commercials and the parents get a lot of money for that and then the kid becomes an adult and has no money to show for it.”

The bill Owens has set forth says that 15% of the families social media income should be set aside for each kid. Though that exact amount isn’t set in stone. 

“That’s open to discussion. That is typically what’s been the case for traditional film actors, 15%. in states that have this protection. I think it’s time we did that for residents of Utah.”

When do you have to start setting the money aside?

Owens said that the bill would kick in when the family starts generating enough business they have to file separate business tax returns.

But some kids are in videos more that others, so what counts for that 15% as earned? Owens said if they’re in a high proportion of the video that 15% income ought to be put in a trust for the kid. 

“If you’re in it more than 30% of the time, and these are factors that can be adjusted and are under discussion, right? This the bill draft it can be discussed and changed at this point. But once you’re in a certain percentage of the video time, you’re entitled to your share of that 15%.”

More aspects that protect kids

Another feature of the bill to protect kids would be for when they reach adulthood. When they are adults they can ask for the content provider to take down the content of them as a child. 

“This gives them the right to remove that content as an adult and not have themselves defined forever online by some crazy that happened in their childhood. So we think that’s an important protection for the kids as well,” said Owens.

Who will police this? 

Owens said they are really hoping for compliance from the parents. But this bill would protect kids with less careful parents have a claim to the money and image later in life.  

As for the actual content being filmed, Owens said there’s not a lot they can do with in this specific bill.

“There’s a lot of that we cannot regulate, right? There’s some bad judgment sometimes when parents are having their kids do crazy stuff. But we we can’t police that, right? That’s a family dynamic.” 

But the hope of the bill is to protect kids and their future as much as it can finically. 

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