Discussion
Introduction
This section will help you discuss the pros and cons of kid influencing, focusing on the role of companies, kids, parents, legislators and social media. Your discussion should be based on the articles “YouTube Kidfluencers Are Becoming Minefields for Google”, “Companies make millions off kid influencers, and the law hasn't kept up”, and the video report “Kid Influencers. Few Rules, Big Money”.
Pros of kid influencing
The texts suggest that kid influencing gives children the opportunity and connections to begin building a career very early in life. For instance, as text 1 shows, the nine-year-old Clements twins are established influencers who collaborate with big brands such as Crocs and Givenchy (03:11), whose products they model for their Instagram page (01:59). The twins are also shown on what appears to be a professional photo shoot session (06:10-06:14). Similarly, the six-year-old McClure twins wear brand clothes (04:48) and are shown participating at events (05:51) and walking on a fashion runway (06:00-06:00). According to text 3, 15-year-old influencer JoJo Siwa also collaborates with different brands and has two lines of merchandise in collaboration with Target Corp, the second-largest US retailer (ll. 9-10). These details suggest that, besides having a career on social media, kid influencers can also make business connections, which might lead, for example, to careers in the fashion industry.
Text 2 informs us that seven-year-old Ryan, the star of YouTube channel RyanToysReview, earned $22 million in 2018 through advertising alone (ll. 49-52). Text 1 suggests the Clements twins, who had over 1 million followers in 2019, could earn more than $10,000 per sponsored post (02:09-02:18). This suggests that the six-year-old McClure twins, with their 5.1 million followers (05:10-05:15), could make even larger profits. Therefore, one of the pros of kid influencing is that kid influencers and their families can make a significant profit, enjoying a more expensive lifestyle than average and perhaps have less financial worries later in their lives.
In text 1, the Clements twins' mother is shown saying that, for her daughters, being an influencer is “not really a job, because they’re having fun” (06:16-06:19). As...
