1206: Taylor Lorenz | How Child Influencers Become Predator Magnets

23:04Like there's always been sort of a family aspect to her content. She's perfectly happy. She was thrilled that she was able to launch her career as a teenager and become this famous multi-million dollar influencer. So a lot of kids are totally happy. A lot of kids also are religious and maybe grow up in these religious households where they view, again, like the promotion of this lifestyle is important. And so they make their own family channels. Some of them get pregnant very young. But a lot of them are unhappy as well. Like you said, I think the ones that are unhappy are usually the ones where they didn't end up making millions, Right.

23:38So your parent put you out there on the Internet, maybe aspirationally or sometimes like didn't even get monetized. Right. You just sort of overshared for what, maybe a couple hundred dollars once or twice. Yeah. And now you've had your privacy sort of violated. I will say one other thing. I interviewed dozens of children for a story. This was back actually in 2018. I'm sure it's even accelerated even more for a story in the Atlantic where I interviewed dozens of children about the first time they Googled themselves and discovered their online footprint. and how they felt about it. And a significant amount of those kids, some of them were upset because they realized, oh my God, I'm in these videos from my classroom.

24:15Oh my God, my preschool had an Instagram account and it's embarrassing. Kids' lives are being documented. We can get into all that as well outside these family channels in an obscene way. But a significant amount of kids, Jordan, were upset that there wasn't more about them on the internet. And they talked about how they didn't feel like a person without a robust digital footprint. And so they wanted more content about themselves online. That's interesting. And I thought that that was an interesting side effect of growing up in this environment where I think kids are conditioned to feel like they cannot process their identity outside of the context of the internet.

24:50That's a radical shift from what we had even, I would say, 10 years ago. And now for a word from companies that don't rely entirely on child labor. We'll be right back. If you're wondering how I managed to book all these great authors, thinkers, and creators every single week, it is because of my network, the circle of people I know, like, and trust, I'm teaching you how to build the same thing for yourself for free over at sixminutenetworking.com. This course, I know you're not booking for a podcast, but this course is all about improving your relationship building skills. It does that in a super easy, non-cringy, very down-to-earth way.

25:20It's great for sales. It's great for business. It's great for personal life. It's not going to be awkward. It's not cheesy. It's not going to make you look like a jerk. It's just practical stuff that'll make you a better connector, a better colleague, a better friend, and a better peer. And six minutes a day is all it takes. Many of the guests on the show subscribe and contribute to the course. Come join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. Again, it's all free sans shenanigans at sixminutenetworking.com. Now back to Taylor Lorenz. Nobody of, I'm 45, nobody cared in high school about being on the internet.

25:53And then in college, it was like your flex, well, even in law school, your flex was like, is your AOL instant messenger away message funny? That was it. Nobody had photos of themselves online or anything. So you got to wonder how the family vlogger job kind of alters the relationship between the kids and the parents, because you can't really separate work from family. And if you're doing cartwheels in the front yard, does it ruin it when your mom comes out with a video camera and tells you to start over and then has to set up the lighting because it's a little bit dusky outside and your your face is shadowed weird?

26:28You think working from home is rough sometimes because you can't separate home life from the office. Imagine your life is your job or your job is your life and documenting everything, real or not, that's your career. I can't say I would be interested in that. I mean, I can see kids just sort of sitting around in the living room and the parents are like, don't look tired, don't be too giggly, don't be too happy right now, be sad. No, no, no, be more sad. And it's like, well, I'm watching a Disney movie. I'm just having the reaction that I want to have. No, no, no. Be super sad that the Lion King, the dad died.

27:02Like, you got to give me some tears. That's kind of what I'm imagining. And that's sad to me. Well, I don't know if you saw that video. There was a video that went viral. I think it was like last year of this mom taking a video of the child. And I think the dog had died. And she said, look more sad. Cry, cry. Come on. We're so sad. We're so sad. And I think she's trying to get the child to make a face for the thumbnail. all, certainly that is some parents. And those parents are - That's gross. Gross, right? Like you said, they're commodifying and stuff. A lot of parents, when you talk to them, they're like, listen, I mean, for instance, I talked to a dad who started a channel that's like, he and his family are really into like outdoor sports.

27:39And he films his ski trips. They film their adventures with their kids. They don't really film at home content, but they've been able to go on these amazing vacations. And he always says like, listen, If my kid doesn't want to be in a video that day, that's totally fine. But they've been able to have all these amazing experiences and I wouldn't trade that for the world and they kind of seem cool with it. I don't think that they mean poorly. I think there's a lot of parents that try to do it responsibly. I think what becomes a problem is this influencer economy that we built intersecting with surveillance culture and facial recognition.

28:12All of the tech that's coming online now where these kids have no privacy. And so I think that having anything about your life on the Internet when you're young and you can't dictate the own story of your life is harder for people. Like, I think the biggest luxury you can give your kids is privacy. Because, sure, it wouldn't have been a big deal maybe 10 years ago because somebody would have had to just go back and watch all that. But now we have AI systems that can scrape all those videos, can pull out clips, can find your face in any single piece of content online through facial recognition.

28:46It's just all becoming a lot more dystopian. And kids are being tracked and surveilled also not just through family channels, but through everything, through classroom vlogs, through other people's social media content. There's all of this filming that's happening in public now. So kids are just being filmed in random other videos and having weird moments in the back of someone's random other vlog, again, because people are increasingly filming in public. So I get like where these parents are coming from. And I'm not going to fault some of the ones that try to do it responsibly. But I think that they are a little bit delusional about where tech is going and like this surveillance infrastructure that we're like hurtling into.

29:22do look there are of course extreme examples and since this is a podcast we're talking about some of these like ruby frank this is his parenting channel where she was kind of like this model parent or whatever but then it didn't she go to prison yeah she was abusing her kids yeah yeah but that's a good example of somebody where it's she was the one that was like do it again like you're the content you know like there are irresponsible parents and what i would say too is there are irresponsible parents out there that act like that that don't monetize right Yeah. Imagine being punished for that and you don't even get a free.

29:52It's like you're not even getting free tampons. Yeah. And you're getting yelled at all the time. But yeah, she was doing weird stuff. Like if their kid forgot their lunch, she would just be like, I'm not bringing it to school. They get to starve. And there was a kid, one of the brothers pulled a prank on their sibling and he had to forfeit his bed for seven months. Yeah. I mean, it's just psycho. And she was ultimately prosecuted. And I think it's important to note that like when these parents are being abusive, actually the ones that are being abusive on YouTube channels, because they're documenting so much of their life on YouTube channels, it actually makes it a lot easier to prosecute them.

30:24And there's actually more accountability for abusive parents that are vlogging their lives than abusive parents that are not vlogging their lives. So I like to tell people that are like, oh, my God, the child's abuse. Yes. But ironically, them documenting everything makes it easier. The real cases of abuse that are harder to prosecute are like when they're not vlogging every aspect of their lives. You're right. It's a lot easier to prosecute if you've got a video. He's fine. Well, here's a video of you forcing him to jump off the roof into the pool and then him in the hospital with the injury he received.

30:54So we're going to submit that in evidence and you can plead guilty. Tends to be a little bit easier from a prosecutorial perspective. There's some funny excerpts when I was reading these articles that really kind of made me chuckle because this has happened to me. Parents can go years thinking their son or daughter is just an average teen on YouTube or Instagram until one day a marketing manager at a Fortune 500 brand calls the house asking to collaborate as happened to one mother I spoke to. This is from an article. This is like my dad here. Some parents don't become aware until other kids begin asking their child for selfies in public or when their youngsters begin receiving special treatment at local businesses.

31:27So like, I'll be with my parents and someone will be like, are you Jordan Harbinger? Can I get a photo with you? It's like my dad had never heard of my podcast. He was like, what's that all about? I'm like, Dad, you understand that the thing I record in the other room over here, other people listen to that. And that's how I make money. Right. You understand that part? It's just like it didn't click until then. Right. It was like, how come the restaurant owner knows who you are? You know, that thing we listen to in the car on the way here. He also heard that at the same time, like other people can listen.

31:55It's just so funny explaining this to my dad, who's 80. It's like he gets it, but he doesn't get it. It's like that's like the radio. Think about it like the radio. Other people can listen to the radio at the same time. Just too funny. There's this crowd control issues. I think this was another one that I thought was kind of alarming, but interesting. This is, again, an excerpt from an article. Because of how quickly things can go awry, most parents I spoke with try to limit the times their children are in public without protection. That's a little scary. This leads to families' lives being severely restricted in terms of the things they can do together.

32:26Family movie nights at the local theater are canceled. Birthday dinners are held in private rather than at a public restaurant. If the family wants to travel to Disney World or go to a concert, prior arrangements must be made. Even parents who take the most meticulous cautionary measures see their children's whereabouts tracked 24-7 by fan accounts online. There are Twitter and Instagram accounts set up by fans to crowdsource sightings of their favorite internet stars and alert followers to their whereabouts everywhere they go. Because of the global reach of social platforms, most internet stars have fans all over the globe, and it can seem like no matter where a parent takes their child, they are on the ground.

32:58When a kid's location is revealed, a flash mob can pop up in a matter of minutes, All it takes is one tweet. That is not a fun way to live your life. That novelty dies really fast, I would imagine. Yeah, I think that's actually the story I wrote for The Atlantic a couple years ago. But yes, again, this is for the most successful kids, of course. But it can happen even on a local level where you have these sort of local kid celebrities where they go to the water park. Everyone knows them because, again, they're online. And I think it's just the dynamics of fame. Like in the past, that sort of thing would happen to like a Disney star or like Leonardo DiCaprio, right?

33:33Or Miley Cyrus, I guess, when she was a child star. But now it's sort of like these mid-level average parents that have to deal with fame. And this is a consequence of the influencer industry becoming so mainstream is that more and more people are sort of suffering the downsides of celebrity. And they're getting the upsides to a point. They're getting some money, but they're certainly not getting like the house in Beverly Hills, right? That like some of these Disney stars got. the 24-7 PR and security that a child star in the past would have. And so I think it's left a lot of parents struggling.

34:03And a lot of parents, especially when their kids blow up online, will take them out of school. They'll just be homeschooled. And a lot of these parents, again, because a lot of the family vloggers are quite religious, they homeschool their kids anyway. So the kid already is in a different sort of environment. But it's very hard for these kids to go to public school. Sometimes they're bullied or they're sort of aspirational. I think of this kid. Are you familiar with the Rizzler? No, but that's a great name. Is that his nickname online? The Rizzler? Yes. That's so funny. He recently appeared on Theo Vaughn.

34:34He's a, I think he's an eight-year-old, maybe nine. Oh God, that's funny. Yes. It's even funnier now that the Rizzler is eight years old. Yes. That's so funny. He's a child. But, you know, I was talking to his dad about this thing because I was like, you know, the Rizzler is, people call him this generation's Shirley Temple. He's incredibly popular online. He blew up on TikTok. He's a child. And, you know, I've talked to his dad about, like, how does he handle this? And his dad said, you know, I've actually kept him in his regular school. And I don't, I have kept his life as normal as possible.

35:03We're fine. If he wants to have this career as he can, we'll do these opportunities. But I want him to have this normal life because the minute his life starts to seem too abnormal, it's going to affect him. So the Rizler is still in public school, but I don't know. He's becoming so famous. He's on late night TV shows. And because of his social media presence, I just, you know, the Rizler I've heard is asking for six figures for these brand deals. So he's also making this obscene amount of money that it'll probably set him up for life. So, you know, I think a lot of parents think, well, they'll pay for the therapy, you know.

35:35Yeah, they'll pay for the therapy. That's funny. It's also like you can imagine when he's in high school, he's going to be like, hey, dad, how much money is in that trust account? Because I'm a little bit worried about paying for college. And it's going to be like, you don't really have to worry about going to college if you don't want to. And you also don't have to worry about the career you're going to have after college if you don't want to, because you could probably retire and have kids and they also wouldn't have to work because you started earning millions of dollars when you were eight years old.

35:58I mean, there's going to be like 50 million bucks in there. You know, there are kids that are totally fine because they grew up monetizing their crazy life when they were young. Yeah. And I think they have an identity crisis. I mean, this is where you start to see these corollaries with other child stars, where even if it's something that they consented to at the time, which children debatably can consent, I would say they can't really consent. But even if they're happy with how it turned out, they're like, listen, I'm a millionaire now at 24 or whatever. They also experienced peak fame very young, and their fan base has often moved on.

36:31And they have these, like, psychological questions about themselves, and they struggle to kind of re-identify themselves. And I think that's when sometimes they turn to addiction or try to reinvent themselves in weird ways or they get super religious and like fame does stuff to you. And I think none of us are prepared for it. My friend Shep Gordon, he was a manager for like Alice Cooper and a bunch of other really famous people. I wish I could list more, but I'm drawing a blank here. But it's just very famous rock stars. Very. And he told me that he's never seen fame do something good for someone.

37:06And basically, he told me no one ever comes out the other side better off. They have money and things like that. But he's like, oh, debatably, you would have been more adjusted person being less famous. And so he's got this kind of torn conscience, right? Because his job is to make his clients really famous and make them a lot of money. But then he's also like, but I got to warn you, you're going to make a bunch of money and you're going to be famous. You're going to get everything you ever wanted. And you are going it's going to screw up your whole life. Yeah. And nobody believes them. Right.

37:35Maybe they're like, I don't care. My life already is a little bit messy. I'll handle it. I've got you, man. And it's like, no, no, you don't get it. This is going to be bad. You just don't see it. But I've seen it with everybody I've worked with since 19, whatever, 65 or whatever he started his career, right? And it's just interesting to see a guy like that because he's like super nice and normal. But he'll just talk very candidly. He's like, yeah, this person has this mental illness and he's got this addiction. And it's like, yeah, fame screws you up. I want to move on to the New York Times expose because this was hands down one of the grossest things I've read this year.

38:08We'll link to it in the show notes for the Times subscribers. I don't know if it's like one of those free ones or you have to be logged in to see it. But the New York Times examined 2.1 million Instagram posts, 5 ,000 mom-run child influencer accounts. Many parents, particularly mothers, they create and manage Instagram profiles for underage daughters, often to jumpstart modeling careers, get brand deals, get free stuff. That's how it usually starts. And a lot of the content's benign, obviously, but many accounts feature highly sexualized imagery. So bikini stuff, revealing dancewear, suggestive poses, which, as you might predict from where the show has been going, they draw large male followings.

38:49And some of the followings of these little girl accounts are 75 to 90 percent male. And not surprisingly, the investigation found predator access and grooming, men commenting sexually, sending explicit messages, people trying to blackmail them. I'm not sure how that works. Maybe you have some inside info on that. They coordinate in Telegram groups to trade the imagery of minors from Instagram. They monetize this. I should probably stop talking now. Tell me more about this because I've got a lot here, but this is like peak gross when it comes to this. Yeah, I think Michael Keller and Jen Valentino at The Times have just done some of the best work really investigating, like you said, this creepy aspect of it, which is that there's a lot of creeps.

39:31Men fetishize young women. And we see this over and over and over again. This is a broader problem in culture. Whether these girls' accounts are being monetized or not, a lot of older men want to follow preteen girls or teen girls. And you can imagine why. It's not because they're interested in what they have to say. And unfortunately, I mean, a lot of young people want to monetize online. Sometimes the parents monetize the children. Sometimes the teenagers want to monetize their own content. But it is for gross reasons, like you said. And I think that once you start to see these like weird telegram links appear or the subscription base becomes mostly men, you have to ask why and if you want to cultivate this audience.

40:15It is sort of there was a lot of controversy recently because Lil Tay, who was a child influencer who was actually being managed by her older brother, got famous when she was nine. She was known as like the youngest flexor on the internet. And she was making these ridiculous videos and like these Lamborghinis with money and stuff when she was a child. She became really famous. And then she recently launched an OnlyFans on her 18th birthday. Oh, geez. That's like the cliche that nobody wanted to hear about, right? Yeah. But listen, she made millions of dollars and she sort of click baited these men.

40:49She said, I took these photos at 1201 a.m. the minute after I turned 18 and now you can buy them. And I think the type of men that are going to buy images of a girl at 1201 a.m. on her 18th birthday, like all those people should be on a list, in my opinion. Which is funny because now they are. Thanks to the OnlyFans purchase record, they are on a list. And I hope the FBI has that list. So she kind of clickbaited them because she ultimately did. The images were actually safe for work. So she just, I think, took pictures in her bedroom. And they were so the men were kind of mad, like, oh, we thought these were going to be racy.

41:22but she's not against doing more racy images. She sort of talked about doing that. And this is not the first girl that has done this. There's these girls that will amass a large following and then flip it. Young gymnasts. I talked to a gymnast influencer who was like, listen, I am not as good as Livy Dunn or Dunn, who's this famous teen influencer gymnast who became a college star. But I know that there's mostly men on here. I want to make my millions to pay for my athletic career. And I don't really care if these men want to sexualize me. I don't care. They're going to steal my photos off the Internet anyway.

41:54I'm not doing any not safe for work stuff, but I get it. And they're fine being sexualized. You know, I don't know. Once they're 18, it is their prerogative to do that. They're adult women, technically. I think the broader problem is that we have a society that sexualizes young girls and that until we fix that broader societal problem, like there's going to be this audience on the Internet. And I'm not a parent, but I would not allow my child to monetize in that way before they were 18. Before they were 18. Yeah. But the article says this Times article, parents sell exclusive photos, videos and chat access, which, God, I hope the kid is not doing that.

42:33No, but those chats can get explicit, especially as people are relying on AI. So one influencer, yeah, one influencer, she is over 18, but she set up a chat bot and she said that almost immediately every the audience wanted to have explicit conversations. Jeez. And these are 99 cents to 250 a month. And again, we're talking about this article specifically talking about underage little girls. Yes, children. Some push subscription only bikini weeks or provocative themes. These parents should be easy for me to say in jail. Bikini week for your nine year old dance daughter is so gross that I don't understand how this is.

43:12I mean, I guess I understand how it's legal from a technical perspective, but you are the worst parent if you're doing this to your kid. And man, and then the incentives are aligned poorly. right? The brand kind of doesn't care if you have a large male audience, despite something inappropriate, right? They're just kind of looking at the demographics and some giant sales tool and going, oh, this little girl influencer has a bunch of guys looking at her, I don't know, gymnastics stuff. We want to advertise this Lexus to as many guys as possible. So we're going to pay. Very rarely does the buyer go, why are so many men following this young girl?

43:47And is that troublesome, right? They're buying tens of millions, hundreds of millions of impressions at once. I don't want to give them a total pass. They should probably flag these. But as of right now, the incentives are misaligned. And then, you know, the algorithms, man, if you're getting a lot of comments, even if they're really gross dudes doing it, and they're sending hearts and weird emojis, that's what tells the algorithm that your backflip photo or your sprinkler thing is something worth engaging on. That to me is just like, all of the incentives are aligned poorly. The platform benefits, the brands benefit, the parents benefit.

44:22And the parents tell themselves the kids benefit because they make money. But really, you're sexualizing your sub 10 years old daughter. I mean, shame on you. I don't know. Am I just an old stick in the mud? No, it's pageant culture, right? Like, I mean, what these parents would say before when they had their kids up on stage in these beauty pageants at seven years old and full face makeup and, you know, sexualizing themselves and dances and stuff is like, listen, this pageant money is going to pay for their college. And it is girls. That's what bothers me so much about it. I think as a woman, there's not really this equivalent for young boy influencers.

44:56There are a lot of young boy influencers, but they're not sexualized in the same way by like masses of women online. It is these young girls. And I think that the parents at some level, especially the ones mentioned in these articles, they are aware of that. And they've decided to make that trade off for money. And that is the problem with all of this stuff, as you said, and the incentive structure, the algorithms, the money, the views culture where people are just paid off views like it all aligns in a bad way. Meta. So Facebook not being very helpful here from what I understand, you can actually get in trouble for blocking too many accounts.

45:33So let's say a mom goes, I don't want these predators following my kid and they block everybody who put a creepy eggplant emoji or whatever in, they can actually run into problems with their account. Why are you blocking so many people? We're going to throttle your ability to do that. And it's like, you are going to make it harder for me to block pedos from looking at my daughter on the internet? What the hell? And I would imagine that there's got to be long-term damage to their kid's self-worth and certainly from their safety. And from a law enforcement perspective, for those wondering why we don't just arrest these folks.

46:04I mean, it's just a big gray area, right? Because it's not technically child sexual abuse material or pornographic. It's just creepy. It doesn't pass the test. You would look at that and go, that's normal. But you can't sort of legally go, hey, this photo shouldn't exist. It's like that photo might be fine in your family photo album. It's extra creepy when it's on the internet and being commented on. It's just riding on that, it's towing that line. Yes. We have a broader culture, again, that fetishizes youth in women. We had, I'll never forget, I grew up with like the Olsen twins, right? There was these, the tabloids were running countdowns to when they turned 18.

46:41You have photographers, paparazzi laying on the ground, you know, when like Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears walked out of their 18th birthday to take upskirt photos of them. That's not legal, is it? I believe it. I mean, look, the upskirt photos now in 2025 are considered inappropriate, although New York Magazine ran one a couple of years ago. But that was a big thing in the odds. And it certainly is a thing now. Even do you remember, like these celebrities would be getting out of the car as well. They would try to get these upskirt photos. Obviously, the women are wearing underwear. Yeah. But we still have this culture that sexualizes girls.

47:14Wasn't that a Britney Spears thing or Paris Hilton? They caught her getting out of the car and it was like so tacky. But if you look online, you know, like you look at how people talk about women and influencers, and especially as we're moving towards this, like, I don't even know how to describe it, but it's sort of this red pill culture of fetishizing youth. This idea that like women lose value the minute they turn 18. That's when they're sort of most valuable. And then they lose value up until they turn 30 and then they're over the hill. All of that is ultimately like deeply pedophilic culture.

47:43It teaches men the younger, the better. And so then you see these men online. I've seen men arguing, well, yeah, I follow these 13-year-olds, but that's normal. Back in the medieval times, girls would get married when they're 13 or whatever. It's delusional. And their lifespan was maybe until 26 or 35 or something. Yeah. Jeez. It's gross. And so, yeah, I think Instagram, you mentioned, has done a terrible job of this because Instagram doesn't want to do anything that will mitigate engagement. So if you block too many people or if you try to sort of exert control of your account to have more sort of user control.

48:17They don't want you throttling engagement. They make it harder. And they say, oh, well, it's to prevent spam. I think that they have long abdicated user controls in favor of engagement above everything else. And now for some deals and discounts so good, you won't have to sell your children's photos to perverts on the internet. We'll be right back. If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment, support those who make the show possible. All of the deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show are searchable and clickable over at jordanharbinger.com slash deals.

48:48If you can't remember the name of a sponsor, you can't find the code, email us, jordan at jordanharbinger.com. I am happy to surface codes for you. It is that important that you support those who support the show. Now for the rest of my conversation with Taylor Lorenz. This is the question I think a lot of people are wondering, and we've touched on this a little bit, but are parents complicit? are they naive or are they actually trapped because now they have a choice between rationalizing bad behavior and not paying for their kids college and not taking a vacation to Disneyland I'm sympathetic to a lot of these complicit less so I suppose but naive okay I kind of can see how you could start that way trapped I can see how that could happen I can see you going wow we made it extra 100 grand this year because of Julie's dance photos.

49:37And now we got to put stuff that people want. It's a little weird. And there's some weirdos, but it's not the end of the world. And they don't, again, they don't know where we live, but they do. And it's going to pay for all of her college. And look, all her brothers and sisters can get the medical care that they need or whatever. They can go to private school in this area that doesn't have good public schools. I hate to say it, but I'm sort of sympathetic to that. Like I get really being able to use the money that you're making from this and then figuring out any way possible to keep the gravy train running?

50:03I think there are good parents and bad parents, right? And like I mentioned, that dad who's like the adventure dad and started recording like the adventures with the kids. Like, I think some of these parents really do go into this being like, I want to be ethical. Look, I want to take advantage of this influencer world. Maybe, like you said, some of it is helping paying for the mortgage after the dad lost the job or the mom can't work. Some of them are in these financial situations and they're trying to do it in a responsible way. And I think that's fine. Some of the kids really want to be entertainers.

50:34They sort of grew up. They really, that's their dream. And the parents are like, look, we'll try to help you realize that dream. Sometimes I think they're naive. I don't know. I mean, I wrote about a 15-year-old who was sexually assaulted in a content house years ago where the content house, the adult at the content house overseeing the content house was 18, by the way. An 18-year-old YouTuber. I talked to the parents and I'm like, why would you send your 14 year old child who eventually turned 15 to live in a content house managed by an 18 year old? And they're like, well, he wants to be an entertainer.

51:04This is a kid who is an aspiring pop star now, like, and was a popular YouTuber and blew up online. And the parents are like these nice Midwestern parents that, again, are so ignorant of the internet. Like parents don't understand these platforms. So they think, okay, I want to help my, you know, I want my child to realize their dream. But I would say, don't send them to LA to do that, they can wait four years. But it's hard when you're a parent. So I think some well-intentioned people get into it and then they're in too deep. But then there's a lot that I think are completely complicit and should be prosecuted, right?

51:34Because they do not have the best interests of their child at heart. And unfortunately, bad parenting is not against the law. Traumatizing your children, you know, to an extent is not against the law, like embarrassing your children rather. But I think a lot more parents just need to go into it with open eyes and be aware, again, of this surveillance infrastructure, where things are going. Because even if it's not problematic today, I promise you we are rapidly losing privacy. And the way things are going is really dark and dystopian. I would argue that, again, the best thing that you can give your child is actually privacy.

52:05That's really well put. I think a lot of people don't maybe understand how the comments and the DMs and the telegram groups kind of can end up with groomed or exploited kids. But what red flag should parents recognize before it's too late? Is there some sort of, I mean, obviously look at the comments that are on our kids' posts. What else? Look in their DMs because they're 11 and shouldn't have privacy there. What are we looking for? Yes. Don't let your child be on the internet unsupervised when they're young. Like, you don't want to keep your kid off the internet completely. I'm very against this idea of banning kids until they're 16 or 18 from getting on social media.

52:42That's the last thing we should do because then they're 18 on social media and they don't know how to navigate these platforms at all. So you want to have these experiences where you allow your child to learn about the internet, but learn about the internet in a safe way. Certainly do not give your child unsupervised access to iPads where they're just consuming content all day and talk to them early. When you see these children online, be like, hey, here's what's happening. The parent is vlogging this. Explain the dynamics of the influencer economy to them and just be aware. It's fine. I think if your child wants to set up a YouTube account, I went to a bunch of these camps.

53:16There are these fast-growing programs for kids aged, I think it's like 10 to 17, where there are summer camps teaching kids how to become YouTubers because this is a really popular career. And I talk to a lot of parents. I'm like, why are you sending your 13-year-old to YouTuber camp? And they're like, listen, I want my kid to grow up. Maybe Susie wants to start a cooking channel. We don't want people timestamping when she's licking off the batter or whatever. But we want her to learn video editing and we want her to feel like she has this creative way to express herself. So set up a private channel.

53:44You can set up unlisted videos. Those videos can be shared with a small group of friends and family, whatever. They can learn the video editing skills. But keep it private, right? Or keep the Instagram account locked. Don't let them engage in this world unsupervised. Not to have a surveillance thing, but you do want to surveil your kids when they're young. And you want to make sure that you have check-ins and that your children can come to you and say, hey, I got a really weird, creepy message. And know that they're not going to get in trouble or that you aren't going to blame them. and say, well, why did you post that photo?

54:12But say, listen, there's creeps out here. And I know that you wanted to share that bikini pic because you felt happier. You wanted to share your dance video because you felt proud of yourself. But we want to make sure that we're watching out for these bad people. This is nothing new. I remember when I was young, my parents resisted getting me a modem for my computer, which is for people who don't know what that is, that allows you to connect to the internet using the phone. They didn't want me to have that because our family friend, who also had a computer and a modem, wouldn't let his kids use the modem.

54:42And the reason was there are pedos online on, I think it was like AOL or CompuServe or whatever it was, but Prodigy, these super old online services where you could join a chat room. And it's like, there's pedophiles in there. And people who've listened to the show for a while have heard this story a million times. But I mean, I even helped catch pedophiles early in the game on AOL in the 90s and had a few guys get arrested by the FBI as a result because they were looking for young teenage girls to take photographs of because they were a photographer. I mean, it was really creepy. And the grooming was real.

55:15Now it seems like it's probably more pervasive because back then, nobody knew what this imaginary 14 year old girl looked like. They didn't realize they were chatting with me who was printing out the transcripts and sending the facts into the FBI. Now they know the girl is real. They can figure out using weird geo guessing, which is where you use like things in videos and photos to find out where someone lives because you see a business and a street name or something like that, or it's next to another business and you can do really creepy stuff like, all right, in the background of this was a Hobby Lobby.

55:44And then they said they went to Home Depot. So we need a list of all of the plazas in California that have a Hobby Lobby and a Home Depot in the same place. Okay, we found three. Let's look at Google Street View and find out what each of these looks like. Okay, I think we found the one where they went. Huh, that means they must live within a few miles of this place. let's look at their house, let's look at other places and geolocate them. And that's why you and I were sort of joking before, they always know where you live. Because if somebody is willing to put that kind of time in there, it's really actually not hard to do that.

56:14One of my friends is like, there's a website, I think it's called GeoGuessr. And you guess where things are. He's like top rated single digit rank and GeoGuessr. Big nerd, as you might imagine. But like, it's very easy to find out where something is pretty much anywhere in the world. If you know what clues to look for in photos and videos. It's really scary, actually. I also just want to say something that I think is actually a bigger problem. I know parents always obsess over the creepiness and the pedophiles and all that. Yes, that is something that I think like tugs at parents' heartstrings.

56:43But there's something that I think is actually a bigger reason, I guess, like a bigger problem with this whole like child influencer industry. And that is the fact that young people don't have their identity formed yet. Young people are exploring who they are. They're trying to learn who they are. They're trying to try on different hats. Like we were both millennials, I think, or like elder millennials. Maybe we had like a goth phase and then we became a cheerleader. And then we were like, you know, we all like we had the luxury of it. And it wasn't filmed, thank God. Exactly. Yeah. Even if you have a child that wants to sort of become a certain influencer.

57:16I talked to this one kid who had, or Timothee Chalamet famously had like a gaming channel when he was young. That's funny. One kid was like doing skateboarding videos and I was talking to their dad. And they were like, that was a sort of more private account. And he was saying like, look, I don't think my kid's going to like this forever. You want to create spaces for privacy because you want kids to be able to explore their identity and not feel like they have to rebrand themselves. And something I've heard from a lot of kids over the years, especially child influencers that I've interviewed, is like, listen, I was really into this when I started it.

57:44I sort of cultivated this brand online and now I'm trying to explore other interests or I'm trying to grow and maybe I'm going in a different way. And you have this audience pressure that's like, no, where's your XYZ videos? Or why are you doing this? Or why have you changed your mind on this stuff? Some of these kids are, they're trying to become political influencers, you know, at like age 16. And your politics, you don't even know about the world when you're 16. Your politics are going to evolve. But the incentive structure is there to lock you in. And so kids end up with a lot of psychological damage because they can't really evolve and explore themselves.

58:14And they feel very beholden, especially when the parent is putting so much online. online, they can't explore their own identity and express their own identity because it's been written for them and because now there's all this incentive around it. So I think, again, you just want to give your kid privacy so that they can have that goth phase in peace. And it hasn't been documented, right? Or they can sort of have. Right. And they don't have to sort of like live with that online and feel that pressure to conform to this identity. And kids want to explore their identity through the Internet. So I think you don't have to keep them offline, but try to let them do it in private.

58:44Did you have a goth phase? Is that what you're trying to tell everyone right now? I had so many phases. I certainly had the emo phase with like the side bags. And like, you know, I just, I think like the goth thing is so funny because I see a lot of kids, it's like used against them later. God, this was you. And you're, you know, now it's been a big thing too, where I talked to one, she's an influencer in college now, but she had a, like a really hardcore Republican phase. She grew up really conservative and it's kind of used against her. She, now she does reproductive justice and she actually talks about like, hey, I had this Republican phase, but it's kind of used to discredit her.

59:15And it's kind of used as, and it's like, gosh. We all evolve. But because the way the Internet is where it's like, well, here's the receipts on, you know, what you said when you were 15. I think she wishes that that wasn't out there, right, that her life wasn't documented and that she wasn't spouting off about politics or whatever or having controversies when you're young, which can then jeopardize your job prospects. Because, oh, man, this is all happening now where you have jobs. And I've talked to employees like, well, they're 22. They're promising, but they have kind of a weird Internet history.

59:43And now we have facial recognition and AI that can sort of flag these things. just keep it off the internet. Just give your child privacy. Yeah, growing up as a brand definitely would mess with your self-worth, your boundaries, your sense of identity. I also worry, and this is an article you can do in five or ten years, I suppose, but I wonder what the stats are going to be like on child influencers transitioning into platforms like OnlyFans, like that Lil Tay you mentioned, because early exposure maybe somehow normalizes sexualized attention in an unhealthy way for a lot of these little girls.

1:00:15And they just want money. They have been taught to value money by our culture, by society, where like even Danielle Bregoli, the Cash Me Outside girl who got famous as well when she was a child, she talks about she's like, listen, she was actually abused by older men when she was a teen. And she was like, nobody cared about me. And so I thought, listen, if men are going to sexualize me and abuse me, and that's what culture is going to reward, I might as well profit off it. And I would say rather than getting mad at these girls because there's so much hate directed at them, let's fix this culture of obsessing about young girls.

1:00:47Like, let's fix this pedophilic culture where men are telling women that they age out when they're 30 and that their value only comes from youth. That is what is feeding this. That is what is feeding these, you know, this market. We should fix that rather than villainize these, you know, 19 year olds that have likely been abused or gone through trauma themselves. I remember the cash me outside girl and I remember a lot of my friends who were parents at the time I was this is pre-kids for me way pre-kids I remember being like oh my god have you seen this and they're like yeah as a parent that's horrifying something is wrong in her home and I was like oh yeah good point I didn't really think about that and my friend who's a professor and he had kids really early he said when that video was going around start the countdown to when she does some kind of porn and I was like what are you talking about and he's like trust me and here we are she's like number one on OnlyFans the day she turned 18.

1:01:36And I've sent that to him. I was like, do you remember saying that she would be in porn? And he's like, no, but I guess I was right. He really called it because she clearly was not treated well by whoever it was in her stepdad or whatever. Well, I can't remember exactly the story, but yeah, she had this traumatic childhood and it was really easy for all of us to laugh at her and be like, what shitty parents? And of course, there was definitely some shitty parenting happening there. She wouldn't have made it to Dr. Phil in the first place. But it's really, really sad to see this child actors right on set.

1:02:05They've got protections. They've got enforcement. You know, we were looking at, I can't remember what his name was. What you talk about, Willis? Remember that guy? Oh, yeah. Yeah. And you had Webster and stuff, although I think he had a disease where he was actually really an adult who looked like a kid. But none of that exists when mom and dad are sharenting, as you think coined it. They're filming you talking about your first period sponsored by a tampon company. and they argue, you know, I'm just filming the kid's life, but it's so much more involved in this. This documentary that I saw that you were in that reminded me to reach out to you.

1:02:36I already forgot what it was called, but it was about kid influencers. Bad influence. Bad influence, yes. And you killed it on there. And the workday for those kids was like 15 hours because they had to film, their whole squad or whatever, had to film one to two videos per day. And I don't know what a video sketching, filming thing is like, But if I had to prepare two podcasts per day or even one per day, I would lose my freaking mind. It would be very hard, even with my whole team. I couldn't do it. I would burn out. And these are kids. They're supposed to spend a lot of time in school and also, I don't know, mindlessly watching SpongeBob to relax because they're developing.

1:03:14And they don't have any of that. They don't have any of the protections that those kids have. They're on all the time. And I got to wonder what being on and performing all the time does to a kid's sense of self, to your earlier point. Yeah. Yeah, we do have the Coogan Act. There are some protections if those kids are sort of in a more professionalized setting. It has all these laws around like child entertainers, basically. And California has stronger protections. I mean, in that case, the Piper Rock Hell case, too, it's these kids that are in these programs, these content houses and things where there's not a lot of oversight.

1:03:42Or the oversight, again, is an 18-year-old YouTuber who's technically an adult, but I would argue should not be in charge of a bunch of young people. Right. Younger people, I guess. So unfortunately, what we're seeing now, though, Jordan, is this reaction where people are rightfully horrified by these systems, but they're backing these horrible, dangerous laws that absolutely will not do what they're claiming to do. And so you're seeing these things. You'll read these headlines. And I made a big YouTube video, wrote 7000 word takedown of this recent Utah law that's like, we're passing a law to protect child influencers.

1:04:15And you see this a lot of states put forward. We're passing these laws to protect child influencers. Well, you read the law, and the law does not protect child influencers at all. In fact, according to a lot of child endangerment experts, these laws will further endanger child influencers and make it even harder to prosecute cases of child abuse. So it's very frustrating. It's very frustrating because people actually do want to do something about this. We can talk about what can actually be done. But we have to make sure that we are not passing really dangerous, bad, essentially censorship laws that are going to further endanger kids, which is what we're seeing now.

1:04:50We're seeing these states. And, you know, it's crazy, too. As I called the Utah lawmaker who co-sponsored this bill, I said, you know, can you explain all these horrible red flags that are in this bill that you passed? He said, I didn't read the bill. I don't know if he said I didn't read. He said, I don't know what's in the bill. Call a lawyer and they can explain it to you. I also interviewed two people that testified for the bill. And I said, guys, what about all this horrible stuff that's in this bill that people say actually is going to endanger the children more? He said, oh, well, we don't really know about that stuff.

1:05:14We didn't really read the bill very much. Like you testified for the bill to be passed. Right. You testified for this law. And you're saying you don't know what's in it. So we are in this horrible situation. Yeah. So don't just get on board because you see a headline saying, oh, we need to pass a law. What's worse than no law is a bad law. Yes. We don't want that. But we do need more transparency. And I would say the things we can do is put pressure on these brands. Look at these brands. When we see the advertising on these channels, why are these brands incentivizing this? You know, like, why is this company monetizing a girl's period?

1:05:45I think that they should receive some letters, right? And also the platforms themselves. Yeah. The platforms themselves know when this stuff is happening. And I think that we need to allow for more them to allow more user controls and anonymity and things like that. And we need to fix this broader culture of pedophilia that we have in society. Yeah. I don't know how you do that. I mean, that's because it's so people don't even want to talk about it, let alone do they have good ideas on how to fix it. I know we're running out of time, but how do you enforce rules and boundaries on a kid who has more money than a grown up and thus, you know, an unusual level of autonomy?

1:06:20It's got to be pretty hard to tell your kid. My parents used to say stuff to me when I was being a little shit like, if you want to do this, then you move out and you get your own place. And it was like, OK, I guess I can't do that. But what happens when you say that to a kid who has a million dollars in cash in a savings account? And he's like, great, I would love to move out and get my own place. And then, yes, I will jump off the roof into a pool and I will drink in my own private property. And I will light things on fire and blow things up because I can afford to do that because I have more money than you, dad, even though you're a lawyer or something.

1:06:52Right. Because they are killing it. And the threats are a little bit more empty. and yes, you have parental authority, but like kind of if they really wanted to not do that with you, you couldn't really stop them. That's scary. Jordan, what's really scary is I talked to, I did a story a couple of years ago about this talent manager and I was talking to parents of teenagers and they said that the talent manager, this Los Angeles talent person had reached out to the teens and encouraged the teens to emancipate themselves. Oh my God. Sending the messages saying, hey, your parents are holding you back.

1:07:24Move to LA, I can make you millions. These parents are holding you back and I'll make you money. So preying on these kids as a parent, I mean, horrifying. That's terrible. So I think here's the thing. The power dynamics are going to be messed up. It's so hard to be a parent of a teen. I'm empathetic to that. You have to build this relationship of trust with your child early. And you have to have an open door policy, right, where you allow them to engage in the internet. Don't say no internet. That's never going to work. You cannot have that world. These kids will find a way to go on the Internet wherever, however they can.

1:07:56I do work in prison sometimes. Those guys have Internet. So your kid who's not in a maximum security facility is going to figure out a way to get Internet. But I think it's about educating themselves and educating them about these systems of incentives that say, listen, these people are going to promise you the world. But look at X, Y, Z. Read this testimony from Ruby Frankie's daughter or whatever. Or look at how some of these kids turn out or look at this and say, if you want to be in an influencer world. We're not opposed to that, but let's access it in a smart way. Let's be sure that you preserve your privacy.

1:08:28And again, educate them on this surveillance infrastructure that's being built because facial recognition is becoming the norm. So say, you know, hey, you're 15. You want to put yourself out there. Guess what? An employer is going to be able to look and AI analyze every single thing that you're ever going to post. Do you really want to take that risk? And a lot of kids, again, they have no brain cells. So they're like, sure, sure. You know, I don't care. It doesn't matter. I'm going to be famous on YouTube and I won't need a real job. So I don't care what employers are looking at. I mean, that's what they would say.

1:08:52And 99 % of people don't succeed. So I think it's about educating them, exposing them to those stories. There's plenty of testimonies from influencers that talk about the fact that, like, look, this is a 1 % market. You're hearing about these 1 % stories. You're not seeing all the failed attempts. and experiment, make your YouTube channel, make it private, but teach your kids to value privacy and respect privacy and teach your young girls to value themselves outside of how they look and value themselves for who they are, not because they're getting validation from men or validation online, because that is what the culture teaches them.

1:09:26And you're right, we're not gonna fix it overnight, but I do think it's important to call that out. And unfortunately, like these trad wife influencers, like they're telling these women too, right? Your value is being a mother at home. Your value is being a young wife and having kids as young as possible. We need to teach girls that there are other ways to value yourself that are not just your body and how young you are. Taylor Lorenz, thank you very much. Enlightening, a little bit scary. Appropriate level of troubling. I appreciate it. Thank you. Imagine facing a rare, incurable disease and finding out that AI could repurpose an FDA-approved drug as a potential cure.

1:10:00That's the breakthrough achieved by Dr. David Fagenbaum and the mission of his company. I'll never forget the doctor walks in the room and says, David, your liver, your kidneys, your bone marrow, your heart and your lungs are all shutting down. That's it. Like we've tried everything. There's there's nothing more that we can do. I was terrified. I was like, had my last rights read to me. Of course, you know, no one thought that it was even possible that I could survive. You're dying from this horrible disease. Chemotherapy just gave you a little bit of a window, but it's probably going to come back.

1:10:30So, you know, what's your game plan to prevent this thing from killing you? Well, the only way to get back is to use the tools that you have within reach. I'm like, shit, I've got this horrible disease. And the only way that like I might be able to save myself is if I can find a drug that's already at the CVS. And so my mission then became, can I figure out what the hell's going wrong in my immune system? So then maybe I could find a drug that already exists that could treat it. I'm not supposed to be here. Like my drug wasn't made for me. It saved my life. It was always there. I am completely on fire about this idea that there are drugs at your nearby CBS, your nearby Walgreens, that could help more diseases and more people, but the incentives aren't aligned for us to do that.

1:11:15So we created Every Cure a couple years ago because we believe that every drug should be utilized for every disease it possibly can, regardless of whether it's profitable or not. 80 % of our drugs that can help people today and tomorrow, no one's doing any research whatsoever to figure out more uses for them. Tune into episode 1005 of the Jordan Harbinger Show to explore how existing medications are bringing new hope to those confronting elusive illnesses. Super interesting stuff. Taylor's great. Friend of the show for a while. We didn't touch as much on content houses. Essentially, there's a bunch of influencers living together, often run by a talent manager.

1:11:51Some of these can be legit-ish, but a lot of it can be sort of like a sweatshop. Long hours, talent managers basically squeezing you for everything you're worth. They sell ads. Maybe they pay you, but they also take out your rent. Maybe some room and board. That's not necessarily transparent. There's no parents. What rights do you have? Who's parenting you? Are you being parented and managed by a boss who gets a cut of revenue? That doesn't seem very ideal for a kid. It can be a very predatory environment. I've seen exposés on this where the bills in the house go unpaid. Kids are trapped. they're evicted, maybe there's no food, maybe they turn off the water.

1:12:24Really big influencers, surprise, surprise, people report never getting paid. It can be just a huge mess. And man, I got to say, some of these influencer families are weird AF. There's like 11 kids and a creepy wifey kind of Christian nationalist vibe kind of thing going on. A little bit of side eye, I would give these families some of the time. Some of this stuff is outright weird. And when it's not a sweatshop. Sometimes these environments are just low-key abusive or maybe not low-key at all. All things Taylor Lorenz will be in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com. Advertisers, deals, discounts, ways to support the show, all at jordanharbinger.com slash deals.

1:13:02Please consider supporting those who support the show. Also, our newsletter, We Bit Wiser. The idea here, something specific, something practical, something that'll have an immediate impact on your decisions, your psychology, and your relationships in under two minutes every Wednesday or almost every Wednesday. If you haven't signed up yet, I invite you to come check it out. It is a great companion to the show. JordanHarbinger.com slash news is where you can find it. Don't forget about 6-Minute Networking as well over at 6MinuteNetworking.com. I'm at JordanHarbinger on both Twitter and Instagram.

1:13:32You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. And this show, it's created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Tata Sidlowskis, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting, the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. If you know somebody who's interested in becoming an influencer, has a child influencer, maybe they're already doing this, definitely share this episode with them. In fact, if they're skeptical of the whole thing, share this episode with them.

1:14:03They'll know that they were on the right track. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time.

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