Fresh Take: Fortesa Latifi on the Truth About Kids in Influencer Families

0:00Amy, let me tell you about a magical place that is so exactly designed to be enclosed space, year-round fun for the whole family, that I bet you already know what I'm going to say before I even say the name. Let's say it together on three. One, two, three. Great Wolf Lodge. You got it, Amy.

0:21Heidi Raykeil:My kids loved Great Wolf Lodge when we went. You probably already know that it has a huge indoor water park with a wave pool, Lazy River, a bunch of massive water slides. But then your pack can hit the other attractions because, wait, there's more. Great Wolf Lodge has adventure-packed attractions like MagiQuest, a live-action game kids can play throughout the lodge, plus the Northern Lights Arcade. Spent some quality time there, so your kid who loves the Lazy River and your kid who loves fantasy games will both have a great time. Great Wolf Lodge also offers great dining options and complimentary daily events like nightly dance parties.

0:56Heidi Raykeil:All under one roof. Unpack the car once and you're settled in to have fun. And with 22 lodges across the country, you're always a short drive away from adventure. We've both had such great times at Great Wolf Lodge. So bring your pack together at a lodge near you. Learn more at greatwolf.com and strengthen the pack. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Fresh Take from What Fresh Hell? Laughing in the face of motherhood. This is Margaret. And this is Amy. Today we're talking to Fortessa Latifi. She is a journalist who has spent years reporting on influencers, kidfluencers, reality TV families, and the kids growing up inside all of it.

1:36Heidi Raykeil:Fortessa's work has been featured in Teen Vogue, Rolling Stone, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and more. Today, we'll be talking about Fortessa's new book, Like, Follow, Subscribe, Influencer Kids, and the Cost of a Childhood Online. Welcome, Fortessa. Hi, thank you for having me. So you start the book where Amy and I both started our journey in the parenting space with kind of the OG mom bloggers. So take us to that time. For those who cannot cast their memories back that far, tell us about this era of the first of the mommy bloggers well it feels funny for me to be telling you guys about this since you were part we lived it yeah yeah but i think the original mommy bloggers were really kind of fascinating because i mean as you all can attest to you were writing these thousands of word essays plundering the emotional depths of you know infertility and miscarriage and potty training and raising your kids.

2:38And it was really this interesting space and time on the internet because for a while it wasn't profitable. And so there was kind of this like preciousness to it because it was just for each other and for yourselves.

2:52Heidi Raykeil:It was also extremely written word and not visual back in the day. I remember Margaret's blog, actually, Margaret had a blog called Short Fat Dictator back in the day. And it was very funny. And you would use sort of gifs and things to make your points, never pictures of your kids. Right. And there was no such thing as Instagram reels. So you could talk about your kids, give them funny names, whatever. Yeah. And the funny stories or the serious stories you would tell were completely with the power of the written word, not by bringing them on camera with you. Yeah, totally. I think it's it was radically different from being a mom influencer specifically because, yeah, so much of it was written and it wasn't visual.

3:31And then, of course, monetization happened and then Instagram happened and everything changed. And, you know, as a mom myself now, and I became a mom in 2024 and I'm like, wow, I wish that I had those essays to read because it's just not the same. Like motherhood content is not the same. Yeah. And even I think with blogging and I found this as a blogger that people who shared more of their lives tended to be more successful. Like there was a little bit of story. I mean, I come from television writing background and I was like, oh, here's something cute that happened this week. Okay. Now here's something, but there wasn't a narrative and a through line.

4:11It wasn't like, well, my husband and I are having problems and I don't know if we'll stay together or I'm having this very tricky pregnancy and how is it going to turn out? I think all of these mediums tend to reward story, which makes sense. Like audiences want to feel attached to you and the story that is happening to you. And I, by staying in the kind of like, here's some cute, funny essays about me. I felt that thing of, oh, this would be going better if I was letting people more into my life. Yeah. I mean, I feel that way even now, like, you know, I have to have a platform of some sort as a journalist, just because that's what being a journalist is in 2026.

4:54Right. I really struggle with how much to share about my own life. And I do think that if I shared more, my stuff would do much better. And maybe that would lead to selling more books. But then I'm kind of going down the path that I'm writing about. So it's kind of this really tricky thing. It is a trap. And I think it's true. And you approach it this way. We tend to be like, these are bad, shallow people making selfish decisions. And that's not really how it happens. It happens much more organically than that.

5:21Heidi Raykeil:I went through, I have my old blog posts. And so I became a parent in 2002. I was blogging by 2008 when I had three kids. I have the old posts and was thinking I put them into a book from my kids. And even looking at them again, like, I don't know if they'd find this so funny. And I was doing fake versions of my kids' names. There was a little bit of a lack of understanding of the permanence of it all or the potential permanence of it all. And here I am saying, well, I took it down. Like, I think it's taken down. I don't know. You can probably find it if you wanted to. We weren't really thinking about how this would play when our kids were in their 20s thing at all.

5:59Heidi Raykeil:It just was I'm sharing this with 100 friends. It's like a little snow globe of other moms reading it. Do you think that was short sighted? How could you have understood what the Internet was going to become? Right. You know, like, I don't think it was short sighted because I don't think anyone else was thinking any differently. So you talk in the book about our fascination with family content. So what is family content? I think people kind of get it. But for people who are not super dialed into this world, what is family content? Yeah, I mean, a lot of it is just wildly mundane, which is really fascinating.

6:32Like, it's just like, it's moms waking up and saying, get breakfast ready with me for my four kids. And it's just them, you know, scrambling some eggs and getting lunches ready for the day, or it's them like cleaning their house, or it's them taking their kids to doctor's appointments. Like it's very mundane. And are the families special in some way?

6:52Heidi Raykeil:Like I'm thinking back to the early version of this was John plus Kate and eight, there were TV shows, or the Duggars, you know, with their 35 children or whatever, like the family structure was remarkable. And then episode for episode, it would actually be they go to the dentist and I don't know, quadruplets, the dentist seems fine, actually. do you need to have a twist for your family to be popular or not necessarily? No, you don't have to. I would say that a lot of times the more popular families do have more kids, but it's not like the eight or 15 kids that the Gosselins or the Duggars had, but it's more like four or five, which I guess is like the 2026 version of like a lot of kids because who can afford that many kids anymore?

7:31Or oftentimes it's like young parents. So parents who started having kids in their like late teens or early 20s or it's religious families or it's families who live on a farm. But it's not always that. Like sometimes it's just, yeah, a family with just a couple of kids just living their normal kind of boring lives. And you talk about the very original family, the Loud family, which was before any of our times. Was it a PBS documentary? It was a PBS documentary, and it was really the first kind of reality show. And it was just a family in Santa Barbara. They had four kids. They were middle class.

8:11There was nothing really remarkable about them, but people couldn't look away. And I don't think we've looked away since then. Yeah. And you talk about the Kardashians being kind of part of that legacy that we've always had families that fascinate us. It's interesting to me because when I watch the Kardashians, I think everything happens to these people. I mean, their content. Talk about writing a soap opera. You could never write as many interesting things as have happened to that family. So in that example, it feels like the remarkable things that happened to them beyond being famous, being robbed, you know, the father coming out as trans, the boyfriend cheating with the best friend.

8:52I mean, just the amount of things that have happened to them. Is that the new model? Whereas the Loud family was just we're happy to watch anybody or does it seem all of a piece? I think the Kardashians are an exception just from how strange their lives are. I mean, partly due to the money and the extreme fame. But when it comes to like family vloggers, like these are just regular, like normal families. But I think there's something about us as people that we want to see how other families live. Like, I will scroll on TikTok and watch a mom make dinner for her kids. And it's like not interesting, but I can't.

9:30Why is it interesting? I don't know. But I'm with you. Right. It's fascinating. I think especially you're onto something with the numbers, like when they have the 20 pieces of bread out and they're making sandwiches, you're like, wow, maybe it makes me feel a little bit better. I think it makes you feel either like you can compare yourself and you can feel better or you can feel worse. And either way, you're having this reaction. Like sometimes I'll watch other moms and they have more kids than me. I have one and I'm pregnant with my second and I like have never made sourdough from scratch in my entire life.

10:03And, you know, I'm watching a mom who has six kids and makes everything, including baby food from scratch. And I feel really bad. And then I scroll and I see a parent who's giving their three year old soda and then I feel really good. And, you know, like it's either way I'm comparing myself.

10:18Heidi Raykeil:So like back in our day, we would have started these WordPress blogs, both of us, Margaret and I were each separately, creative people, not working in the same way we used to. And this was a creative outlet for us. And it was a way to reach out and find a small audience. And it seems to me like, okay, so these days, if you're putting reels of yourself making breakfast for your unremarkable family, are you trying to start a small side business? Or are you really just trying to connect and be seen? Because I look at it as like, why would you ever put your family out there? Is the gesture more simple than that?

10:50Heidi Raykeil:It's both? I think it's both. I think that motherhood, obviously, as you both know, is incredibly isolating. And so you're sitting there and you're alone and you're with your baby and your children all day and you're like, no one sees me. And so you're like, OK, let me make a reel or let me make a tick tock and put it online. And hey, if I hit the viral lottery and become a mom influencer, maybe I can buy a million dollar house and I you know, my husband can quit his job. And what's the downside? I think that's right. You get over the loneliness. I mean, we all have that instinct to be like, look at this picture of my baby who looks adorable.

11:22Everybody feels that. One of the things you hit on early in the book is the transfer from the mommy bloggers to the sort of more Instagram or family vloggers, that it's marked by a switch in focus from the mom to the kids. And that seems to be kind of at the crux of almost why you're writing this book, that that shift to following kids seems worse, I guess, than just moms talking about their own lives. Yeah, I mean, I guess it's up to each person to decide if they think that it's better or worse. But I definitely think it raises more questions about privacy and consent. Because when you're writing about your experience of motherhood, that's one thing.

12:07But when you're sharing everything about your children, that's another thing. Right. And it quickly becomes a job for the whole family. There are obviously YouTubers. You talk about the family fun pack, 15 billion views. I mean, this is their life. They're making a tremendous amount of money with this endeavor.

12:26Heidi Raykeil:That's right. And even when it goes really south, like Ruby Frankie and her family vlog, what were they called? Eight Passengers, I believe. Eight Passengers. And that went, you know, there's Netflix documentaries about what happened there. And it was terrible. Those kids were abused. But what content, right? And then we participate in watching the content about that and going back and trying to find stuff. And it's the infamy is rewarding to everybody except the kids. And then I sort of feel bad for participating in it. But when does it move from? There's an influencer I follow online who has a really super, super cute baby.

12:58Heidi Raykeil:She just does. Like, we all think we have a cute baby. This woman has a really cute baby. And it's just pictures of her with, you know, it's just her and her baby. Right. And I love it. And my phone shows me this. What's the harm in that? And then, well, like, maybe there is no harm in that. And maybe there's terrible harm in that. And when you cross that line, seems very hard to discern in the moment. I think that's totally right. And I think a point that I tried to make in the book and that I want to make here is that I don't think that every parent who posts their child online is evil or immoral or a bad parent.

13:28I just don't think that. And I think that squashing this topic into something that's so black and white doesn't serve anyone. Like I mean, I have family vloggers and mom influencers that I follow that i'm like, oh my god I love their kids. They're so cute. Like i'm not immune to this, you know, and I don't think anyone really is But I think as we often try to do on the podcast It's like your mileage may vary. This may have good outcomes or bad outcomes But it's important to go in aware of the full story So we're going to take a break and we're going to come back and discuss some of the dangers in family blogging We'll be right back

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16:06Or shoes that make you feel like, well, you. So go ahead, show off a little. Find shoes that get you at prices that get your budget. Head to your DSW store or DSW.com today. DSW, let us surprise you. So you quote in the book, Bridie Hamilton, talking about the eight dangers of family vlogging, for lack of a better term, for putting kids online. Is that right? Yes. And she talks about unwanted attention from invisible audiences, which is like Amy said, you're putting stuff out there. You don't know where the Internet's going. You don't know how big this is going to get. Yeah. And you don't really have a ton of control.

16:48No, I mean... Anyone who's ever posted anything on the internet, you don't know where it's going to end up. You don't know how big it's going to get. You don't know who's going to take it which way. I mean, it's so complicated. She talks about risks to personal safety, loss of control over personal information, stigma, which is a big one. I mean, you know, I don't think I've ever taken down my blog, but definitely one of my middle schoolers friends found it at some point. Tell me about that. They didn't care that much because I really didn't write that much about them. but oh it's stories about you from i mean it was mitigated by the fact that the blog was very small and i didn't really talk about my kids that much but it did surprise me the day it happened like we're already there where your friends are reading stuff that i wrote in the late 2000s about you it just really was surprising right and then also on this list psychological consequences reputational damage, loss of discretion, and the big category, number eight, unknowable harms.

17:52And that's the question that Amy asked, right? Like, was I wrong? And I have been always a little bit snooty about people who were like, I don't ever put my kids on Facebook or the internet. And I'm like, calm down, your kid's not that interesting. Like, I mean, all of my kids had YouTube channels at one point when they were little because they thought they were going to be, who's the kid you talk about in the book, Ryan's World. And like two people watch them and then they stop doing it. I'm a little bit like we live in an age where people can see your kids on the street or can see them on Facebook and there's not that big a difference.

18:27But it is different when your kids are characters in a television show that someone's watching. So talk a little bit about your research into the downsides of this? Just from talking to kid influencers, both for this book and for my previous work, it can be incredibly intense. I mean, I talked to a young woman who her first menstrual cycle was made into a brand deal. And that's like, not that uncommon. Like in the research of this book, I found many such cases of first menstrual cycles being turned into content. And it's just like, you think about how difficult it already is to grow up and to be going through puberty and into adolescence.

19:08And then you think about what if your parent was putting everything about those milestones online? I mean, that I just can't imagine how I would have felt as a teenager. And what is that?

19:22Heidi Raykeil:Like, I guess I'm coming back to this idea of like, there's a line that you'll cross at some point. Clearly, you monetizing that and invading your child's privacy has crossed that line, but for probably$150. So what is it that when you get that line? Well, I don't know. I mean, some people are making like tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars off of brand deals, you know? So if you think about if a person has millions of followers and they can command $100 ,000 for a brand deal, I think you can say to yourself as a parent, okay, I'm going to make an ad out of my child's first menstrual cycle, but it's going to pay for their half their college education, you know?

19:59So like, I don't know, I think it's easy to say like, oh, I could never make that trade. But then you think about what that trade actually means. Right. Well, and I think it happens really slowly. I've told the story on the podcast, but my son, through a very random set of events, was up for a role in a movie, like a big feature film. A big part. A big part. Lead in a big feature film. I kind of was like, oh, this is funny and fun. It came about because We knew a casting director who was looking at, oh, this is doesn't your kid do gymnastics, blah, blah, blah. And then at a certain point, we were really into it.

20:33Like, OK, you're going to fly to Brazil and you're going to make all this money and college could be paid for. And then there was some discussion about he needed to be a certain age and he looked very young for his age. And someone said, oh, well, they can give them hormones to stop them from growing for a certain time. And it wasn't someone asking me to do it. But I was like, oh, this is how it happens. Like suddenly you've already spent the huge salary in your mind. Yeah. You've gotten everybody excited. We're all going to Brazil. And then stuff starts coming in that you're like, I'm already in this.

21:09I can't get out now. It's quicksand. Yeah. I mean, it's sunk cost fallacy, right? That's exactly how we were talking about it. Sunking cost fallacy. But I think that for a lot of people who are like, let me show you my cute baby. And then suddenly Amy's like, that baby is cute. And then 30 ,000 other people get on board and suddenly you're doing period brand deals and you kind of lost it. Yeah. Well, how do the kids feel about this?

21:34Heidi Raykeil:Because I think it's we can see that it's a gray area. But did you interview kids for the book who were fine with things like their first menstrual cycle being used for content? Yeah. You know, I think that's what makes it so interesting is that it's not that every single child influencer grows up and hates their parents and hates that they were online. And there were kids that I talked to for the book who said, I love being a YouTube star. And when I grow up, I want to do my own family content. And, you know, the dream of so many young people is to become a YouTube star. And so for some of these kids, they're like, well, I was born into it.

22:10And like, how lucky am I? I think it has to probably do with the personality of the children, because some children were like, this is my nightmare. I hate being online. I wish that none of these billions of views existed. and others were like, yeah, when I grow up, I'm going to make my own family content. And you also talk about some of the real downsides. And unlike, I think, I mean, Amy and I both were in Hollywood for a long time and Amy was on sitcoms and saw a lot of little kids come through. It's like those parents have kind of already chosen the path of like, we are trying to become famous on TV by going to this series of auditions.

22:49It struck me in the book that some of these people start making content and it leads to this huge life that it wasn't quite the same as like, we're going to get your headshots done and buy all these outfits and go out and try to make you a big star. It's like, well, we were just documenting our lives and now suddenly everyone knows you and you're famous. You talk about people like Ryan's World. They're making tremendous amounts of money. Yeah. It can be challenging. There's a whole section about like what happens when the music stops. Right. And talk about some of the people like Colleen Ballinger and the Stouffer family when this fame really turns on them.