There’s No Such Thing As An Ethical Family Channel (Even If The Family Is Strict)

I watched a video by YouTuber jewelamina about the family vlogging channel Vidya and Pookesh. They’re parents who became famous for their strict parenting methods, and people debating over whether or not they’re good parents.

My opinion on them is that strict anti phone family vloggers demonstrate the same hypocrisy as trad wife influencers. They moral grandstand about how a woman’s duty is being a wife and mother and they should never strive to have jobs or earn money. What are they doing while propagating that message? Earning money through their jobs as influencers. You know, the very thing they claim to be against. The only way it wouldn’t be hypercritical is if they’re giving every single penny they earn to their husbands to have complete control over, but they’re never gonna do that because they’re smarter than that. They know how dangerous it is to have their husbands control all the money, yet they have no problem telling other women to do the opposite. A real trad wife would have no social media presence at all, hence why you never see a trad wife influencer over the age of 40.

Vidya and Pookesh can pat themselves on the back for how great they are at raising their kids all they want. The way I see it, if you don’t allow your kids to have screen time while actively turning them into screen time for other people and profiting off of it, you’re a hypocrite. If their kids aren’t allowed to use the same social media platforms their parents are posting them on, then they’ll be completely oblivious to their parents profiting off of what’s essentially their humiliation. Getting yelled at, scolded, and grounded by your parents is embarrassing for kids. I’d imagine most of us wouldn’t want that to be filmed and posted. Imagine when Vidya and Pookesh kids become adults trying to get jobs, and the interviewer says they’re a fan of their parent’s channel they reference something very personal from their childhoods. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’d be horrified if a stranger knew something personal about me. I’d especially be horrified and angry if I found out my parents have been posting the most vulnerable moments of my life for millions of strangers to gawk at. Family blogging is a direct violation of the kid’s privacy because kids can’t consent. Given how Vidya and Pookesh pride themselves on their strictness, I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t care about their kids’ privacy.

I also just plain don’t trust any parent who films and posts their kids being punished because there’s a pattern of the parents who do that end up being revealed to be abusers. Look no further than 8 Passengers. Folks were praising Ruby (and to a lesser extent Kevin) for their strict parenting. They never gave their kids smart phones (and eventually no phones at all), and punished them with chores and exercise whenever they got bad grades or misplaced important items. Then the cracks started to show after the infamous “Chat’s bed was taken away for 6 months for pranking his little brother” video came out. Eventually Ruby (and her negative influence/affair parnter Jodie) was arrested for child abuse and child endangerment. The same happened with the Duggars. They weren’t family vloggers, but they too were praised for being strict with their kids. No phones, no videogames, limited tv, etc. Not only was the oldest son outed as a rapist and pedophile, the parents forced the daughters (aka his victims) to take full blame and do public damage control. Not to mention, none of the kids saw a dime of the money that was earned through the show, despite them being the reason the show was profitable in the first place. Vidya and Pookesh are already rich, but where is all of that money they’re earning by filming their kids going? Are they gonna put in a savings or college fund? Or are they gonna be like every other family “strict” channel and keep it all to themselves and leave their kids high and dry with college tuition because they “don’t believe in handouts.” Hot take, but at least 50% of the money earned through family channels should belong to the kids. No matter how much work the parents put into planning, filming, and editing, their channel wouldn’t exist without their kids. Yet many of those parents respect their kids as people enough to think they deserve the money that was earned off of their labor. Since the kids of family channels aren’t classified as child actors and don’t benefit from the Coogan Law.

Another uncomfortable truth that doesn’t get brought up when it comes to family channels that emphasize strictness, is that a lot of people genuinely hate kids and love seeing them be punished, even if the punishment isn't warranted. The biggest example of this is DaddyOFive, one of the OG popular family channels. Mike’s fans reveled in watching him “pranking” his kids to the point where they’re in tears. He got away with it for so long because he framed it under the guise of discipline. Looking at videos that criticized DaddyOFive, the comments sections were riddled with the most disgusting and disturbing insults and violent fantasies directed towards the kids. Some were even giving suggestions for harsher punishments for the younger kids. Mike and his wife knew this, and that motivated him to keep making those videos all the way up until the law stepped in.

At the end of the day, posting kids online at all is inherently dangerous. Not all social media platforms are built the same, I personally don’t think posting kids on Facebook is that bad. However, TikTok is an extremely public platform. Part of the reason why TikTok gets the most reach out of all the social media platforms is because the algorithm shoves every video in everyone’s faces regardless of whether or not they're interested. This is what leads to the wrong types of people finding family vlogging channels. It’s common knowledge that the silent minority of family vlogger’s fans are pedophiles. Even if the parents never post videos of their kids in swim suits or eating phallic shaped foods, pedophiles will still save and share those videos with their friends for the purpose of satiating their disgusting paraphilias. By choosing to make content featuring their kids, Vidya and Pookesh are actively feeding their kids to wolves whether they intend to or not. Stalking is also an issue. There’s a disturbing amount of grown adults who build parasocial relationships towards the kids of family channels. Many family channels aren’t shy about their full legal names or where they live. All it takes is a handful of details for a stalker to figure out where their kids go to school, or any other locations the kids like to go. Not to mention, thanks to Gen A.I., pedophiles have an easier time making, selling, and sharing child porn. Where do they get the reference material to build the models for those videos? From family channels. There’s nothing stopping a pedophile from taking Vidya and Pookesh’s videos and making child porn of their kids.

So sorry, I’m gonna be a hater and say I don’t trust Vidya and Pookesh and don’t think they’re “good patents.” A good patent would NEVER be a family vlogger and violate their children’s privacy for attention and profit. They just raise their kids in private, OFFLINE, and let how they grow speak on their parenting itself.

As Shari Franke said, “There’s no such thing as an ethical family channel.” No exceptions.

Kids Deserve Safe Online Spaces, Whether You Like It Or Not

I absolutely can’t stand the "kiDs ShOuLdN’t bE OnLiNe aT AlL” rebuttal whenever internet safety for kids gets discussed. Those people refuse to understand that kids who are part of any marginalized group or victims of bullying rely on online spaces for community and support. Having good irl friends and being accepted by the community you were born into is a privilege that not every kid has. As someone who is black, queer, and has niche interests, trying to make friends as a child was an arduous task. I didn’t start making real friends who truly understood me until I got involved in online spaces. I’m annoyed by kids on the internet too, but still think they deserve to be protected while online. This is why I wasn’t happy when I heard the news that Roblox might be shut down. Online safe spaces for kids are kinda extinct. Without Roblox, all those kids will have nowhere to go. If a kid’s only social media platform is Roblox, and the only way they can talk to their online friends is Roblox, if it shuts down, all those friendships will be lost. Plus it will only encourage kids to be more involved on mainstream platforms like Twitter and TikTok. Roblox may not be a “kid friendly” online space, but it’s literally the closest thing to an option kids have nowadays.

The internet is also a valuable resource for kids who are abused by their parents. Loving, responsible, understanding parents are also a privilege that not every child has. I see at least one teenager making a post about how they need money to leave their terrible living conditions every other day on multiple social media platforms. Folks love to dismiss those posts and tell those teens to just get a job. I don’t know how it is in other countries, but the job market in the US is terrible. First of all, you need at least a GED to qualify for the majority of minimum wage jobs; there are no one bedroom apartments in the US that are affordable on a minimum wage salary. Second, even jobs that usually hire teens like the fast food industry raised the hiring standard to unreasonable levels. Dominos now requires people to write cover letters to qualify for store front jobs. Third, thanks to A.I., entry level white collar jobs that don’t require a college degree like telemarketing are becoming obsolete. The barrier of entry with jobs is hard enough for able bodied neurotypical people with high school degrees. Imagine how much harder it is for disabled and/or neurodivergent teenagers who haven’t graduated yet or are homeschooled and don’t have diplomas at all. So for the majority of teenagers, art commissions and asking for communal support through donations are the safest, easiest, and most readily available options for them to earn money. Both of those revenue streams wouldn’t be an option if they were banned from being online.

The rebuttal to all of that is always that kids should just use irl resources to help with their plights. As someone who was abused by their step father, people severely underestimate how truly alone and helpless children are in those situations. The people who say that kids should talk to other trusted adults fail to understand that adults don’t listen to kids. Whenever a kid tells an adult that they’re being abused by their parents, they’ll either be told they’re lying, they’re exaggerating, or they’re just simply being disciplined and they deserved it. Guidance counselors don’t do anything besides just telling kids to stand up for themselves and tell them to stop or walk away. Neither of which are an option when it comes to someone who holds absolute power over them. Other adults in the family tend to be complacent or apathetic. Many of them operate on a “not my monkeys not my circus” and “keep that in you home” mindset, which basically leads to kids getting ignored. In worse cases, the other adults in the kid’s family will advocate for or absolve their parents of abuse: “They wouldn’t do that. You don’t know them like I do,” “They had a rough childhood, so cut them some slack,” “You think that’s abuse? That doesn’t hold a candle to the stuff my/our parents did me/us,” “They’re doing their best, so quite being so judgmental and ungrateful!” Child Protective Services doesn’t really do much for abused kids either because 9 out of 10 times, they take the parents’ side. The rare times parents do get punished by CPS, they get a few months of probation and maybe anger management, then just get sent home unmonitored. CPS only really helps when the child has visible scars, even then parents can lie about where the scars came from because it’s always a “he said she said” without evidence, or when the child is already dead. Most abusive parents also isolate their children, so going to friends isn’t a viable option either. Even if the kid had a friend they could confide in, their friend is a kid too. There’s only so much a kid could do to help another kid in that situation. Not to mention, if the kid’s friend’s parents are friends with their parents, then the same situation I mentioned about how other adults in the family aren’t always helpful will happen. his why the most common “solutions” for abused kids before the internet were to either to grin and bear it until they turn 18, run away and risk being trafficked or die from the elements, or commit suicide. 

All this to say, banning kids from using the internet and not bothering to make online spaces safer for them isn’t a good option. It’s actively counterproductive to the most vulnerable demographic of people in the world.