On April 16th, Governor Bill Lee signed SB1469 into law, marking Tennessee’s entry into a small but growing number of states attempting to regulate the use of children in monetized social media content. The law, which takes effect July 1st, requires influencers and content creators to set aside a portion of earnings for minors featured in their monetized content and provides those individuals the right to request removal of that content once they reach adulthood. In passing this law, Tennessee joins California, Illinois, Minnesota, and Utah in the fight to address what lawmakers have described as a rapidly expanding gap in child protection.
Tennessee’s new law responds to a modern reality: children are increasingly central to monetized social media content that generates significant income. As State Senator Page Walley noted, minors are frequently the driving force behind revenue earned via social media, and yet there are few meaningful safeguards protecting their wellbeing or ensuring they are compensated.
At first glance, this appears to be a new problem created by social media. In reality, however, this is just the most recent iteration of a familiar problem. The exploitation of children, including their exploitation at the hands of parents or guardians, is a well-documented phenomenon in the entertainment industry. Long before the rise of influencer culture, child performers generated substantial income in Hollywood while remaining vulnerable to manipulation, overexposure, and financial control by adults. Public figures such as Brooke Shields have drawn attention to the continuing harm and exploitation experienced by child actors over the years, illustrating how minors are often placed in situations that prioritize profit and visibility over their safety and autonomy.
Today, social media has created a new environment where similar dynamics can unfold, often with even less oversight. Unlike traditional entertainment industries, where child labor laws and contractual structures can provide at least some level of accountability, the world of online content creation operates largely within the private sphere, frequently within the home itself.
Although both historical and modern legislative efforts have largely focused on preventing the economic exploitation of minors, there are actually two distinct, but overlapping, categories of risk.
First is the issue of economic exploitation. In the growing “family vlogging” and “kidfluencer” economy, children are often featured prominently in content that generates revenue from sponsorships, advertisements, and platform monetization. Yet, absent legal requirements like those recently passed in Tennessee, there is no guarantee that minors will receive compensation for their participation in content that generates income. Jessalyn Grace has been cited as an example of this pattern: she created and posted content as a minor while her mother managed her accounts. By the time she turned 18, she reportedly had no access to the earnings generated from her content or even to her old accounts themselves.
The second, and broader, concern is the increased exposure of minors to sexual exploitation. The concept of “stranger danger” has taken on an entirely new meaning in the digital age, extending beyond physical spaces into online environments where access is endless and identities can easily be concealed or faked. When children are visible online, whether it is through their own activity or content shared by others, they become accessible to national and global audiences, including individuals who may seek to exploit that access. “Kidfluencing” also goes against the age limitation protections built into social media platforms.
The CSE Institute commends Tennessee and other states that have enacted laws aimed at protecting minors in the context of social media influencing and content creation. These efforts represent an important first step in acknowledging the evolving risks of exploitation in digital environments. However, legislators should also consider how to address broader concerns surrounding social media access and the ease with which predators may reach minors online, as well as more comprehensive approaches to preventing sexual exploitation. After all, “a society that acts in law and language as if men who pay to sexually access women are simply consumers . . . is a society in deep denial about sexual abuse – and the inequality underpinning it.”
All views expressed herein are personal to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law or of Villanova University.