At the end of January, the influencer Jessica Thivenin led her three-year-old son to believe that she was touching his face with feces. Disgusted, the little boy cried and then got angry. And this joke it ended up on Tiktok, where it has been viewed 6 million times.
Renaissance MP Bruno Studer saw it as an “image attack” of the child. A few days earlier, he had presented a bill on children’s image rights on the Internet, alarmed by videos of this type and the proliferation of family vlogs, which show children in particular in their day-to-day life or on vacation. .
This text, examined this Monday by the deputies, provides that the parents of a minor child jointly exercise their right to the image and that they associate the child “according to their age and degree of maturity in this exercise.”
It also makes it possible for one of the parents, if they disagree with the other on the issue, to go to the family judge. The latter may, if he considers it necessary, prohibit one of the parents from publishing content related to the minor on social networks.
“Family” influencers in the sights of the deputy
The Bas-Rhin deputy does not hide it: part of his bill targets content creators who expose their children on social media. This is particularly the case of the last article, “which could proceed, if the judge deems it necessary, to withdraw the parental authority of certain children from their parents.”
In short: an influencer who publishes content detrimental to the dignity of one of their children could, in the most serious cases, be deprived of parental authority.
The latter also cites “videos of babies in the potty or in the bathtub” among the problematic content posted on social networks. Not to mention that, according to him, much of the child pornography content found on the network is diverted from photos or videos of children posted by their own parents.
“It is the continuation of the work that I started with the 2020 children’s influencer law, it was a first step in this regulation of the image of children online,” explains Bruno Studer to BFMTV.com. This text has already outlined a framework for child influencers: it has made it possible to professionalize the sector with rules similar to child models or underage actors.
Since the publication of a first decree in April 2022, parents who want, for example, to create a YouTube channel in which their children are the main actors must first request authorization from the administration. Contacted by BFMTV.com, the General Directorate of Labor, which depends on the Ministry of Labor, told us “it does not have” the number of files presented to date.
The 2020 law also requires parents to deposit part of the income received by their child with the Caisse des dépôts et consignations until they reach the age of majority, as is the rule for children in entertainment. Sophie Benarab, director of the influencer agency Madein, believes that it is now “a bit easier to explain to brands why they have to pay for the child” that appears in a society.
Blur reigns for the children of influencers
If these are rules for influential children, what about the “children of influential people”? Much more numerous than the first, they appear for some regularly on their parents’ social networks, sometimes in product placements, without being, however, the main object of the account.
This is, for example, the case of the daughters of Cindy Poumeyrol. This influencer who became known in Koh Lanta shows her two daughters on her Instagram account and involves them in certain product placements. In this case, they receive money that is blocked in the Caisse des dépôts et consignations because they are supervised by a modeling agency, the content creator claims to BFMTV.com.
Cindy Poumeyrol assures that she did not ask many questions before showing her children on social networks, since her shares “are very spontaneous.” “I was already famous when I got pregnant and agreed to play the game to the fullest,” she explains.
But unlike Cindy Poumeyrol, “there are creators who don’t have sponsored content contracts for their children,” because they are not yet required to do so, explains Sophie Benarab, whose agency specializes in “family” content.
An enforcement decree that has been long overdue
The 2020 law provided for this case rules similar to those of child influencers: they would be applicable from a threshold of income generated by the presence of the child, the time that the child is present in the image or the number of published content where it appears
These thresholds have been waiting to be set for two and a half years, by decree. Bruno Studer assures that he questions the government “regularly” on the issue, but stresses that the definition of these levels presents several challenges. “Regarding the number of hours spent preparing content with a child, for example, it is simply declarative: how to control the number of hours declared?” asks the deputy.
Lille bar association lawyer Marilou Ollivier, whose firm handles influence-related cases, identifies another problem: “Who enforces these children’s rights?” “The labor inspectorate is already overcrowded and understaffed, so it will never go out to check an influencer,” she says.
“It is impossible to monitor everything”, answers the deputy Bruno Studer, who says he is “aware of the limits of the law” of 2020 and highlights his role of “awareness”. “We need resources within the prefectures to apply the law,” he said, however.
A unique working relationship
Marilou Ollivier, from the Chhum law firm, also judges that for influencers who post content with their children, “there is a real blur between what is related to parenthood and what is part of a working relationship.” “For example, when we film a child telling him what he has to do, we move out of the role of father to him and into the role of employer,” she explains.
According to a Potloc study published in February by the Observatory of Paternity and Digital Education (Open), 44% of the 273 influential parents surveyed say they obtain their children’s consent before posting content about them. 30% of them say that they set a maximum frequency for posting photos/videos that concern them.
This mix of genres means that the father-influencer-son (of) influencer relationship does not fall within the classic frameworks of the employer-employee relationship. And a son (of) an influencer who does not feel respected in her work or no longer wants to appear on her parents’ social networks, will hardly be able to act accordingly.
For her part, the influencer Cindy Poumeyrol swears that if in a few years her daughters ask her to remove the publications where they appear, she will gladly do so.
“If we pay attention to all the criticism, we don’t do anything anymore,” she devastates when asked about the negative comments about her children’s exposure on social networks. “If I assume that I am a public figure, I live from that.” For her, “it’s part of the job” to show most facets of her life. Including her children.
Source: BFM TV
