'Girl influencers,' Instamoms, and sexual predators

My latest for UnHerd:

While some girl influencers bring in six-figure earnings, most of the accounts which the reporters investigated earn little to no money at all. Some mothers express the hope that Instagram will open up opportunities for their daughters, launching modelling careers or helping to pay for college educations. But these uncertain benefits come with alarming — and entirely predictable — risks. 

Meanwhile, the mothers featured in the story come across as 21st-century “pageant moms” who sacrifice their daughters’ childhoods on the altar of objectification and hypersexualisation. But the access “Instamoms” offer to their offspring is far more intimate and insidious — from selling subscriptions to exclusive photo and video content to offering private chat sessions with their daughters. Some even auction off their girls’ used leotards to “fans”. 

These mothers are not so naive as to be blind to the risks they court — how could they be, when creepy comments and direct messages mixing enticements and threats abound? — but they cannot seem to forfeit the attention their daughters receive. The mothers appear to be experiencing a dangerous entanglement of objectification and identity, as though their daughters were mere extensions of themselves. 

On social media, every eyeball counts, no matter who is watching or why. These women cannot bear to tear themselves away from the dangerous audiences they’ve cultivated, even as their daughters are shunned by classmates (“‘We can’t play with you because my mom said too many perverts follow you on the internet’”), traumatised by law-enforcement investigations, and warped by self-objectification. 

One mother, “Kaelyn”, observed that her daughter, now 17 years old, has “written herself off and decided that the only way she’s going to have a future is to make a mint on OnlyFans”. 

Another mom, “Elissa”, said, “I think they’re all pedophiles” and “disgusting creeps”. “[B]ut she nonetheless keeps the account up and running,” Valentino-DeVries and Keller report. “Shutting it down, she said, would be ‘giving in to bullies.’” 

Kaelyn described herself as “stupidly, naively, feeding a pack of monsters” and said that “if I could go back, I definitely wouldn’t do it.” But there’s a “but”. “But she’s been doing this so long now. Her numbers are so big. What do we do? Just stop it and walk away?” 

The obvious answer to the question this mother poses as an impossible quandary is: yes!