Kid Influencer - Blog #7

I’ve known of influencers and we have talked about their power and impact on the public, but it never occured to me that it could be a kid. As I was going through these children, all I could think was, “what does this kid do that is so special?” I thought back to the Fyre documentary and the questions from class discussion about the responsibility of influencers or if they even have any. I didn’t know any of these kids or that they even had this many followers, that probably because I don’t have anyone in my family that young. I chose to look at Hailey’s Magical Playhouse, because I thought the picture was absolutely adorable of all the kids in their costumes, playing dress-up was always my favorite thing to do growing up. Hailey has 2.22M subscribers, she joined youtube February 19, 2015 and has a total views of 1,542,743,652. Her first video was posted 5 years ago and has 4.8M views while her most recent video was 7 months ago with 90K views. Her most popular video was 3 years ago with 118M views, and all I have to say is if youtube was around when I was a kid why didn’t my parents do this for me?! We could’ve been rich! Her account is run by a parent and the name “Hailey’s Magical Playhouse” is copyrighted

Hailey’s videos started out as toy reviews and unboxing videos, she can’t really read when she first started so her dad helps her out and they open up the toys and play with them. I think this might be a popular way for parents to see how toys really work before buying them. Each video comes with a description of the toy, there they found it, how it works or how long it takes to set up, and shows Hailey playing with it. They come out with new videos every week and each video has the comments turned off from when she started until now. Video length can range from 5 minutes to 40 minutes, depending on the content of her video. 

Over the years the videos have gone from toy reviews to videos of her pretending to play with different toys or play sets, these videos are typically longer than the toy reviews. These videos are just compilations of them playing with different toys, these types of videos try to focus on integrating learning and playing. When I was first looking at the video titles I was thinking, why in the world is this so popular? But once I actually watched a couple, okay well skipped through them and watched a couple seconds at a time, I figured it might be useful for parents and kids to watch. Parents can find different ways to teach their children and fun ways and the children can learn as they watch. The only difference is that these videos have less views than toy reviews, I think it's because of their names people assume they are going to be something different. The comments are also turned off for these videos, and throughout the years (with playing and toy review videos) her youtube and Instagram account is linked. So I traveled on over to instagram to see what that looked like. That was a bust because she doesn’t even have any posts yet. 

I’m really not sure how these videos started or what gave her parents the idea to start recording, but they really did a good job with that decision. I think it’s fun for kids to watch because it’s someone that looks and acts like them, so not only is it relatable for them but it gives them ideas for what to do or it's just plain fun for them to watch! A lot of parents use technology now to distract their kids while they’re out and put an iPad in front of their face, so this could be some of the videos that kids can watch to keep them busy. So that might be a form of uses and gratifications of social media for kids and parents. I really like how Hailey’s parents keep the comments off on her videos because I can imagine it's hard for children to have this kind of “fame.” There are always people who are going to say rude or nasty things, even if she can’t read them it’s not fun for her parents to see either. That might be why they don’t use other social media outlets, like Instagram, with Youtube you can’t directly contact someone so if you don’t use other outlets that can do that there’s less of a chance of people harrassing you.

I think this might be a really good way for Hailey and other kids to form a “good” relationship with the internet and social media, rather than using it mindlessly, they can learn and find entertainment from it. Being on the other end is a little iffy though, I think putting your kids on social media can be good or bad. Like I had stated before, as we have seen in class discussions and readings, there are always people and risks you take by putting stuff online even if it is a little girl. Unfortunately, we’ve also seen how the people have to police and report their own issues and the actual platform does a poor job of policing things, because of their own agenda. But we have also seen how social media can be helpful, while it’s not hashtag activism it is a movement for parents and children to use playtime as a way to learn. Putting a child in the public eye, like this, is hard and can be dangerous. It’s sad that a lot of times young children and even teens who become famous don’t get to learn how to be a kid, but this situation is unique because all she has to do is play and be herself! 

Going back to my first question of if these kid influencers have a responsibility to the public, in a way yes. For children like Hailey who have a lot of people watch her reviews, she and her parents have a responsibility to show people what things are really like and give honest reviews (not as serious as adult influencers, but still something to think about). As hard as it was to sit through and watch little kids play pretend, it is a very unique channel and it seems to be pretty useful and popular. While there is a potential for invasion of privacy or harassment, especially since she is a young girl, her parents do it right. People aren’t allowed to comment and they are very mindful with what they put up and their intentions behind it.

References:

Stroud, S. & Henson, J. (2018). The dark side of social media. In Angeline Close Scheinbaum (Ed.), The dark side of social media: A consumer psychology perspective (pg. 3-10). Routledge. 

Whiting, A. & Williams, D. (2013). Why people use social media: A uses and gratifications approach. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, 16(4), 362-369.