Chris McCarty is working to protect child privacy in the age of parent influencers

Before they could even vote, Chris McCarty had helped draft first-of-its-kind legislation proposing stronger legal protections for children featured in influencer content. 

“It started as a Girl Scout Project,” Chris explains. “We have a gold award, the equivalent of a Boy Scout Eagle Award, which entails making a positive and lasting change in your community. One of the ways they propose you can do this is to change a law. That's one of the less common routes but I’m a public policy nerd so it sounded right up my alley.”

Now a university student, Chris founded Quit Clicking Kids, an organization that promotes better labor standards, compensation, and privacy for children who appear in family influencer content. “Parents are becoming the bosses of their children,” Chris explains. “Especially when the children are still living under their parents' roof.”

In the latest episode of 1Password's Random But Memorable podcast, Chris explains why legal frameworks have been slow to catch up to some of these issues, which are about security as much as parenting, and some general advice for parents when sharing content online. 

Read the interview highlights below or check out the full episode in your podcast player of choice. When you've finished, join the conversation in our episode discussion thread! 

Editor’s note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity. The views and opinions expressed by the interviewee don’t represent the opinions of 1Password.

Michael Fey: What are your thoughts on the rise of sharing parenting moments online and how it affects children's future privacy?

Chris McCarty: I think it's really important for parents especially to consider the ways in which online content doesn't always die. In fact, quite frequently it's a very permanent thing to share something online. It can be screenshotted or downloaded. With the rise of AI technologies and reverse image searching, it's increasingly easy to be able to find out everything about a person just from their name or image. 

You have to be careful about how many “one-time” moments you’re sharing online. Are you building out a comprehensive picture of your family life just from those individual posts? That's something that you have to be mindful of as a parent: How much of a full story am I giving to my followers? Are strangers getting access to this information? Taking a look at that broader picture is really important.

MF: Do you think that parents are aware of the risks of building this comprehensive online version or vision of their kids?

CM: Some certain parents are, but not all of them. A lot more education needs to happen in this space just to make sure that people follow best practices. Another important aspect for parents to consider is the idea that it feels safer to post some things online because there's this perceived distance between the parent and whoever is interacting with the content. It's important to know that you don't necessarily know where people are commenting from and that artificial distance is exactly that — artificial. 

If you don't know who your follower base is, there are definitely people who can interact with it. People who perhaps don’t have the best intentions. It's important to know that they might be far away, but they also might not. 

MF: Can you talk about some of the key legislative moments that you've reached or that you're working towards? What has the response been from lawmakers as you've been showing up on the scene?

CM: To me, the first milestone, one of the biggest milestones, was getting a bill crafted in Washington state in the 2021-2022 legislative session. That involved a lot of cold calling and cold emailing legislators in Washington state and saying, “hey, here's the problem.” 

Ultimately, there's a lack of privacy for these children. There's also the fact that a lot of these accounts are really significantly monetized. There's a report from Credit Karma that said accounts with a million subscribers can make up to $900,000 a year from Google's AdSense revenue program. That's just through one platform, YouTube. And one million subscribers is actually at the lower end of where a lot of really popular YouTube accounts are. 

These people are bringing in a lot of money and they're relying on filming family dynamics. They're relying on filming their children. In a way, you see children becoming the breadwinners of the family, similar to the way that traditional child actors would be, except there's no protections for the children to ensure that their percentage of the money is actually being saved for them. 

"Children are becoming the breadwinners of the family, similar to the way that traditional child actors have been."

So I came, I took those issues together. I said, I think that we need to mirror the Coogan laws, which protect traditional child actors. They set aside 15% of a child's earnings in a locked trust account. We also need to have a provision of the bill that protects a child's privacy. So once they reach the age of 18, they can request a social media platform to delete content that featured them when they were a minor. 

Together, I think those form a pretty comprehensive set of protections for child influencers. That was the bill that was initially drafted in Washington state. It was me and a nonpartisan council staff member that kind of got together, had an hour long phone call, put all the bill text together. That was really significant because it was the first of its kind and went on to be adopted by Illinois, California and Minnesota. Now a plethora of other states are introducing bills, but the fact that we have that initial bill and that three laws exist to protect these new child stars — to me, that is just absolutely phenomenal.

MF: Are social media platforms doing enough to protect kids' privacy, or do you think that there's more needed there?

CM: There's a lot more to be done in the realm of protecting kids' privacy. I really hope to see a greater prevalence of those “right-to-be-forgotten” provisions. I think it's really important that anybody, especially kids whose lives are shared online without their consent, has the right to request that a social media platform delete something they’re featured in that they're not comfortable with. 

5 takeaways for parents from our interview with Chris McCarty

1. Shift from child-centered to parent-centered content. Share your story, not theirs.
2. Ask for consent—even if it’s symbolic. Involving them in the decision builds trust.
3. Imagine the reversal. If your child documented your worst day online for thousands to see, how would that feel?
4. Plan for deletion. Build in a “digital exit strategy” for your kids and discuss it with them when they’re old enough.
5. Be mindful of monetization. When money enters the equation, so do power dynamics and ethical gray zones.

You can also check out the Quit Clicking Kids website, which offers educational resources, email templates for contacting lawmakers, and a federal petition.