The Dark Side of Family YouTube Channels

People might not think it’s a big deal for family channels to exist, but where do you draw the line?

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We all know that family channels on YouTube are huge. Whether it’s the clickbait video titles or the numerous controversies, family vlogging channels have always been noticed for doing some nonsensical things, and some have received global publicity.

People look at these channels and wish their family was like theirs, maybe because of the clothes, the house, or the family itself, but they never really wonder what goes on behind the scenes when the camera isn’t on, and the true “perfect family” is shown – the trauma the kids face while making these videos aren’t.

One of the big problems with family channels is that they can edit whatever they want out, so they maintain the perfect persona that can go all over the internet. They shove a camera into a child’s face as soon as they’re born and sometimes even before they are born. People then can see the children, and if the family decides to tell the name of the child, they’d know that too, and they could use that to their advantage.

Another huge problem that doesn’t get spoken about enough is the fact that some of the family vlogging channels have social media for each one of the children featured. The bio of the account may say “Ran by my Mom” or “Ran by my Dad,” then have the social tag for the parent in it. So the child may have its own account, and maybe it is run by the parents, maybe it’s not, but it’s so the app can’t take down the child’s account.

A true social media account loophole.

People might not think it’s a big deal for these channels to exist, which is okay, but where do you draw the line?

Family YouTube channels thrive on clickbait video titles. Some fake an actual disease just for views then respond to the comments they get saying that it was “just for awareness.” In some cases, the parents are too busy recording for YouTube to watch their children, and they want to pull the oldest child out of school, put them into a home school, or in a school that only runs for half the day. That isn’t right. The child needs to be educated, and they shouldn’t be taken out of school just for “another pair of hands around the house,” which was actually said by the Labrant family recently. The family put their eldest daughter, Everleigh, into a home school on September 9th, 2022.

Speaking of the Labrant family, they’ve posted controversial things and lost subscribers over the past year. A few times, a video of theirs was taken down because it went against community guidelines, and they were demonetized for it.

When their son, Zealand, was having a seizure, they recorded it before calling for help. The amount of trauma it does to his brain is huge, and it mostly affects the hippocampus (learning and memory), entorhinal cortex (gateway for information entering and leaving the hippocampus), amygdala (processes fearful and threatening stimuli), and thalamus (the bodies information relay station). Those parts of his brain could be completely damaged, or are slowly becoming damaged, all because they didn’t call for help as soon as it started, but don’t worry – they documented and uploaded it on YouTube.

People are noticing. They have called out the families for the controversies, the clickbait, and the trauma they’ve caused their children by commenting on the videos, commenting on social media posts, or even making their own videos explaining what is going on and why they shouldn’t have a platform.

On top of that, the children will have grown up with everything they say and do on camera, so the children will always be there, on social media. Some children of family vlogging channels aren’t at the age where they understand what’s going on, so they think it’s okay. The older children of the family understand what’s happening, and they may be uncomfortable with it, but the parents rarely seem to care because they’re getting attention and views, which equates to money, from everyone all over the world.

Does the line get drawn when a child is in immediate danger? Does the line get drawn when the child finally says “I’m uncomfortable with what you’re doing”? When does a family realize that they should be calling for help instead of recording their son having a life-threatening health scare like a seizure?

When is enough considered enough?

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