Children’s Role in Family Channels
   In most family vlogging channels, the parents hold the camera but are not the content. The parents function as a constant, knitting together the daily occurrences of the family, from showing the little one’s playdates to attending the older children’s sports events. In one CGH vlog titled “Brooklyn Gets Asked to Homecoming [...]” the various kids' activities are shown as part of the parents’ carpool. Between shots at gymnastics and dinner prep, the mom sits in her car and gives explanations about her kids’ activities. Rarely does she talk about herself outside her status as a wife and a mother. At one point in the vlog, oldest child Brooklyn is asked to homecoming at a school pep rally. Just after that scene, mom Mindy points the camera at the boy who asked Brooklyn to the dance and asks, “were you nervous?” (McKnight 2016, 4:34-4:35). Though the mom is participating in the creation of the scene by asking the question, she is not the content. Rather, her question serves to further contextualize and explain what the kids are up to. This is a recurring pattern. In family vlogging, parents are often the directors and videographers while their children’s lives are the content. 
   Even moments that do not seem directly related to the children still revolve around them. For example, the Shaytards vlog, “Happy 9th Birthday Princesstard,” starts with dad Shay and mom Colette entering a Target. They are dressed up for a late night Target visit so they quickly explain that they were just at their friend’s wedding. Given that they rely on interesting parts of their day to vlog, one would think a wedding would make exciting content. Yet, the wedding topic is soon brushed aside in favor of their daughter Avia’s 9th birthday. When they circle back to the wedding, it is quickly related back to their children. The dad says, “You know what that wedding tonight reminded me of? That we have two daughters and I think about the day that they get married?,” (Butler 2014, 7:09-7:17). Their oldest daughter at this point is about to turn nine, so there is no real reason to be thinking about them getting married. Furthermore, a wedding is itself an exciting event. Regardless, they repeatedly mention their children while discussing seemingly unrelated topics like the wedding. Mom and dad’s Target adventures are exciting only if they connect back to the kids. Thus, children remain the focus of the content even when they are not on camera. This shows that the family’s brand is tightly wound around the children’s image and identity. 
   The importance of the children for the success of these family vlogs is further revealed by the editorial choices. Oftentimes, the parents will provide narration while the camera is pointed at the kids. At the beginning of the CGH vlog “Our Family Morning Routine” the dad Shaun shares his everyday tasks, some of which are unrelated to the kids. The camera, however, is pointed at the children, acting as a decorative and engaging visual to his words. This is reinforced through title and thumbnail choices (McKnight 2016). For both CGH and the Shaytards the name of at least one of their children is in the title of three out of their five most popular vlogs. Similarly, for all five of the most popular videos for both CGH and the Shaytards, kids' faces are in the thumbnails. The title and thumbnail are crucial to garnering interest in the content. These, similar to filming choices, are decisions, instances where parents are calculating what part of their vlog they believe will garner the most clicks and engagement. In repeatedly using their children to market their videos, they are cementing the centrality of the children to the prosperity of their YouTube channel. Both in their filming and marketing choices, the children remain the central image of the channel. 
The Harm: Sharing Children’s Low Points for the Sake of Authenticity
Children in family vlogs can have a camera on them at any time of day, regardless of the negative social, emotional and physical consequences. The ILS’ emphasizes that for something to constitute child labor, it must cause emotional and/or physical harm to the child (2023). Family vlogs often cause emotional harm in that they strip the children of their right to privacy for the sake of content. 
   Kids in family vlogs do not have privacy. To enact the family’s authentic and real brand, the children must share both their best and worst moments. For instance, in the Shaytards most popular vlog ever, Emmie, the middle child, is ill and in the hospital. The thumbnail of the video shows Emmie wearing a hospital gown and the title reads, “BABYTARD IS SICK!” Her illness is treated as a marketing strategy. When the video reaches the portion at the hospital, mom Colette films Emmie and asks, “What are we doing at the hospital?” (Butler 2014, 6:50-6:54). Emmie does not respond as she squirms.The mom then raises Emmie’s blanket and explains, “Yeah, cover yourself up, she’s not quite comfortable wearing a hospital gown,” (Shaytards, “Babytard is sick!” 6:54-6:57). Despite acknowledging that Emmie is uncomfortable with the hospital gown, and presumably, with being filmed while wearing it, mom Colette continues to push past Emmie’s boundaries. In a telling moment, the mom jokes, “You’re probably wondering why she is in the hospital. We’re not gonna tell you. Bye Guys!”(Butler 2014, 7:00-7:04). Just then the title cards start playing before coming to a screeching halt. Once more we see the mom’s joking face as she says “Just kidding! That would be so mean,” (Butler 2014, 7:07-7:10). The joke here is the implication that Emmie has a right to keep her illness private. Instead, mom Colette and dad Shay argue that their audience is entitled to know private details, such as illnesses, about their children. This particular instance works to further the family’s authentic image, as it shows that, like any other family, sometimes their children are sick. Nevertheless, it is the result of an exploitative moment, where fitting with the ILO’s definition of child labor, they seem to have caused their child emotional harm, pushing her boundaries and right to privacy in a moment of increased vulnerability. 
   CGH, similarly, often share private information about their children regardless of the social, emotional or physical costs. Paisley, the youngest McKnight child, was adopted into the family as a baby. Over the years, CGH has shared many details about Paisley’s adoption story. In one instance, they show six-year-old Paisley excitedly receiving a happy birthday message from her birth siblings. She looks at the camera as she says, “those are my birth sister and birth brother,” (McKnight 2017, 9:18-9:20). This is a vulnerable and personal moment for Paisley. Furthermore, as a six-year-old, she is not able to fully appreciate the possible consequences, whether social or personal, of making this information accessible to anyone. Forever, regardless of what she desires in the future, people will have access to intimate details about her birth and upbringing. Her excitement and joy about family help construct CGH’s wholesome authentic family image. Once more, however, it comes at an unquantifiable emotional cost to a child. 
   Sometimes, parents share seemingly embarrassing moments in the lives of their children, regardless of the emotional harm this may cause their children. In one Shaytards vlog, Avia, the second oldest Shaytard, is having a hard time at the beach. She then begins to cry and express distress. Rather than comfort his daughter, however, dad Shay laughs and continues filming, telling his daughter there is nothing to be afraid of (Butler 2010). While from an adult’s perspective this may seem inoffensive, a relatable and authentic moment of a child having a tantrum, it is still an instance of a hyper-vulnerable moment in a child’s life being used for content/profit, regardless of the potential harm to that child. Now, any of Avia’s friends and/or classmates can go on YouTube and easily find a video of Avia in distress. Her distress is the price to pay for continuing to build her family’s authentic image. 

Overlap between Play and Sponsorship Time
Even when children seem as if they are having fun on camera they are still engaging in child labor for their image is being used to generate a profit. Labor and fun, even for children, are not mutually exclusive. Both CGH and the Shaytards incorporate “fun” clips where their kids are promoting products. In these instances, the boundaries between down time and labor are blurred.
In a more overt example of child labor, in one Shaytards vlog, dad Shay and mom Colette use their kids to incentivize fans to buy their merchandise. They show their children, most of whom are under the age of ten, signing over two thousand calendars. It is part of their yearly calendar sale, explains dad Shay, encouraging fans to be one of the first two thousand people to pre-order a calendar so they receive one with all of their children’s signatures. As the day progresses, Shay says, “We’re still signing them guys. My hand, face, feet and feelings are sore,” (Butler 2016, 7:38-7:44). Here he acknowledges that it is hard for him, an adult, to sign so many calendars. It is not far-flung to assume that the children, similarly, felt some exhaustion from the task. Thus, as the ILO definition of child labor establishes, this instance exemplifies how the children are potentially harmed emotionally, as their free time is taken away for the sake of the family business. 
Oftentimes, however, the line between fun and labor is far blurrier. A few years ago, mom Mindy began a hair-product line that now sells across Walmart’s across the United States. The children have always played a central role in advertising the products. In one particular video, they show the CGH children at a photoshoot for the products. Throughout the video they emphasize how much “fun” the kids are having, as their pictures are taken (McKnight 2022). They are getting their makeup done and sitting around the pool, all very fun and exciting. Nevertheless, the reason for the “fun” photoshoot is to create advertisements for Mindy’s hair products. Regardless of how much the kids are enjoying themselves, ultimately, they are working as models. The children are engaging in labor, for they are producing images that are being used to sell products. This, however, is disguised under the illusion of the fun and glamor of a photoshoot. 
In an even blurrier form of product promotion, family vloggers often incorporate ads into their videos. In one CGH video, mom Mindy and son Daxton are seen playing with Nintendo’s in the back of their car. The mom explains that she and her son, “play together once in a while when we’re sittin in the car being bored,” (McKnight 2016, 1:49-1:50). This moment of apparent leisure and joy, however, is a Nintendo sponsorship. At the beginning of the video, mom Mindy and dad Shaun thank Nintendo for “partnering with them” (McKnight 2016, 0:10-0:20). Similarly, in the McKnight’s morning routine vlog, dad Shaun shows the little ones, Daxton and Paisley, using beddies - a type of sheet for young children. Dad Shaun touts the wonders of Beddies, claiming it makes their mornings much easier (McKnight 2016). He does not mention, however, that the CGH family has stakes in the company that makes Beddies. Instead, viewers are misled to believe that these are genuine, unbiased recommendations. Meanwhile, the kids are made to act out for the camera how easy it is to use the product. Their freetime is taken by the responsibility of generating content and financial profit for the family. 
Thus, not only do children in family vlogs lack privacy, their lives are also made to revolve around the family’s needs for advertisement, promotion and content. As such, they are spending large amounts of their freetime on camera and working for the family business. Consequently, they fit the ILO’s standard of child labor that the child must spend large swaths of their afterschool time on the other activity. 

At Least We Protect Them: The Language of Online Safety
Both the CGH and Shaytard parents define online safety in a way that makes their choices for their children socially and ethically permissible. One way they did so was by, initially, not sharing the kids’ legal names. In the CGH channel, they would refer to the children as CGH #1, CGH #2 , CGH #3, etc. based on their birth order. Meanwhile, the Shaytard kids would be referred to by tard adjacent nicknames such as Babytard and Princesstard. As they used these nicknames, however, both families would still share the faces and experiences of the children. Eventually, both families stopped using nicknames for the kids. In choosing to hide their names but not their faces, these families created a definition of privacy that benefited the family business. Sharing a child’s personal life events becomes fair game insofar as they are not sharing their legal identity. 
These parents also used social media platforms policies to redefine safety. In the video, “Happy 9th Birthday Princesstard!” there is a part where the dad lets Princesstard, whose real name is Avia, know that she has received many happy birthday wishes via his Twitter account. Avia expresses a desire to receive the messages to her own account to which dad Shay replies, “when you’re 13 you can get one,” (Butler 2014, 12:03). Once more, family vloggers are redefining safe social media use for children. Dad Shay’s comment suggests that it is dangerous for Avia to have her own account before she is thirteen, for that is the age at which one can officially (according to both X and Instagram) one can get a social media account. It is important to note, however, that thirteen is not a magical age at which point children gain the maturity to navigate social media, it is merely a policy used by various social media companies. Furthermore, it is dangerous to presume that social media is only bad for children when they are in charge of it. Sharing a child's image and identity online, whether they are five or thirteen, can be dangerous regardless of if they can log into the account. Nevertheless, these parents' redefinitions successfully present them as sensical and safe guardians who are taking all measures necessary to protect their children. The kids are not engaged in child labor according to these parent’s efforts, for the parents are taking all necessary precautions to mitigate possible harm. 

Discussion
Children in many family vlogs are engaging in child labor, as defined by the ILO. The ILO stipulates two main ways in which paid tasks constitute child labor: when they harm children - whether that be emotionally or physically - and when they affect the child’s schooling and/or result in a large commitment outside of school (2023). 
The difficult work of maintaining an authentic brand tends to fall on the children, regardless of the consequences and pressure. Authenticity, as defined by Taylor (2022), is an action rather than a fixed term. Each content creator has their own definition of authenticity that they then attempt to represent to their viewers. If they stop being perceived as authentic they risk losing everything. For family vloggers, their relationship with authenticity is under constant tension. They tend to initially define authenticity as having an average working/middle income family. As they grow more famous and wealthy, however, it becomes more difficult to sustain that type of authenticity. There is a world’s worth of distance between doing hairstyles on a bathroom counter and picking out your hairstyle to the Grammys (McKnight 2017). Instead, these channels lean on the children’s relatable and universal experiences of childhood to craft an authentic brand. This comes at a cost, however, as children consequently lack the right to define what aspects of their life should remain private. Furthermore, it is a potential source of stress, as the people around them will forever have disproportionate access to information on their lives and upbringing. 
Much of the harm caused in the search for authenticity is the result of placing a burden of emotional labor on the children. Children are a vulnerable population. They are dependent on their parents and, thus, it is hard to extricate what constitutes consent and what are parent’s taken for granted assumptions as to what their children are comfortable sharing on camera. Furthermore, it is impossible to know for certain how much pressure children feel to perform for camera’s and ensure the channel’s success, as for families like CGH and the Shaytards, that has/is their main source of income. As Marwick and Boyd argue, what people post on social media is a performance (2010). Even if a child would have to get ready for school regardless of if they are being filmed, it is likely that the presence of the camera is a weight that adds a layer of performance, of labor, to these everyday tasks. Thus, when everything in one’s life is open to the cameras, when it is nearly impossible for one to define the boundaries of their privacy against the power of their parents, children are thus engaging in large amounts of emotional labor. The weight of that emotional labor is a type of harm that does not necessarily have immediate consequences. Nevertheless, over the years, as the children of family vlogs navigate a world where friends and strangers alike know the intimate details of both their highest and lowest moments, that weight may become all too real and present. 
   In addition to the possible harm, as the ILO specifies in its definition, family vlogging can also consume much of these kids out of school time. Whether directly engaged in labor – such as, signing two thousand calendars for fans – or indirectly – such as, being filmed making your bed for an advertisement – the camera and the labor are never too far. Often framed as every day, fun life, they are made to incorporate product placements and create advertisements in their alleged freetime. Further increasing the stakes of harm, most family channels, including CGH and the Shaytards, do not share if and/or how the children are compensated for their work. Thus, not only are these children made to spend many hours producing content for their families, they may never be properly remunerated for it. Instead, parents try to assuage concerns of child labor by redefining online safety as when a child does not have control over a social media account and the public does not know their legal name. 

Policy Recommendation
   Limits should be placed at the national level as to what and how children can participate in online content. As I demonstrate throughout this article, the presumption that parents always know and act in their child’s best interest is incredibly challenged in the world of family vlogging. Parents may want to provide for their children while simultaneously benefiting financially from making their children the stars of their online content. Furthermore, there is no moral or ethical way that one can gain consent from a child to have their childhood shared with thousands if not millions of strangers. Thus, given the impossibility of true, informed consent, the clash of interests between parents seeking what is best for their children and what is best financially, and the various possible harms children in family vlogs are exposed to, children should not be in family vlogs. What I mean by this is not that parents should not be able to discuss their lives as parents. Rather, my suggestion is that, until a certain age, parents should not be able to post clearly identifiable content centering their children and generating a profit from it. All children deserve a childhood free of the emotional labor and harmful consequences attached to family channels. 

Conclusion
Family vlogging, with its competing tensions and large profits, is unlikely to disappear any time soon. Thus, it is all too important that the role of children in this type of content be closely examined and considered. Through this paper I sought to see if children in family vlogs fall into the ILO’s definition of child labor. Through the case studies of CGH and the Shaytards, I demonstrated that family vlogging puts an undue emotional labor burden on children. Furthermore, it is harmful in so far as it violates children's right to privacy and can consume their freetime from school. All the while, it remains unclear if the children are receiving any financial compensation for participating in these vlogs. In an effort to address these kinds of critiques, the parents of these family channels have attempted to define internet safety in a vague manner that suits their needs. Regardless, I suggest that efforts should be made at the national level to protect children from being harmed for the sake of internet content. 
There is still much to be researched and understood about children in family vlogs. This paper’s major limitation was the limited sample size, both in videos coded and channels analyzed. It is possible that, by observing more videos and more channels, different patterns of the uses of children in these vlogs will emerge. There is also a time component. Both the Shaytards and CGH are early content creators, who set the ground for what family vloggers are like today. Thus, it is possible that there are differences in the work of children from older YouTube generations versus newer YouTube generations. 
Furthermore, there are many interesting areas for future exploration. For instance, many of the most popular family vloggers, including the Shaytards and the McKnights, are members of the Latter Day Saints Church. This generates questions as to the relationship between religion, vlogging and children. Additionally, there is also a lot to be learned as to the families’ marketing strategies. Due to time constraints, I was unable to conduct a deeper dive into the use of children in video titles and thumbnails. Nevertheless, there is much to be learned on the role children play by simply evaluating these families’ advertisements. Another area of interest that could answer many of the questions on possible harm is interviewing the children of family channels. Thus far, much of the research has centered around content analysis, with limited contact with the creator’s investigated. As the children of family vloggers grow older, however, the opportunity opens up to understand how they interpret the ups and downs of their unique upbringing.