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Gov. J.B Pritzker, D-Ill., signed into law a new bill protecting child social media influencers from being exploited by their parents or guardians in online content last week.
The law will ensure that children featured in significant portions of their guardians’ online content will be paid separate from the account holders for their contributions to the videos.
The bill represents the first law in the United States that will regulate child social media influencers.
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, D-Ill., signed into law a new bill protecting child social media influencers from being exploited by their parents or guardians in online content last week. He can be seen here speaking to business and political leaders on April 12, 2023. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Pritzker signed S.B. 1782 into law last Friday, which will go into effect on January 1, 2024. It adds children on social media to Illinois’ existing Child Law Labor. The description of the bill on Pritzker’s website stated that it "creates a private right of action for child influencers against their parents that featured them in videos and did not properly compensate them."
The bill stipulates that children under 16 must be compensated if they are present in at least 30% of the content posted online by their guardian within a 30-day period for which that guardian is being paid.
It also requires that the parents or guardians of the child influencers must set aside gross earnings due to their kids in a trust account that they can acces once they are 18.
There is no law enforcement mechanism present in the bill should the influencers’ caretakers neglect it, though it provides an avenue for kids to sue their guardians for the money once they become adults.
Illinois state Sen. David Koehler sponsored the bill. In a statement about it, the lawmaker said, "This new digital age has given us tremendous opportunities to connect with one another, but it's also presented legal issues that have never existed before. We need to work with our children to see the problems they face and tackle them head-on before any further harm is done."
Koehler recalled that he took up the bill at the request of 16-year-old Shreya Nallamothu, a high school junior from Normal, Illinois, who recently told ABC’s "Good Morning America" that she realized that children were being exploited by adults for social media clicks.
Shreya Nallamothu looks at her phone in Bloomington, Ill., on Tuesday, May 9, 2023. Illinois lawmakers aim to make their state what they say will be the first in the country to create protections for child social media influencers. Nallamothu, 15, raised her concerns to Illinois state Sen. David Koehler of Peoria, who then set the legislation in motion. (AP Photo/Claire Savage) (AP Photo/Claire Savage)
Nallamothu told the outlet that during her increased use of social media during the COVID-19 pandemic, she saw more and more kids being recorded and used for online content. She said, "The more I fell down that rabbit hole, I kept seeing cases of exploitation."
The young woman added, "Especially for very young children who maybe don't understand what talking to a camera means and they're not able to conceptualize what a million people looks like, they don't understand what they're putting out into the internet for profit and that it's not going to be able to go away and that their parents are making money off of it."
After noticing the trend, Nallamothu reached out to Koehler’s office in 2022, pushing for legislators to move to protect kid influencers.
After the bill was signed, she told GMA, "When I went into it, I wasn't 100% sure what I was doing. I didn't go into it expecting to pass a bill within a year. I'm very grateful for Sen. Koehler and his team for paying attention to a constituent."
Pritzker’s spokesperson Alex Gough provided a statement to Fox News Digital Tuesday, stating, "The internet provides more opportunities for children to display their creativity than ever before. In the event that minors are able to profit from that creativity, they deserve to be shielded from parents who would attempt to take advantage of their child’s talents and use them for their own financial gain."
He added, "The Governor is thankful for the leadership of Senator Koehler and Representative [Sharon] Chung on this legislation and was proud to sign it."
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