Kidsfluences

Me too. Children are often channelled into things their parents think they should or could be doing and I have no doubt that it's influenced by school-gate one upmanship and parental kudos. Truly horrible.

I’ve said it before, but at the risk of sounding boring, YouTube is full of this rubbish, you won’t believe it until you see it, it’s child exploitation in a big way

It's disgusting, revolting - makes my skin crawl.

I feel as though I am living in a parallel universe. When did every decent parameter disappear?..... or was I just living in a bubble?

Money-making commodities===children. Disgusting !

As was the other article that I read about American children immersed in a " Culture of Disrespect ". So are our Brits !!

It’s almost prostituting children. Strong word, I know, but why would children be used like this?

More U.S. ideas that undermine our social and community standards; it will get worse post Brexit as we ingratiate ourselves with Trump's USA.

When I was a kid there was always a few kids who set up bootleg tuck shops etc.

If it is coming from the child I think its okay. Problem is when its driven by the parents

Not the same thing, but I was educated in a private school and one of the girls used to bring in cigarettes, (not always your usual types), sweets, crisps and alcohol on occasion. And she actually did all her transactions 'behind the bike shed'. Just as an aside she is hugely successful businesswoman now. I told my father at the time and he said 'she'll go far'. She certainly did. No idea if she had any help rom her parents but this new method of obtaining cash using your children is quite simply, awful

notanan2 I think the problem now is these things appearing on social media open to all manner of unsavoury people.

It’s always gone on in one way or another though hasn’t it?
This is nothing new really!

Oh I think you are quite wrong bugbabe it very different selling a few sweets or ciggies to mates which could be called enterprising but to have thousands of ‘followers’ and even setting up schools to teach children how to seek more is using the children for gain They aren’t just making a few pounds pocket money they are making thousands
This has never happened before even putting kids up chimneys was to help the family survive not to make millions out of small children
Completely and utterly disgusting

Kids have always encouraged other kids, it is just a more modern (and certainly exploitative) way of doing it. My grandaughter loves all these videos. Does she get the toys because of it? Nope, her Mum usually points out that they are rubbish and redirects her to something more beneficial. Consequently, I hope she is learning discernment which is an important lesson.

My skin also crawls when I've seen trailers for talent shows for kids who've been groomed by parents and entered for these competitions. Some have talent, some don't but I can't help thinking that the psrents/guardians have a financial motive for pushing their offspring onto a stage long before the child is mature enough to make their own decisions .

I think it is dangerous to for the children concerned to appear in videos on Youtube. I also wonder about who pockets the money?

I m not bothered about your granddaughter getting the toys icanhand that’s entirely up to her parents She is not being exploited
The children who are advertising these goods to thousands of other kids are the ones being exploited and being exploited by their parents and by the adults who run these schools teaching them how to do better videos Whose pocketing the money, the kidsfluence schools, and possible the parents maybe the kids in some cases but it’s a very poor lesson to teach these children in my opinion and makes me feel so cross as to what we are doing to our young people in the name of progress

notanan2 I think the problem now is these things appearing on social media open to all manner of unsavoury people.

Thats only a problem if the kids are DMing fans unsupervised

I like to think if I was a parent I’d ban the viewing of this trash, as it is I can only try and discourage my grandaughters, but if all parents just banned YouTube, they’d lose their audience overnight, and believe me, if you’ve never seen any of it, it’s completely exploitative, and it beats me, that it can in any way be called entertainment

notanan what are you meaning ?
The children being exploited (by their own parents) are the children making the videos not those watching them

this sounds a bit weird. is that all they promoting...? children promoting toys to try out. theres loads of that on you tube anyway, but why pick a charity shop? be careful who is actually doing this to their child...sounds a bit fishy to me.

deft not the child.money making parent.....

It's by no means a new thing.
Way back in the 90's a group of child psychologists whose colleagues were being recruited at high salaries to work with advertising agencies and manufacturers, wrote an open letter (I think it was in The Times) deploring such practices.

They warned that children's burgeoning psyche would be harmed and their brains 'progammed' by TV adverts.
They were laughed at.

Then I came across an interesting but scary article about how 'hidden influences' in advertising, encourage children to badger parents - and how effective this was.

Parents who said 'no' to importunate requests felt guilty and often subsequently bought the denied item later.

Parents who gave in for peace and quiet, had surrendered to the known influences.

But it wasn't just children being brainwashed into asking for goods, it was children being taught how to make their parents feel guilty.

One of the things I discovered a little later was that diet companies paid a huge premium for their adverts to appear amid children's progammes on TV, particularly for pre-schoolers.

The argument was that Mums were likely to be watching with toddlers and would want to lose be made to feel ashamed of 'baby weight' which hadn't gone away.

In fact, it was worse than that. Child psychologists
working for ad agencies had advised that the earlier you could get the message 'fat is shameful and unhealthy' into the minds of children, the more they were likely to make Mummy feel ashamed, 'Mummy why do you have a fat tummy?'
But also, with such oft-repeated messages, it was easier to get the children (as adolescents) themselves on the deadly and unending dieting trail.

We can all see this worked like a charm.

www.huffpost.com/entry/how-advertisers-manipulat_b_718227

I agree with Absthame. We have quite enough influences coming across the Atlantic, thanks very much. Many of them aren't good. Child beauty pageants, anyone?

It’s not only the advertising angle, what I really detest are these families that they follow, I feel desperately sorry for the children involved, it must be like living in a goldfish bowl, every event in their lives is staged, obviously an enormous amount of money is being made, but at what cost?