State lawmakers from California to Maryland are passing laws that address privacy and safety issues around a new kind of entertainment “stage” — parents who turn their kids into social media influencers such as “Ryan’s World,” a YouTube channel with 39 million subscribers.
TikTok, Instagram and YouTube are increasingly a digital stage for a form of entertainment that states are moving to regulate on the basis of privacy and labor concerns: Parents’ use of their children as money-making social media influencers.Even as states from Maryland (see here) to California (see here) face First Amendment challenges to laws aimed at protecting the safety, health and privacy of teens, states are increasingly moving to regulate homegrown commerce that plays out in entertainment like “Ryan’s World,” a YouTube channel with 39 million subscribers. While Ryan’s World started with videos of Ryan Kaji and his family opening presents, it’s mushroomed into a line of clothing and toys at Walmart and Target, and soon, a feature film.
Scores of other parents are moving to cash in using the same social media formula, content that is attracting advertising dollars from major brands, and that can be one way for advertisers to reach a young audience without having to deal with privacy rules such as new Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) rules that are now taking effect (see here).
In recent years, about one quarter of the states have considered children’s digital entertainment legislation, including Arizona, California, Georgia, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Ohio and Utah, and some of those laws have explicit youth privacy rights included, said Leah Plunkett, a professor at Harvard Law School who researches that topic.
Typically, US federal and state privacy rules for children and teens start with a requirement parental consent. With the child social-media influence model, however, those protections don’t apply, and some states, such as Minnesota, are moving to give minors new privacy rights as a result.
“Once a child who has been put on this digital entertainment stage, so monetized on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok is, once they hit 13, they get to go to the content creator, usually parents in the platform, and say, ‘Delete me. I don't want to be on the digital entertainment stage anymore.’ I think that that is one of the most far-reaching new privacy rights we have seen in any state under any type of law, and Minnesota just did it,” Plunkett said at the world’s largest annual gathering of privacy professionals in Washington this week.*
As challenges by tech industry groups such as NetChocie to laws like California’s Age-Appropriate Design Code or Maryland’s law of the same name percolate through federal courts, the outcome of those cases remains unclear.
Amelia Vance, president of the Public Interest Privacy Center, said the changes Maryland lawmakers made compared to California’s law were closely watched to see if that law would manage to avoid a constitutional challenge. It didn’t. NetChoice sued the state in federal court in February, saying “Maryland’s law is no different [than social media restrictions in California, Texas, Utah, Arkansas and Ohio] and we’re confident the courts will block it” (see here).
While those states have suffered a number of losses in First Amendment challenges by NetChoice, Vance and Plunkett said the odds of state laws surviving will increase as they become more specific and granular about what online spaces are restricted to children or minors.
“The question is really going to be, what does the Supreme Court do about it?” Vance said.
* IAPP Global Privacy Summit 2025, Washington, DC, April 22-24, 2025.
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