The House of My Mother: A Daughter's Quest for Freedom

YouTube is a social media and video-sharing platform that was founded in 2005. The site quickly gained popularity and spawned a new form of content vlogs, video blogs that usually depicted the creator’s everyday life.

Family vlogging, a sub-category that gained traction during the early 2010s, was especially popular in LDS communities like the one Shari Franke grew up in, as mothers used their platforms to share the realities of raising large families and to promote traditional family values. Oftentimes, the family’s children played starring roles in the videos posted on the internet for public consumption. Family vlogging was a new form of media with little to no restrictions or protections in place, and it quickly became a highly lucrative venture for many “momfluencers.”

However, as family vlogs racked up millions of views, questions about the ethical implications of earning money by publicizing private family moments began to arise. Driven in part by high-profile instances of abuse in popular family vlogs like 8 Passengers, many began to worry that family vlogging was a way of exploiting children for financial gain. These fears also coincide with the growing popularity of child influencers across social media platforms, many of whom bring in millions of dollars in revenue and have their accounts managed by their parents. In response, certain states have moved to pass laws protecting child social media stars, including stipulations that their parents set aside a portion of their earnings in a trust fund.

The House of My Mother reveals how easy it is to obscure dark realities on social media, emphasizing the need to ensure and prioritize the well-being of children who find themselves at the center of successful social media enterprises.