A Marketplace of Girl Influencers Managed by Moms and Stalked by Men
Seeking social media stardom for their underage daughters, mothers post images of them on Instagram. The accounts draw men sexually attracted to children, and they sometimes pay to see more.
www.nytimes.com
A Marketplace of Girl Influencers Managed by Moms and Stalked by Men
Seeking social media stardom for their underage daughters, mothers post images of them on Instagram. The accounts draw men sexually attracted to children, and they sometimes pay to see more.By Jennifer Valentino-DeVries and Michael H. Keller
Feb. 22, 2024, 9:42 p.m. ET
The ominous messages began arriving in Elissa’s inbox early last year.
“You sell pics of your underage daughter to pedophiles,” read one. “You’re such a naughty sick mom, you’re just as sick as us pedophiles,” read another. “I will make your life hell for you and your daughter.”
Elissa has been running her daughter’s Instagram account since 2020, when the girl was 11 and too young to have her own. Photos show a bright, bubbly girl modeling evening dresses, high-end workout gear and dance leotards. She has more than 100,000 followers, some so enthusiastic about her posts that they pay $9.99 a month for more photos.
Over the years, Elissa has fielded all kinds of criticism and knows full well that some people think she is exploiting her daughter. She has even gotten used to receiving creepy messages, but these — from “Instamodelfan” — were extreme. “I think they’re all pedophiles,” she said of the many online followers obsessed with her daughter and other young girls.
Elissa and her daughter inhabit the world of Instagram influencers whose accounts are managed by their parents. Although the site prohibits children under 13, parents can open so-called mom-run accounts for them, and they can live on even when the girls become teenagers.
But what often starts as a parent’s effort to jump-start a child’s modeling career, or win favors from clothing brands, can quickly descend into a dark underworld dominated by adult men, many of whom openly admit on other platforms to being sexually attracted to children, an investigation by The New York Times found.
Thousands of accounts examined by The Times offer disturbing insights into how social media is reshaping childhood, especially for girls, with direct parental encouragement and involvement. Some parents are the driving force behind the sale of photos, exclusive chat sessions and even the girls’ worn leotards and cheer outfits to mostly unknown followers. The most devoted customers spend thousands of dollars nurturing the underage relationships.
The large audiences boosted by men can benefit the families, The Times found. The bigger followings look impressive to brands and bolster chances of getting discounts, products and other financial incentives, and the accounts themselves are rewarded by Instagram’s algorithm with greater visibility on the platform, which in turn attracts more followers.
One calculation performed by an audience demographics firm found 32 million connections to male followers among the 5,000 accounts examined by The Times.
Interacting with the men opens the door to abuse. Some flatter, bully and blackmail girls and their parents to get racier and racier images. The Times monitored separate exchanges on Telegram, the messaging app, where men openly fantasize about sexually abusing the children they follow on Instagram and extol the platform for making the images so readily available.
“It’s like a candy store ,” one of them wrote. “God bless instamoms ,” wrote another.
The troubling interactions on Instagram come as social media companies increasingly dominate the cultural landscape and the internet is seen as a career path of its own.
Nearly one in three preteens list influencing as a career goal, and 11 percent of those born in Generation Z, between 1997 and 2012, describe themselves as influencers. The so-called creator economy surpasses $250 billion worldwide, according to Goldman Sachs, with U.S. brands spending more than $5 billion a year on influencers.
Health and technology experts have recently cautioned that social media presents a “profound risk of harm” for girls. Constant comparisons to their peers and face-altering filters are driving negative feelings of self-worth and promoting objectification of their bodies, researchers found.
But the pursuit of online fame, particularly through Instagram, has supercharged the often toxic phenomenon, The Times found, encouraging parents to commodify their children’s images. Some of the child-influencers earn six-figure incomes, according to interviews.
“I really don’t want my child exploited on the internet,” said Kaelyn, a mother in Melbourne, Australia, who like Elissa and many other parents interviewed by The Times agreed to be identified only by a middle name to protect the privacy of her child.
“But she’s been doing this so long now,” she said. “Her numbers are so big. What do we do? Just stop it and walk away?”
In investigating this growing and unregulated ecosystem, The Times analyzed 2.1 million Instagram posts, monitored months of online chats of professed pedophiles and reviewed thousands of pages of police reports and court documents.
Reporters also interviewed more than 100 people, including parents in the United States and three other countries, their children, child safety experts, tech company employees and followers of the accounts, some of whom were convicted sex offenders.
This is how The Times found its sample of 5,000 mom-run accounts.
An 11-year-old girl sits under a beach umbrella in red lipstick and a polka dot bathing suit. With her legs beneath her, she wears heart-shaped sunglasses and blows a kiss.
A 7-year-old girl faces the camera in athletic shorts and top. She’s doing a standing split in front of a wall of roses and a neon sign reading “Hello Gorgeous.”
A 10-year-old girl stands in a garden with hand on hip, wearing a Santa-themed one-piece, a sparkly Santa hat and knee-high socks.
A 5-year-old girl does a standing split outdoors in a two-piece leotard with a white top and hot-pink bottom. Her right hand hangs in the air, and she looks at the camera through pink glasses.
#hashtag
Accounts
A 9-year-old girl in a white frilly leotard pulls her leg over her head while arching her back.
A 9-year-old girl in a pink bikini top and tight shorts jumps with outstretched hands. She is wearing Mickey Mouse ears.
A 9-year-old girl in a short white top, white flared stretch pants, black heels and red lipstick stares back at the camera over her shoulder.
A 9-year-old girl in heavy rouge and a red two-piece leotard does a standing split outside, tugging her knee above her head.
A 9-year-old girl waves her hands and raises her leg in a pink cut-out leotard and leopard-print heels.
A 9-year-old girl does a standing split in a two-piece, a brown hat and brown high-heeled boots.
A 9-year-old girl in hoop earrings, green sports bra, black sneakers and red lipstick pouts at the camera with her hair blowing.
A 9-year-old girl wearing makeup, jewelry and an orange bikini top and hot pants does a back-bend split outside a garage.
An 8-year-old girl smiles for a headshot wearing a pink denim vest over a two-piece leotard.
An 8-year-old girl does a standing split in red lipstick, heart-shaped sunglasses and a red top with her upper torso facing the camera.
An 8-year-old girl smiles with a second-place award for a dance competition.
An 8-year-old girl poses in a pink bikini, knee-high socks and roller skates holding a giant 8 balloon.
Not racy.
Racy.
Not racy.
Racy.
Racy.
Not racy.
Racy.
Racy.
Not racy.
Racy.
Not racy.
Racy.
A girl in early adolescence opens a lace robe to reveal a string bikini with ruffles on top. She looks at the camera in heavy eyeshadow, making a kissy face.
Classified as racy.
Super
That is such a cute swimsuit!
I will sleep with you in future. Remember my ID. I fall in love with you. It’s Sincerely. I know you will be waiting for me.
Mom clearly isn’t monitoring the comments section
Absolutely Gorgeous!
Very nice
Is this an advert for pedos? This content shouldn't be posted.
Love that teen body..
Yummie
Cover up you're a little girl
These are examples of posts from the mom-run accounts. To protect the identity of minors, their photos will be described rather than shown.
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