The Darkside of Family Vloggers

By Deputy Features and Opinions Editor Luca Oakman

Trigger Warnings: Discussions of child abuse and neglect.

With the rise of Youtubers came a rise of Vloggers, people filming their day to day lives. To connect with their audiences on relatable content in life and because of this, many parents began documenting the highs and lows of parenting. The Family Vloggers. What could go wrong with showing the joys and simultaneously the struggles of being parents? Demonstrating how they deal with anything from tantrums, bad grades, extra curricular activities, to how they practice discipline and even medical emergencies. Audiences worldwide connected with these channels, their struggles were being highlighted and talked about and some of these channels amassed a huge following. What could be so controversial about such a wholesome genre of Youtube videos?

Well in recent years, alongside the rise of other media platforms such as Instagram and Tiktok many viewers have noticed a common theme rising among some of the most well known Family Vloggers, they have noticed a rise in suspected child abuse and neglect. While this is not the case for every family vlogging channel, it is becoming more common for once loved vloggers to be accused and charged with various crimes against minors. 

One channel that faced ridicule from fans was The Stauffer Life. Myka and James Stauffer had been running their channel since 2012, where Myka shared her lifestyle, her weightloss journey and her experience as being a mother and nurse. She would share anything from her domestic chores, to pregnancy announcements, and dealing with miscarriages.

In 2016, the couple announced that they were in the process of adopting a young boy from China and thoroughly documented every step of this long and complicated journey online. From 2017, he was officially a part of the Stauffer family and the Stauffers became a family of six. Their new son, who they named Huxley, quickly became the centre of their videos. Not long after the adoption was finalized, Huxley was diagnosed with autism and a sensory processing disorder; Myka started to put the focus of their videos on the struggles she faces as a parent of an autistic child. In 2019, Myka and James welcomed another baby to their family, now having five children in total.

However, in 2020, many people began to notice that Huxley was no longer being featured in their family orientated videos and later in May of that year, the couple released a video that shockingly announced that Huxley was no longer in their family. The couple described how they dissoluted their adoption, how Huxley was now living with a new family who was described as ‘better equipped to handle Huxley’s medical needs’. They had essentially given away their adopted son.

Their viewers were outraged and many accused the couple of going through the whole adoption process for financial and business gains on their channel, due to the Stauffers receiving various sponsorships for their most popular videos that heavily featured their children. The Stauffers have refused these allegations and ever since Myka posted an apology on Instagram. However, the couple have not posted any more social media posts that involve themselves or their children. 

Another example of controversy that erupted from the Family Vlogger genre, a well known criminal case, is in regards to Ruby Franke and her Youtube channel, 8 Passengers. Ruby Franke documented her family’s daily life, her videos consisted mainly of her demonstrating how she parents and disciplined her six children. While her channel did have a large number of followers, her parenting style did spark some controversy online very early on; many describing it as harsh. Some even go as far as saying her form of discipline bordered on abuse. An example of her questionable parenting decisions was refusing to bring her youngest daughter’s lunch to the school after she forgot it that morning, saying that “if she goes hungry, it’ll mean she’ll learn her lesson and won’t forget it again”. However, one particular event that sparked major backlash from their viewers occurred when Ruby aired what she did to discipline her eldest teenage son for playing a prank on his sibling. She ended up taking away his entire bedroom, and forced him to sleep on a bean bag on the floor for seven months. 

This sparked many of their viewers to look back on older videos on their channel and found a disturbing pattern which revealed Ruby's seemingly harmful methods of disciplining her children.  Many outraged viewers began a petition to get local authorities and child protective services involved to investigate the well being of the children in the Franke household. To avoid further allegations, this did effectively bring the end of 8 Passengers. However, Ruby did not stop from posting on social media and later made another channel with her business partner Jodi Hildebrandt where they advertised their life coaching business, ConneXions.  This is when everything took a dark turn; in August 2022 Ruby’s youngest son had escaped the family home and ran to a neighbours house. He was severely malnourished, bruised and had signs of chafing from restraints being previously chained to his legs. 

This brought the authorities to the house, where they also found Ruby’s youngest daughter in a similar condition. Soon after all the children were safely removed by authorities and an investigation found that she subjected her two youngest children to starvation and confinement, as well as other horrendous conditions. Ruby, along with Hildebrandt, were both charged and found guilty for four counts of child abuse; each were sentenced to up to 30 years in prison. Her eldest estranged daughter, Shari, later came out and called her mother the “family’s very own cult leader.” 

Youtube is 20 years old and Family Vloggers are still an unregulated corner of the internet. This has obviously not only brought the children’s safety to question but many dread to wonder how many vloggers are using their children for fame or financial gain. These families hide behind the screens, being sure not to let their true colours seep into their videos but over time this dedication slips. 

Although not all Family Vloggers use, abuse or neglect their children, many are completely innocent and honourable with pure intentions of simply sharing their life's journey. While this is true, there is still a need for laws and legislations to be brought in to protect these children to ensure that they have future access to all earnings that are raised from paid and sponsored YouTube videos that they featured in. The children in these videos are essentially working and should be treated and have the same protection as child actors would have. Youtube should follow all child acting laws, which essentially means that the children cannot work over a certain amount of hours a week and a portion of all the earnings go into a protected trust, which the parents cannot access and the only one who can access the earnings is the child once they become a legal adult. This would avoid the exploitation of the children in this so-called Family Vlogger genre and if they are in an abusive situation like the Franke children, it allows them agency outside of the family when they come of age.