A new law in France means that child social media stars will be treated the same as child models and actors, regulating how much they can work and how companies must treat them. As social media becomes increasingly lucrative, lawmakers said, kids need protection. 

Lucrative it is. Last year, the highest global earner on YouTube was the channel of an eight-year-old American boy that made 26-million dollars.

It’s laudable to put some protections in place, but even allowing (and more likely actively pushing) kids to pursue fame may be failing to protect them … from the cesspool of online life and from the bad ideas inherent to a culture that substitutes style over substance and “influence” over character.

We’ve seen this kind of thing before. A few years back, I wrote a piece entitled, Mommas, don’t let your babies grow up to be popstars. Today, I add, or social media influencers.