If your brand works with, or is hoping to work with family creators or kid-adjacent content, the compliance ground just shifted twice in one week.
On September 16, 2026, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen used her State of the Union address to announce the broad strokes of the EU Kids Act. Under the proposed act, there would be no social media access for children under 13, parent-supervised “mini accounts” for 13-to-under-15-year-olds, and mandatory safe-by-design obligations for platforms serving 15-to-18-year-olds. The European Commission is expected to formally table the proposal on September 17.
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The timing isn’t a coincidence. Regulators on both sides of the Atlantic have spent the last two years trying to answer the same uncomfortable question: when a child’s face, voice, or daily life becomes the product, who actually gets paid, and who’s responsible for protecting them?
This guide covers who child influencers and “kidfluencers” actually are, what they earn, who controls the money, and how to make sure a child’s rights are protected during the collaboration — plus how US states are now forcing that money into trust accounts, and how the incoming EU Kids Act fits into a fast-moving global shift toward treating monetized child content as a form of labor.
What Is a Child influencer? Kidfluencer, Kidvertising, Kids Marketing, and the Terms Behind the Data
Before the money and the law, it’s worth being precise about the terms, because they get used interchangeably online and mean different things to regulators.
Source: Magnific
A kidfluencer (sometimes “child influencer”) is a minor or child whose image, voice, or likeness builds an audience and generates revenue, whether they’re the one holding the camera or, more often, a parent-run “family vlog” channel that features them. This is the definition state lawmakers have been racing to pin down, since a workable kidfluencers definition is what determines who a trust-account law actually applies to. Illinois, for example, defines it around a minor appearing in the “likeness, name, or photograph” of at least 30% of a parent’s monetized content.
Kidvertising is the narrower marketing term for advertising aimed at or featuring children, whether that’s a brand paying a kidfluencer directly or simply targeting a child audience through content designed to appeal to them.
Kids marketing is the broader discipline: the strategy, media planning, and creative approach brands use to reach children and the parents who buy on their behalf. Kidfluencer and kidvertising campaigns are two methods that companies use to target young audiences with advertising, not synonyms for it.
The distinction matters here because most of the new laws target the first category specifically. They regulate what happens when a child’s presence is the commercial asset, not simply when a brand happens to market to children.
How Much Does a Child Influencer Earn?
Ryan Kaji of Ryan’s World was named Forbes’ highest-paid YouTuber three years running, with alledged reported earnings of $22 million in 2018, $26 million in 2019, and $29.5 million in 2020, at ages seven through nine. Family channels further down the ranking still post substantial numbers: the ACE Family has been alledgedly estimated to earn around $1.4 million a year , and the twins behind the FishFam channel have alledgedly reportedly generated up to $150,000 a month in brand deals for their family.
According to The Regulatory Review, a child influencer earning tens of millions of dollars a year historically has had no legal claim to any of it: the account, the brand deals, and the bank account all belong to the parent. That gap, between headline creator income and what a minor actually keeps, is exactly what the new wave of state and EU legislation is trying to close.
As House of Marketers Founder Inigo Rivero puts it:
“Often, parents or guardians manage the account and contracts. Ethically, however, there is debate that the child’s contribution should be documented and fairly recognised, with the earnings kept somewhat transparent and protected for them.”
That gap, between headline creator income and what a minor actually keeps, is exactly what the new wave of state, EU, and UK rules is trying to close.
Working With Child Influencers: Earning, Legal Liability and Contracts
In most US states, reports have suggested that parents can still legally keep 100% of a child influencer’s earnings. Illinois, California, Minnesota, Utah, and Montana are the exceptions, each now requiring a portion of a child’s earnings to be set aside in a trust.
California’s version builds on the oldest model in the country. California’s original Coogan Law, passed after child star Jackie Coogan discovered his parents had spent his entire film earnings. The law requires 15% of a child performer’s gross earnings to be set aside in a blocked trust account until they turn 18.
In September 2024, California extended that exact protection into the creator economy. Assembly Bill 1880 amends the Coogan Law so that when a business or brand directly contracts a minor as a “content creator,” 15% of the minor’s gross earnings must go into a Coogan trust account, the same as a child actor. A companion law signed the same day, Senate Bill 764, targets the more common family-vlog scenario instead of a direct contract: when a parent-run channel features a minor in at least 30% of its monetized content, 65% of the child’s proportionate share of earnings must go into a trust.
The other four states each built their own version of the same idea. Illinois got there first, in July 2024: minors under 16 who appear in 30%+ of a parent’s compensated content over 30 days are owed 50% of the gross earnings from it, held in trust until 18. Minnesota goes further, barring under-14s from appearing in more than 30% of monetised content at all. And if they do, they’re owed 100% of the profits, not a share. Utah’s rule, prompted by the Ruby Franke abuse case, kicks in once a parent earns $150,000+ a year from content featuring their kids, requiring 15% into trust. Montana’s Child Digital Protection Act layers a right to request the content’s deletion years later on top of its own tiered trust contribution.
If a child’s image, time, performance, or creative work is being used commercially, there should be a clear written arrangement and fair compensation behind it. That’s the same principle now showing up in five different states’ law, in five slightly different forms.
So should children be engaged in this kind of work?
It’s the question we get asked most often by brands weighing a family-content campaign of their own:
“Our relevant public experience is mainly marketing products designed for children and families, rather than managing children as talent.
In these cases, we work directly with the parents and the fees are paid to the parents. ”
In other words, the simplest way to stay on the right side of laws is to not create liability in the first place. This can be done by keeping the commercial relationship and the compensation with the parent rather than the child.
Should Kids Be Social Media Influencers? The Debate Behind the Law
None of this legislation settles the more basic question underneath it: should kids be social media influencers at all?
The case for it usually comes down to family economics. For some families, a child-featured channel is a legitimate, full-time income source. The case against it centers on consent. A child can’t meaningfully agree to have their life, meltdowns, or medical appointments monetised in front of millions of strangers, and testimony from former child influencers and their families has driven several of these bills directly.
What almost every new law agrees on, is that compensation and consent shouldn’t be left entirely to informal family arrangements once real money is involved. That’s a narrower, more workable question than “should kids be online,” and it’s the one legislators have actually been able to act on.
The EU Kids Act: Europe’s Answer, Announced This Week
Where the US has moved state by state on compensation, the EU has focused on access and design. The EU Kids Act was previewed in von der Leyen’s September 16, 2026 State of the Union address and is due to be formally proposed on September 17. The EU Kids Act sets a gradual minimum age model:
- no social media access under 13
- parent-supervised “mini accounts” with limited features and time restrictions for 13-to-under-15-year-olds
- and mandatory “safe by design” obligations, such as switching off infinite scroll and requiring platform-level age verification, for services used by 15-to-18-year-olds
Earlier draft reporting also floated a more granular under-3 tier with a near-total access bar, alongside a distinct 3-to-13 “child-friendly platforms only” band. The exact age bands are still being finalised ahead of the full text, and the proposal will still need to go through the European Parliament and Council before it becomes law.
The Act doesn’t directly regulate influencer earnings the way Illinois or California do. Instead, it changes who’s even allowed to hold an independent account at what age, which has direct downstream effects for any brand or agency running kidfluencer or kidvertising campaigns into EU markets: age verification at sign-up, parental account controls, and platform feature restrictions are all set to become compliance requirements rather than platform preferences.
How to Make Sure You’re Following the Rules When Partnering With Child Influencers
Between state-by-state trust laws in the US and an EU Kids Act that regulates access rather than money, there’s no single checklist that satisfies every jurisdiction at once. The safest position for a brand is to build in more protection than any one law currently requires, rather than the minimum any one of them mandates.
According to Inigo:
There should be parental consent, the child’s assent, a clear contract, limits on hours, formalised breaks, an appropriate adult or chaperone, comment moderation, no disclosure of private information, transparent payment records, protected earnings and a right to stop or request removal.”
That list holds up regardless of which state, country, or platform a campaign runs on. Written agreements and transparent compensation are no longer just good practice, they’re becoming the legal minimum in more places every year, and building to a checklist like this keeps a campaign ahead of wherever the law lands next rather than scrambling to catch up.
Final Thoughts
Two years ago, the only rule governing a family channel’s earnings was whatever the parents decided was fair. That’s no longer true anywhere this industry actually operates. State by state, and now at the EU level too, regulators have been trying to find a middle ground: enough oversight to stop real harm, without treating every family video as a labor violation.
That search for a middle ground isn’t unique to this industry, either. Child actors and musicians have gone through similar situations for decades, and the tools that came out of it (trust accounts, working hour limits, record-keeping) are largely what regulators are now adapting for social media. The influencer economy is simply catching up to a version of oversight that entertainment already had to figure out.
For brands and agencies, the direction of travel is clear: compensation clarity, written agreements, and compliance awareness aren’t optional extras for kidfluencer and family-product campaigns anymore, they’re the baseline. If you’re considering a collaboration with a child influencer or a family creator, that’s exactly where we can help, from structuring the contract correctly to making sure compensation, consent, and compliance are in place before a campaign launches, not after a regulator asks about them.