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เอกสารฉบับเต็ม
ABSTRACT
The world of child influencing has forged a path for children to reach Internet stardom while simultaneously making a small fortune. Every day, more and more parents try to have their children break into this market and become a kidfluencer by posting content of them on social media. This Note argues that current advertising and child labor laws in the United Kingdom are insufficient to protect the interests of child influencers. This Note addresses the legal framework for dealing with potentially negative consequences that children working as kidfluencers may confront. Due to the role of parents and the private nature of the industry, child influencers are in a unique position to endure psychological and reputational harm, as well as financial exploitation. By allowing the kidfluencer industry to continue in this unregulated manner, the United Kingdom fails to fulfill the obligations imposed by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. To solve this problem, this Note proposes that Parliament adopt legislation that requires obtaining a license before working in the kidfluencer industry, and that mandates the creation of blocked trust accounts for kidfluencers. Implementing this legislation will allow the United Kingdom to fulfill the obligations set by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, while simultaneously respecting family autonomy.
I. INTRODUCTION
"What do you want to be when you grow up?" If asked to guess how children answer this question, you would likely predict jobs such as a doctor, lawyer, police officer, or teacher. However, if your answer did not also include "influencer," then you may have a lot to learn. An influencer is "a person who is paid by a company to show and describe its products and services on social media, encouraging other people to buy them."1 Incredibly, nearly one in five children ages eleven through sixteen in the United Kingdom want to be an influencer as their full-time job.2
However, a child does not need to wait until they are an adult to be an influencer. When an influencer is a child, they are often referred to as a kidfluencer.3 There are many highly successful kidfluencers, such as ten-year-old Lorenzo Greer, known as "Tekkerz Kid," from Birmingham, who earns more than £400,000 per year as...