Malas influencias: El lado oscuro de las redes en la infancia

"Bad Influence" is a grim 3-part Netflix docuseries about kidfluencers and the awful parents who monetize their childhoods for clicks. It's well-produced, but the whole thing feels exploitative, invasive, and downright icky. I'm grateful we don't have children; I can't imagine raising a kid in an age where everyone has the attention span of a gnat. AND where kids take life advice from someone like Piper Rockelle, who I only know because she did a cursed collab with the witless Katy Perry, who recently rode Bezos' penis rocket into space cosplay with Gayle King (who is now shocked, shocked!, by backlash). This series rightly lays blame on the momagers, the platforms, and the adult enablers, especially the legions of creepy men who follow these minors and collect photos like they're Pokémon cards. I may not be a digital native (I still remember our first VCR), but I do know this: nothing about this influencer economy feels safe, decent, or sane.

So the topic of this docu-series was very interesting, very eye opening, but the way it was executed felt wrong and honestly kind of strange. The parents seem to not really take much accountability for putting their children in these awful situations, the people they chose to interview seemed to be biased about the topic and seemed to still think it was okay to have your children plastered all over social media. This whole docu-series just seems like even more exploitation. I think they should have taken this topic a bit more seriously. I felt gross throughout the entire duration of this new Netflix "expose" which at this point just seems to be more click bait without any real consideration for the topic at hand.

I watched it at one go just a while ago. A must watch for parents and alike to understand how vulnerable we all are to virtual fame and the easy money. Exposing kids to camera, filming, sharing, looking for validation and endorsements is selling the childhood of the kids to others. It's nothing less than the child labor exploiting emotional and physical health of the kids. No amount of justifications for such parenting activities is acceptable. It's about time Govt came up with some laws and started implementing it!

The old adage 'A picture speaks thousands words' no longer holds true. Every single picture is fabricated and manipulated for reasons beyond the comprehension of the consumer of the content!

I work in influencer marketing, so this was incredibly relevant for me. We have to be careful when we're working with family focused creators because we absolutely want to avoid situations like this where the kids are being manipulated and exploited.

This story goes even further than just financial and emotional exploitation sadly. I hope more stories start coming out about similar situations because I know they're out there, and the more we can do to protect children from this kind of mess the better. It really drops the facade of these kids all having fun and doing it on their own and shows you how manipulated and puppeted they were to make money for the mother. Gross!

This is a show about something that needs to be talked about a lot more than it actually is! Super heartbreaking to see these kids manipulated like that! The second episode absolutely broke me, its so sad how this mom is allowed to get away with horrible things. I hope that when piper turns 18 she has the courage to come out about all this abuse. I would recommend watching this show, not in a public place because you might shed a tear or two. I think this is eye opening to many people, before this documentary I would see piper getting a lot of hate for her actions but after an inside look it makes sense.