66: The Dark Underside of Family Vlogging, Part 2 with Catie Reay
We continue our family vlogging conversation today, discussing how often our kids get put out and displayed on the internet and how that affects them. I have Catie Reay joining me to talk about how children get exploited in family vlogging. Catie was raised in a religious cult and had to overcome childhood sexual abuse. Now, she advocates for children online, dedicating her time to helping parents navigate conversations with their children about online safety. Her viewpoint will provide everyone with food for thought. Let’s dive in!
Show Highlights:
How putting children online can still have negative consequences, even if there is no abuse
Catie reveals how family vlogging channels fail to protect children from abuse, sexualization, and stalking
The controversy surrounding family vloggers who monetize their children's content
Why it's exploitative to use children for creating online content as they cannot consent to being broadcast to millions of people
How child actors face exploitation in the entertainment industry
The importance of considering children's privacy and emotional well-being when creating and consuming parenting content
How creating digital scrapbooks for children without proper consent can potentially result in long-term emotional distress
How children get forced to sign NDAs by their parents to prevent them from speaking publicly about their experiences
The challenges of balancing the demands of social media and parenthood
The importance of parents being proactive in adjusting their children’s digital habits to prevent them from being sexualized online
Why parents must protect their children’s digital footprints
Resources and Links:
Connect with KC: Website, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook
Get KC’s book, How to Keep House While Drowning
We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: www.strugglecare.com/promo-codes.
-
KC 0:05
Hello, you sentient ball of stardust. My name is KC Davis and welcome to Struggle Care, the podcast where we talk about all things related to mental health and wellness and a few topics that I just find personally interesting. So we're continuing our discussion about family vlogging. And really just the idea of Sharon Ting and how much we put our kids out there on the internet and the impact that that is having on them. And so I have this week, Catie Reay, who is an advocate for children online, and Catie, tell me a little bit about your background, why this has become sort of a cause that you've taken up?
Catie Reay 0:44
Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Hello, everyone. I was born in a religious cults and experienced over a decade of CSA at the hand of a family member through several decades of therapy, I found freedom and I wanted to share that freedom with others to the internet. And of course, resources galore working with nonprofits galore. And speaking at conferences later found there are a lot of people out there who wants to not only navigate their own freedom, but help their children to avoid the kinds of things that they had to be raised in and heal from. So I've spent a lot of time dedicated to helping parents navigate hard conversations with their kids about safety, online safety, navigating, grooming, online exploitation, abuse, human trafficking. sextortion what it looks like to have conversations with your littles and how to heal from that on the other side, if you've experienced it yourself.
KC 1:42
Yeah. So you've mentioned several things in there that obviously have a pretty big overlap with this issue of how we're putting children online. And when you and I first talked, you know, I sort of brought up the Ruby Frankie case, which for anyone who's listening, that's not familiar, Ruby, Frankie was a very popular YouTube channel where she did family vlogs about her and her kids, the channel was monetized. And recently, she was actually arrested for child abuse when her children were found bound and starving. And one of the things that you said to me where that I want to use as a jumping off point is when we first talked, you actually said, it's really important to understand that the majority of family vlogging is not Ruby, Frankie, and that it's still problematic, because we tend to think of, well, if I'm not abusing my kids, well, if I'm not doing these issues here like this, there's this conversation this discourse about like, well, but it's okay for me to put my kid online because we're not doing those things. So can you talk about that for a second? Oh, absolutely.
Catie Reay 2:46
So Ruby Frankie's situation is unique in the circumstances that we got a front row seat to on curated information, all families log in is curated. So sorry, you're gonna hear pieces of my toddler because this is real life, and my toddler wants to wants my attention. So I'm gonna open his crackers. He's gonna go on his sweet, merry little way and then I got it. Man, you are safe. Thanks, love you. Bye. They love you. Bye. Okay, we'll see in a little bit. It was a view behind the curtain. Every family vlogging channel is curated. The intention of this curation is to sell us a product and everybody's purchasing what's being sold this perfect, loving, happy family. This peek behind the veil showed us that is not a at all what was happening inside of this family. And thank goodness that these children got taken care of and they're hopefully going to get the justice that they deserve and the protections that they should have had this entire time. And yet the family vlogging channels were that is not what's happening behind the veil. The reality is there are still lacking in serious protections that are happening. Children are being hyper sexualized, children are being sexualized, being sent sexualized, DMS there is nonconsensual, deep fake intimate image abuse being created of these children. They're being stalked. They're being doxxed. They feel unsafe and public, as someone who hears from these children of family vlogging channels. Every single day active we being subjected to these very things, begging myself and other advocates and activists to do something, please get legislation passed, please talk to our legislators, please get someone to do something in my state. So this stops happening to me, where a camera is put in their face every single moment of every single day, no matter the instance, private moments they would have never chosen to have shared publicly are shared publicly. They go viral and this child is then subjected to bullying at school. They're subjected to hyper sexualization because of the thumbnail that was intentionally chosen by me Parents, these are all pieces, like smaller pieces of a larger issue.
KC 5:03
So I want to play for you a clip that is of a different it's not to be frank, it's a different family vlogging channel to give people a sense of like you said, you know, they have the camera in their faces in these moments. And one of the things that I think people don't realize, because I'm talking about this over my tic tock channel is like, when we post to social media as just private individuals, we are just going about our day, right? Like 99% of us work, we go about our day, something funny happens, we video it, we're catching these moments as they happen, and then uploading them onto our Facebook or snapping our friends. So when we watch family vloggers, or child influencers, I think there's this sense that like, the same thing is happening there. And when you mentioned, you know, okay, these kids are having these like vulnerable moments and a cameras put in their face, I want to play this clip. This was a clip of a family vlogger, who is making a video about the fact that her son's dog just died. And they're really sad. They're sitting together in the car videotaping, but what this woman did was she forgot to edit out a part of the video where she's like directing her son on how to behave on camera and posts it and I think this is a really brutal, but honest thing that we have to understand what it's actually like for these kids to have a camera in their face. So if you can pray for us, we appreciate it. I love you guys. Coming composure for the video closer and closer. And closer.
Catie Reay 6:40
Act like you're crying
KC 6:47
like this? No, no, no, but go like this. For the video. Like this, put one hand up like this. No, go like this, like this. But let them see your mouth. Let them see your mouth. Okay, this child looks to be about seven or eight years old, if that may be six. And this I think rightly so like horrified this section of the internet that saw it. And people truly didn't realize that these are not just parents taking off the cuff videos of their kids as they do something. This is scripted. This is I mean, it rages me to listen to that. Because the psychological damage that that does to children, I recently posted a video of a family that had they're going on family vacation. And this isn't even a family vlogging channel necessarily it like their children are in every one of their videos, but they're going on a family vacation. And the mom is specifically says we're going on a family vacation. And we don't want our kids working the whole time. So we're only going to do a few videos, but they have an entire spreadsheet of every single shot. They're going to film of their children and themselves to create content that then gets monetized and to not even be able to go on family vacation without having to perform. And so this obviously sparked a lot of debate and a few things came up for people that I thought would be helpful for us to discuss, right? So obviously, when we talk about Ruby, Frankie, everyone's like, yes, that's horrible. Like don't abuse your kids. When we play this clip. People are like, Oh, okay, that's not okay. But what happens is that people start to do this cognitive dissidence of trying to go okay, but if the family vloggers that I follow, don't do that, then it's okay. So I wanted to kind of answer some of those objections. So one of the things that comes up is that they'll say, Well, how is this any different than being a child actor? Are you going to stop watching all TV without child actors? Because, you know, they're still kids. And, you know, if, because one of the things that I see it's like, kids cannot consent to what it means to be broadcast to millions of people. And so how do you answer that when someone says, Well, what about child actors? Is that not exploitation?
Catie Reay 9:04
Well, it absolutely is exploitation at its finest. That's what I was like,
KC 9:07
oh, have you met a child actor, they're pretty fucked up.
Catie Reay 9:10
Quite literally, we've seen in the history of child actors coming out of I mean, if you guys have not read, I'm glad my mom died, you absolutely should read that book. We're talking about a group of individuals who are put into such a staunchly hyper sexualized industry and expected to be something that a child cannot maintain the expectation of and they grew up with such severe addictions, coping mechanisms, and lifestyles that actually just continue the degrading process of their mental health if they
KC 9:45
survive. And that's with protections. People don't understand that that there are actually protections Yes, we have
Catie Reay 9:53
laws in place. For child actors that determine how many hours they're allowed to be on set. It requires them to still get At schooling, it requires them to still have access to public education. It determines the type of content they are allowed to be in and what is allowed of their likeness to be broadcasted. These are protections that do not exist for children and family vlogging channels, it is quite literally free rein, it is free rein, there are zero protections whatsoever. And that's why we're currently working on legislation. Washington State took up legislation. We're currently working on Maine, we are right behind with Maine. So that will be brought up in our hopefully this legislative session, if not legislative session. We're finishing up language in the bill right now. But we're hoping to see it completely sweep across the United States, particularly states where family vlogging is at its highest.
KC 10:43
So the next sort of objection or question that comes up from people is okay, well, I won't watch family vloggers anymore. But what about people that they aren't doing necessarily family vlogging content? What about I love when I watch parenting experts that are showing real life parenting where they're talking to their toddler, or they're talking to their kid, you know, isn't that okay? Because I just I have to admit, I see the issues of consent. But like, I just I get so much out learning from that, you know, Oh, I
Catie Reay 11:14
totally understand that. As a parent, I am so grateful when I can come across parenting content, and I can learn and I can grow because someone said something in a way I hadn't heard it before. And it clicked, I am so grateful for creators who make that content without using their children to do so there are skit type works where you can pretend to be yourself and your child to have identical conversations that would happen without your child being utilized in the content. There are ways to almost engage with a fake conversation with a child and answer it the way you know, they would answer it. You can do those things without your child even being on screen. I follow a lot of creators who are asking their kids questions, and all you can hear is their voice and their kids prior to filming, they simply ask their kids Hey, Are you cool with me recording this? So I can ask you a question. And the questions they're asking aren't invasive, it's not taking something from their child or putting them in harm's way. It's a question that blows parents minds and helps them navigate hard conversations with their kids to I'm grateful for parents who found a way to navigate parenting material that doesn't involve having to put their kids in their content.
KC 12:23
And then I always think of it as like, you know what our kids are really, really little. It's easy to think of them as just extensions of ourselves, for sure. Like another appendage? Yeah, like they don't they're not on the internet, they don't know. And we have this idea of children as like, everybody potty trains. So like, if I'm talking about potty training, if I'm talking about my kid having an accident, if I'm talking about you know these things, like it's not embarrassing to us as parents, yeah. But we don't realize what is embarrassing to a child. And one of the ways that I like to think about it is like if my husband were to start a channel about how to have a good marriage, and he was like, to what degree would I be comfortable with him using our marriage as content without my permission?
Catie Reay 13:08
For sure. Like, what calm? How deep? Are we going? Are we talking about what happens in the bedroom? Are we talking about exactly like, what, what degree
KC 13:18
and I don't want him filming our fights. But when I think about like, he just reenact them, and I'm like, okay, but like that was a real fight we had that was a real, you know what I mean? Like,
Catie Reay 13:28
and that was intimate, and there were actual feelings behind it. And I'm still processing some of that stuff. And just trust that it led to and it's much deeper than a lot of people think and if you are a consumer of that type of content, let alone a someone who creates that type of content, there are two different conversations to be had. But the one that intersects in the middle is maybe you didn't know, and you just haven't heard it told to you in a way like this before, that children truly cannot consent to the outcomes of being viewed by hundreds of millions of people across the globe. And the outcomes nine times out of 10 are quite literally devastating. For most of these kids, they do not grow up happy and healthy and grateful that their likeness was spread online. And I hear this objection, often, these parents are just creating a beautiful digital scrapbook for their children to look back on later, their children do not look back on this digital scrapbook. Happily, they come back and they say Please remove my likeness in perpetuity from your channel. That's what we're so that
KC 14:29
is the next objection that comes up is well, I won't watch the ones that are abusive. I won't watch the ones where they put their camera, their kids vulnerable moments online, but I do like this other family because they always ask their kids permission before they post anything or I like this family because their kids ask them to take something down and so they took it down or that's kind of like our next level objections like maybe these families are okay, but one of the things that I found really interesting is that if a child is reaching an age where they're asking their Parents to remove content, like the content that was there. The one that I talked about last week, it was 300 to 400 videos that these parents removed when their children requested. And I genuinely say kudos to those parents, right. I know all of us are out there doing the best we can for the most part. And I don't think that family is trying to be exploitive of their children. I don't think they don't seem like we had a family that's like, you know, forcing them to cry on camera, things like that. And I do think like, that's obviously a step in the right direction. But what hit me was that everyone acted like, what happened was, the kids liked doing the content, and then all of a sudden, it wasn't fun to do the content anymore. And so they asked to stop. But if that's what happened, why did those children want the past videos removed? Right? If the only issue was, it was fun when I was little, but it's not fun. Now, why would you want the videos to remove? Wanting all of the past videos removed tells me that what actually happened was these children finally reached an age where they were able to conceptualize what it really meant for their presence, and their likeness, and their performance, and the intimate moments of their life to be broadcast to hundreds of 1000s of people. Yeah, and so that's not I liked it, and now I don't and so it's okay, because I revoked consent that I never had consent. I never had informed consent, I did not realize. And I think that should be the lesson is that if kids are reaching an age where they're saying, now that I get it, now that I can actually understand what putting this video out in the world means I don't want it anymore. We shouldn't just be like, well, it's Hurray, as soon as you revoke consent, like, why are we thinking back and going, Oh, well, that should tell us that children under this age cannot conceptualize this.
Catie Reay 16:48
I think something that is super important in situations like that is listening to those children, because they're not going to you've got two stories, you have the parents and it's they didn't have fun anymore. And so we're you know, taking a step in a different direction and starting a new chapter. And then you have the voices of those who requested their likeness be removed, and their story is going to sound different. There's a reason you're not publicly hearing from the children of family vlogging channels currently, and it's because the vast majority of them and this fact is going to shake so many of you to your core. I hope you hold on to this. And I hope it keeps you awake at night. So you understand exactly what's happening. The vast majority of minor children and family vlogging channels have been forced to sign NDAs by their parents, via the family lawyer that runs their YouTube channel. So they don't tell people what's happening. And you may say, Oh, my God, well, that makes no sense because an NDA signed by a kid would never hold up in court. They don't know that their children under threat of lawsuit, they are told by their parents to tell no one every minor child who has reached out to me and said, Please, for the love of God do something and tell someone I just can't go public because I signed an NDA does not believe me or any other advocate or activist when we tell them that won't hold up in court. They don't believe us, number one, number two, they're still living in that household. They're still relying on those people for food and water and basic necessities, they have to continue to go along with it until they're able to maintain their own independence. I need you to understand how serious that
KC 18:19
is. Yeah, I don't think people realize that like, because that's the other objection that comes up is, but their kids seem like they love it. Or parents saying, Oh, our kids love it. Our kids seem like or, you know, well, they're not saying, you know, the family that I was referring to when they took the videos down? Well, those older kids eventually came back and said, nevermind, actually, we do want to do it again. Because that parent continued to make those videos with the younger kids. And I think what people don't realize is that I mean, you think about to me, it's like the two polar opposites of family vlogging we have the Ruby Frankie's where their kids aren't going to say no, because they're literally being bound up with tape and tortured all the way to the other side of this other family vlogging channel that I was discussing last week, and this week, where this guy seems like a good dad, like he talks about his mission is he wants to put positive parenthood out he wants other men to see what healthy fatherhood can look like. And he has separate bank accounts for his kids so that they're getting the money he asks them if they want to. He pulls the videos when he's asked and but it's just as hard if not harder to say no to your parent, when they're a good parent that loves you.
Catie Reay 19:29
And I think also the concept of dependence is created when from infancy you can create an income and you have your entire life and there is a bank account filled with hundreds of 1000s if not millions of dollars that was created as a result of your likeness being streamed online, and now you're an adult and you want to walk away from it and you don't want to do it anymore. And creating an income on your own is really hard and it's very, very difficult and the potential of going back to that lifestyle knowing that it was consistent income. So
KC 20:03
there's this other channel, that's another one I saw recently. And it was an influencer and her husband, and they had just had a baby. And the video is like, basically like, so you know, influence will do, like, get ready with me videos, or they'll do like going to target videos when it's little montage of snapshots. So this video they were making was like, watch me get up in the middle of the night to take care of my newborn, and you watch her get up out of bed and pick up the baby. And then the next shot, she's on the other side of the bed handing the baby to dad, then the next shot, she's making bottles. And then the next shot, you know, Dad is doing this, and then she's doing this and you know, even I am scrolling through and I see it. I'm like, Okay, what are her life? But what we don't conceptualize when we see those videos, is that like, there's a ring light on, like, how are we seeing and it's completely dark bedroom? No, she woke up, you know, baby's crying, she woke up, it's not bad to let your baby cry for a few minutes to get something done right to go to the bathroom, do whatever, but like left baby crying to set up a ring light to get back in bed to pretend to be asleep. So she can reenact getting up and getting baby then had to put the baby down, move the ring light to the other side of the bed so that now we get the shot with dad, right come over hand it to dad. I mean, like this is not just oh, here's our moments, like it, people don't
Catie Reay 21:21
get now and people don't understand how long each one of those segments takes to prepare to film to edit. And you're talking about if she waited till the morning to film and edit, she spent hours clipping and restoring and adjusting and making everything exactly as she wanted for just that one. It takes so much time to curate content that is like aesthetically pleasing like that it takes so much time to curate that content. And to do that, in the middle of the night with a newborn baby. I don't know how you find it in you. I'm like baby, I was. So in gorged and I was so miserable. I just wanted to like roll over and forget that something came out of my body. But that persistent, nagging pressure to make an income any way possible. And knowing that there is quite literally a formula to do it with Children Now is it really hurts my heart.
KC 22:21
Well, that brings me to my next objection, because you know, we're now we're stair stepping down. And so this was a couple who were already influencers, right. And so this little video is not just you know, Meg and Ohio, making a little tick tock about what it's like to get up in the middle of the night. This is the start of this child's very existence every minute of this child's existence, being a part of the family brand being, you know, videotaped. And I think what happens is there's this creep, and I even understand how this happens for parents is that in the beginning, everything your kid does, is so general, like every baby wakes up in the middle of the night, every baby is pooping their pants, every baby is vomiting on you. And so talking of even just talking about like, let's let's say you're not video, but you know, oh, today, my baby vomited on me. It doesn't feel like a violation to your child. Because that's such general, every baby does this, no one's gonna grow up and be upset that their mom said as a baby, You vomited on them, right? But the creep from every baby does this it's general to this as a person with their own personality, their own unique experiences their own very private experiences where, okay, so every kid potty trained to but like how in depth? Can you talk about that? And yes, every kid has a tantrum, but like how in depth can you talk about right? And even as a content creator, who doesn't put my kids in my channel? When I talk about parenting? Even for me, there's this evolution and this challenge of how what's the line of being general enough that I can make a comment about parenting without talking about something about my child. And so anyways, all that to say, so the next objection is, well, what if I'm not an influencer? Yeah. Going parenting, what if I just, yeah, just I'm just, you know what, I'm posting it for my friends. Or I've got 1000 followers, or, you know, I'm not putting pictures of my baby in diapers. I'm not forcing my kids to work when they don't want to. I'm just doing little dance trends and doing little this. And sometimes my kids are in the background, or sometimes they come up and ask me for a snack and they're on the camera. That's okay. So
Catie Reay 24:27
first, I want to go back just a little bit. We've found what helps a lot with us being able to talk about parenting, the parenting tips, parenting, the revolution of our parenting and how it's evolved over time has really come from a place of being able to just tell people things that we teach our children without the story of where it evolved from, like, you know, my kid did this thing one time and said this thing and was in this situation like that all can be completely annexed from the lesson itself, and we can talk about how our Children have responded to this lesson without uncovering them. And the objective has always been to keep our children covered. But I need you guys to know I was a Sharon ting parent. Like I posted my children's milestones online, I posted that my kids school that they went to on the first day of school, I did that stuff. I was that parent. And it wasn't until I came across creators who said, Hey, this stuff is unsafe as a result of these reasons. And I was like, Oh ha made me think a little differently. I started researching, I started researching, I started researching and then I quickly started removing my children's likeness from the internet. And then I started sharing with other parents. This is how the word gets out is we literally just game a telephone, we tell each other Hey, these are the reasons why this is not as safe as you may think it is parenting isn't this over excessive concept of filming and documenting every single moment of your children's life and all of your content exists around them. We're just people in a place who have kids, and we want people to see them. How am I going to update grandma Margie, she wants to see the milestones. Well, how I update grandma Margie is through private encrypted text messaging applications where data can't be scraped. That matters a lot to me that data can't be scraped that my kids likeness, their image can't be saved. And then shared somewhere. Email has never been something that's historically safe, even private ID social media accounts historically, or something that's never been safe. And the reality is, every single person watching this right now, I know that you do not know every single one of your Facebook friends. I know that for a fact,
KC 26:28
that's really what got me and I'm not as I don't go to some of the lengths you do. Like, I have like a private Instagram account that I put my kids and we have like skylight frames and things like that. But I will say like I did get to this point where you know, because I would post pictures on my Facebook where I looked one day, and it was like, and I'm not even someone that has as many friends on Facebook as a lot of people do. But I mean, I had like 700 friends and I started looking at who my friends were. And it was like, Okay, people that I used to work with that marketer from the other company that I met at a brunch one time, you know, acquaintances that I did one playdate with and their partners and I started looking at that and going I don't know these people like I'm trying to share a milestone with great aunt Margie. I don't know, if the marketer for PepsiCo that I had lunch with one time is a pedophile, for sure. You think people wear those as a sign on their head? Yeah. And I
Catie Reay 27:27
think when we try to have that particular conversation with parents who either like share a little share a lot, or overshare and help them recognize how many saves that they have on their videos, how many comments, vulgar comments are on their videos? And you have parents who intentionally say things like, why would you guys say stuff like that? This is an innocent, beautiful baby. No one would ever sexualize this child and then showing them like your child is actively being sexualized in your comments in stitches and duets. There are you know 780,000 saves on this video, I need you to ask yourself why what percentage of those are people who have insidious, insidious ideas and they keep coming back to the it would never be for that reason. It's you guys who needs to get your head out of the gutter to those people who are struggling with that concept. I encourage you to dig into what is happening with children's material online. If you have never heard of child sexual abuse material, you probably know it as child pornography. It is a very pervasive problem. It is a 10s of billions of dollars industry and it is quite literally fed by the free content that you are putting online. Yeah, there's an
KC 28:41
article that came out about eight years ago in Sydney and Australia, they had had this huge bust. It's like one of the biggest busts that ever done on child sexual abuse material online. We're talking millions and millions and millions of photos on this website. And they found that up to half literally half of these photos were taken from parents social media accounts, their Facebook accounts, their Instagram accounts, their Tik Tok accounts, and in many cases, so there's like two things that happened to those videos that get taken. Sometimes the image is taken because as is it is attractive to someone. And it's not something we would think about. We don't think about a three year old in a diaper as being sexual. We don't think about a four year old in her bikini or a six year old in her gymnastics leotard like we don't think of those things as sexual, but that absolutely does it for someone who looks at children as sexual. And so some of these images are just taken as is. But the other thing that's happening is that images of children fully clothed are taken and then doctored and deep faked because someone liked their face. Someone liked the color of their eyes. And so that's terrifying. And there is literally a
Catie Reay 29:51
public Instagram page with hundreds of 1000s of followers where people have deep fake cell Celebrities faces on to the bodies of children and then infantilized their faces. I need you to understand that they made a four year old Emma Roberts on a four year olds body and put it in lingerie. Hundreds of 1000s of people follow that content, hundreds of 1000s of comments saying, Yeah, that's the one. I'm fucking sorry, four years old. That's the one. That's the whole point of the conversation we're talking about when we are creating likeness of our children online access to any one and every one, they will, in fact, do with your child's likeness, what they want. And there are a lot of people out there who want to cause harm a lot.
KC 30:49
And the idea of it were sort of that generation, like the internet really became accessible to the masses when I was in like the sixth grade with, you know, aim Messenger, and your one little dial up and there's like three websites, but like, we're the ones who grew up on the internet. And so we don't have access to generations older than us making these decisions. Like I think that especially when the mommy blogger content like that was so meaningful to so many moms who felt isolated, didn't have support and all of a sudden parents online start talking about things that they aren't talking about in real life. They're not talking at the playdates about how hard things are, but they'll go online and because it feels a little anonymous talk about how hard parenting is. So now you have all these parents going, oh my god, someone gets it. Someone understands that nobody before us has ever had to navigate. How do I talk about my life as a parent while grappling with the realities of my child and their right to privacy, autonomy, consent and a digital footprint under their control?
Catie Reay 31:50
Yep, there really wasn't. I mean, our introduction, like you said into the internet was AOL chat rooms, one of the most pervasive places for grooming, hyper sexualization? Yeah, I
KC 32:02
don't know why we are struggling with it because we more than anybody know how grody it is on the streets.
Catie Reay 32:09
In the US. It was us it was us. We took literally like the full brunt of force of the internet saying, Welcome.
KC 32:18
I don't want to shame parents that are putting content online. There's such a lower level, absolutely
Catie Reay 32:24
not. I think that does need to hear it in a way they've never heard it before. They've heard it from someone who came from an angle that was either not their flavor. I'm not out here to police anybody's language or their approach on this topic. Everybody has a different approach. I like to approach it from an educational standpoint, in hopes that someone hears it in a way they've never heard it before. And they adjust the way they show up digitally. Yeah, I mean, the reality is, we can troll where what happens with our child's likeness online learning what I've learned, I said no more like I will not be responsible for my child existing or my child's likeness existing online and experiencing digital harm as a result of their digital footprint that I created for them, they had no choice in the matter, there is no way for them to have consented to exactly what was taking place when they were put on in the digital space. So I don't want to be a part of the potential harm that comes from that I'm going to save this space for them to choose in the future if they do choose because not everybody wants to be on social media. What if my kid grows up and says, You know what? No, thanks. I actually I've seen what social media has done for you. It's great. I love that you love it. I don't even have an interest in my likeness being out there. So I don't want it No, thank you. Well,
KC 33:35
and think about, you know, we talk so many times to young adults about think about what you put online because employers will Google your name, they'll find those things. And it's like, okay, can you imagine the feeling of trying to get a job and that employer, Google's you and finds your whole childhood? And you might be thinking, well, they're not going to not give you a job because of like, you know, you being a child, but like, what if they don't like your mom? What if they don't like the political affiliation of your family? vlogging channel? What if you don't I mean, like, what if there are things that they want to discriminate against, that they find in all of this digital footprint that you didn't have control over? Like you didn't consent to? Or
Catie Reay 34:12
what if they do hire you because you were hyper sexualized as a child, and now they're looking at you that way. Like, we have to understand all of the complexities of the things that people are really seeing of these children online and the ways in which that's going to impact their future.
KC 34:27
There's one more point that I want to bring up before I will let you go, which is that so as a large creator, I've got 1.6 million followers on Tiktok I've had a little bit of a exposure to like, how dark the Internet can be. And I consider myself someone who's pretty careful about not giving away my locations. You know, I don't show my kids faces. I try not to make anything identifiable about my children even as I'm talking. And but there's two things that happened to me like one was one time being on a live stream and talking to people and I just made a video about misogyny. And so a bunch of men that were really angry in my comments making a comment about where I lived that I had never given out. And then the second thing that happened was one time I was making a tic talk about how I had taken my kids to the beach. And it was about overcoming anxiety, because I had a lot of anxiety around taking my kids to around water. And the shot was my kids weren't in the shot. It was literally sand, water, a little bit of like a dock and a coastline. That was it. It looked like every beach in America. And someone commented, you may want to take this down, because I know where you are. And I DM to them. And I was like, how do you know where I am? And you would think, Oh, it's because they recognized something, this person lived across the country. And they said, Well, I know you live in Houston. And there's a red barn in the background on the right side. And you said you were at the beach. And so I just pulled up a map of the coastline of Houston and on Google Maps, and I started going, I saw that there was a doc and I went, then you can see the docs and I went doc, by doc by doc, looking at Google Streetview. Until I found that red barn in the background. I know exactly where you are with your children right now. And by the way, they were doing this to be helpful. Like they weren't like threatening me. They were saying like, I know, you think that this is nondescript. But I want you to know, it took me eight minutes to find out where you take your children to the beach that
Catie Reay 36:22
is quite literally terrifying. Like to get a message like I know exactly where you are. What I've heard, as far as those particular situations is the safest way to share what you're doing without it being a direct location is posting well after you've already left that location, which most of us do, right? Like when we're filming these pieces of this activity, and then it we draft it and we go play like and then later after we've gotten home, we have time for the editing process. That's when we're like editing and doing all these things because like they come at the beach, but I think that's so important for people to remember is the Internet is a very dark, very scary place, you are quite literally giving anyone and everyone access to you. If your profile is public. If it's not, you're making it a
KC 37:08
little harder. And if that's a place, you go frequently, it doesn't help you to post it later.
Catie Reay 37:13
Correct. If that's the place you frequent posting it, you're promising that someone's going to find you there. At some point, I like to post most of my content from my inside my bedroom, just right here, just like this, set up my bed, prop up my ring light, say my little my little thing is and then there isn't much for people to go off of as far as location wise, other than the fact that people do know that I live in Wyoming because I've done a lot of local community work, I do a lot of calls to action, calling on the community to help with local legislation sending our representatives their thoughts on the fact that we still haven't moved in certain areas. The biggest thing when it comes to keeping our kids safe online is recognizing if anyone and everyone can find us, or can have an opinion on us or can do things with our content, they can also have an opinion, do things and manipulate content of our children. And that scares me more than the idea of them doing that to my kids scares me more than the idea of them doing it to me.
KC 38:13
And I think one of the things that I hear from people is they'll say, Well, you can't live in fear. I can't, you know, control my life, just because there are bad people out there. And then the other objection that comes up is you know, okay, but like someone could take a picture of your kid at the park and use it somebody could be looking at your kid at the park and use it. And what I always say is that's true. And if you went to a park and someone took a picture of your child, would you ever take them back to that park? If you like to go to a park and all of a sudden the next day someone a mom posted on your little Facebook group or a dad posted on your facebook group page, just so you guys know, I was at that park and somebody took a picture of my kid and here's where I found it. You would never go back to that park. Yeah, like to me, it seems so obvious. Like I know that I know that anywhere I go. Someone could snap a photo. But I certainly I'm not saying live your life in fear. Never update your nana. I mean, like even between you and I we have different comfort levels as far as like how private how encrypted but taking any steps towards safety is a good thing. Well,
Catie Reay 39:15
in that park analogy, it's if somebody told you that there is a unknown predator that hangs out at this particular park takes pictures of kids while he's there. And the police have never done anything no matter how many times he's reported, you're not going to go to that park, you may go with the efforts of calling the police just to say hey, this fucker hasn't left still. Are y'all going to do anything? The reality is you're not going if you experienced it by yourself independently, just like you said, you're not going back knowing that the reporting system isn't working. Hello, we're talking about platform reporting here. It doesn't work. We've been doing it for years and they do not Don't remove content from predatory people. They do not remove accounts from predatory people who are continuously doing these things where they are taking your child's like this. And they're hyper sexualizing it and using it for insidious purposes. As someone who is down these rabbit holes for my work in advocacy and activism, I promise you, your children's likeness are being hyper sexualized and use for child sexual abuse material because I'm one of the people that binds it. And I have to contact you through your DMS and Instagram. And I have to tell you, ma'am, I regret to inform you, but your children's likeness has ended up on pornography websites, and you're mortified. And I hear your voice clips where you are literally crying, saying this can't be the case. What do I do and I walk you through the steps of calling the police and then I walk you through the steps of reporting to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and using the feature take it down so that a child's likeness who's been sexualized online can be removed from the internet in perpetuity. And then I walk you through the process of talking with the FBI for the first time so they can dig and find exactly where what accesses and what sections of the internet this has been purveying in I am on the other end of your children being hyper sexualized on the internet, I am the one that you all reach out to myself and hundreds of 1000s of others who are doing this work. And I'm telling you right now, your voice clips live in my nightmares, your voices will not leave my bones as I hear you break down about your children being sexualized on the internet. And for those of you who don't believe it could happen to you, you have a choice to adjust the way you show up digitally now. Or you will be reaching out to me and someone like me one day as well, because there are people out there who do not stop what they do. And they are really good at what they do. And it is hyper sexualizing children online and using their images For insidious purposes. That is not fear mongering, that is the world that we live in this digital space, big space was not intended for human safety. That's why our legislation is so behind right now. Our digital capacity is decades ahead of our legislative measures for safety. That's why we're working so hard every legislative session to pump at least something out like one thing, can we just get one thing to start the ball rolling. Unfortunately, we don't have anything robust enough. But we're trying we're working really hard on it. So I just want you to know parents who are in this gray area where they're struggling. They're not sure where to start, just start if you're hearing this and you're like God, I really can't do this anymore. Like I've heard this. And I feel differently. It's been shared in a way that I hadn't heard it prior. Just start by deleting. That's what I did. I started by privatizing my Facebook account and just deleting one picture after the other. And I did not realize that there were 1000s of them years of having shared by children, there were 1000s of them. And I was really grateful for the opportunity to start that process. Katie,
KC 42:50
I can't thank you enough for the time that you've taken to have this conversation. I know it's a heavy conversation. But I know it's going to benefit a lot of parents and in turn are going to benefit a lot of kids. Can you tell us where we can find you if we want to follow you on social media or any resources that you have for us?
Catie Reay 43:07
Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Case me. You guys can find me at the Tick Tock advocate on both Instagram and Tiktok
KC 43:13
Awesome. All right. We will put some of those things in the show notes too. And I hope you have a great rest of your day.
Catie Reay 43:19
Thanks, friend. You too.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai