A mother has been accused of ‘exploiting’ her children by forcing them to create 40 social media while on holiday – and tracking their progress on a spreadsheet.
Disney enthusiasts, Lilly Davis, and her husband Paul, from Salt Lake City, treated their six children to a Disneyland trip.
Each child was allegedly asked to create themed content for their mother’s social media channels, with a target of 40 videos between them, with Lilly insisting she didn’t want them to be ‘overworked’ during the trip.
According to Lilly’s Collabstr website, the parents profit a hefty $2,150 per each Instagram photo feed post or reel and $1,150 for each TikTok video.
However, the mother has since met criticism online by professional councillor KC Davis, who claimed that Lilly has ‘exploited’ her children from content.
Lilly has since made her TikTok account private, but KC’s video has garnered more than two million views, and many others have taken to the comment section to voice concern.
Lilly Davis (pictured) has been criticized on social media for asking her children to create social media content on holiday
Taking to TikTok, KC claimed that consuming family vlogging channels equates to ‘supporting the exploitation of children’.
She explained: ‘Now, I don’t know this woman, and I don’t have any personal animus towards her, nor am I trying to send hate her way.’
KC then drew on a video of Lilly where she explained that she doesn’t want her family overworked while on holiday and so the children were only required to record a minimal amount of content.
Lilly shared a clip of a detailed spreadsheet for each child’s tasks.
‘We don’t even get to see the whole spreadsheet, but there are at least 71 lines,’ KC said.
She added: ‘I went back and counted and it’s 40 videos, and that’s not even the whole list.’
‘The idea of their children not working is making 40 videos, and as you can see, they are meticulously planned out, and I know some of these trends; they’re not quick to make… there will be reshoots, there will be outtakes.’
KC urged viewers to see an alternate reality behind the videos. She said: ‘If you have this idea in your head that… family vlogging channels or family influencers are just going about their authentic life and capturing things as they think about it, I want this to sear into your brain – that’s not what’s happening.’
KC Davis (pictured), a US-based professional counselor, has accused Lilly of exploiting her children
Lilly and her husband (pictured center right) treated their six children (pictured) to a Disneyland trip
KC claimed that the influencer lifestyle will have potentially damaging effects on children.
She said: ‘It is every single aspect of your life as a child having a camera put into it, being categorized, being thought about how it can be packaged.’
‘This is not ‘you did something funny, let’s get it on camera’, this is ‘ok, now everybody get into the living room because we need to do this transition, ok now do it again, reshoot it.”
She added: ‘This is mother walking into the bathroom in the morning and going, ‘well, on our list is you getting ready, so I’m going to put the camera in your face while you get ready.”
The counsellor concluded: ‘If 40 plus videos is them giving their kids time off, can you imagine how many videos families like this and other family vloggers are making their kids perform.’
KC warned others against viewing similar family-based social media channels because it’s distorts reality and is unfair to the children
‘This is the saddest thing I’ve seen in a long time,’ KC added in the caption.
The video has amassed over two million views, and many other have found issues with family-based influencers.
One said: ‘If my parents did that to me as a child after I turned 18, I would never speak to them again.’
A second added: ‘Those poor kids.’
A third wrote: ‘I cannot even imagine how these children are treated behind the scenes when they don’t cooperate.’
Social media users have shared their thoughts on KC’s video, and many agree with her outlook on family vlogging
A fourth said: ‘The amount of energy it takes to grab a few family photos is already so much — I can’t imagine this.’
Another added: ‘It’s going to be so fascinating at these kids start growing up and speaking out.’
A sixth wrote: ‘My kid doesn’t enjoy making a video for just us to have a memory of.
‘If she sees it, she’s like ‘nah please’. So, we don’t…I can’t imagine.’
Lilly has since offered a response to the criticism via Instagram. She said: ‘A very large TikTok account has made an outrageous video that has reached millions of people with truly egregious and more importantly false claims, and as a result, we are being attacked from multiple angles.
‘In the video, this creator encourages her viewers not to support family vlogging channels as they exploit their children, and then she used my face and my video as a perfect example of a family content creator that exploits her children and makes them perform.’
‘This could not be further from the truth.’
‘Anyone who follows our channel knows that we are not family vloggers and that the channel is not about my family, it’s about me. My husband is supportive and participates frequently and on occasion our kids participate as well, but this is rare.’
‘Just to paint a picture on how rare. Before this last family trip out of the last 250 videos we’ve done, only 14 include our children, asides for our oldest Maggie who’s an adult in college, and many of those were just slices of life where they were in the background.’
‘From the start our children have chosen their involvement in our channel… we absolutely do not require any of children to be in any of our videos ever.’