For some reason, social media algorithms love dropping me off on kid influencer pages.
I’m not sure if it’s because so many of my friends have been pregnant, hosting baby showers and children’s birthday parties, but it’s been in overdrive.
One minute I’m scrolling past recipes, and the next I’m watching a toddler with puff ponytails review snacks, or a 7-year-old nailing a dance trend while her mama cheers off-camera. It’s adorable. It’s entertaining. Then I open the comments.
That’s where the cute ends. Strangers are critiquing little girls. Grown men (or bots) leave heart-eye emojis under bath-time clips. People with no business in a child’s life post like they’re family. Now add artificial intelligence to the mix, and the danger is bigger than creepy comments.
Today, someone with a free app can take an innocent photo of a child and turn it into something sexual. No hacking required. No contact with the child. Just a clear picture, and kid influencer accounts post thousands of them.
The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, the nation’s clearinghouse for reports of child exploitation, received more than 400,000 reports tied to generative AI last year alone. That’s more than 1,000 reports a day.
And the audience for these accounts isn’t who many parents think it is. When The New York Times investigated parent-run accounts for young girls in 2024, reporters found that the following were dominated by adult men. Some paid for extra photos. Some sent messages that should have sent any parent running. Worse, those big followings made the accounts more attractive to brands, so the cycle kept feeding itself.
Research from Georgetown Law has shown that adults tend to see Black girls as older and less innocent than white girls, starting as young as age 5. Put a Black child on a public page, and that bias follows her straight into the comment section.
Texas did make it a felony to possess or share AI-generated sexual images that appear to depict a child, and it’s already being used. In May, Texas Department of Public Safety agents arrested a man accused of possessing hundreds of AI-generated images involving children. That matters. But a law that punishes predators after the damage is done can’t pull a child’s face back off the internet.
There’s also the stuff we don’t think about until years later. A birthday post, a first-day-of-school photo in front of the house, a shout-out to the child’s school. Put those pieces together, and you’ve handed a scammer what they need to steal your child’s identity long before that child is old enough to check a credit report.
And through all of it, the child never got a say. A baby can’t agree to have a tantrum go viral. A 9-year-old doesn’t understand that a video posted today could follow her to college applications and job interviews.
I’m not here to shame anybody. Many of us post because we’re proud, because our village now lives online, and because some families earn real money from it. I get it. But pride and a paycheck don’t erase the risk.
So here’s the ask. Make your accounts private. Share with a close friend’s list instead of the whole world. Leave out school names, uniforms, and anything that shows where you live. Skip the bath-time, swimsuit, and dance recital posts. Read your comments, and block without apology.
It’s not easy to stop feeding the machine. Every like, share, and comment tells the algorithm to serve up more children.
