Middle Schooler Wants to Delete Mom’s YouTube Channel After Feeling ‘Exposed' from Having Her Life Documented Online

• A middle schooler says her mom has been vlogging their lives for two years, and she wants her to stop
• The mom has filmed her without hiding her face or disguising her voice and the teen says her friends are starting to tease her about it
• Now she wants to take down her mom's YouTube channel without telling her and is asking the Internet for their thoughts

A young girl says her mom is exposing her online, and she wants it to stop.

The middle schooler wrote on Reddit's "Am I The A------?" forum that she wants to delete her mom's YouTube channel, but she's scared of the ramifications. She says that ever since she started middle school about two years ago, her mom has had been a YouTube vlogger.

"My mom would record or try to record at every single time she possibly could. This meant school events, after school classes, extracurriculars, the car, vacations, me studying or doing work, cooking, literally just being at home, you name it. She also recorded me going to urgent care for strep throat for some absolutely absurd reason," the girl wrote.

To make matters worse, she says that her mom blurs out other family members' faces or censors their voices, but she doesn't for her daughter, meaning that she's getting recognized at school.

She wrote, "And the worst thing? No one in her comments or any of her subscribers had a problem with a prepubescent middle schooler being exposed to the dangers of the Internet with absolutely no privacy in her daily life. In fact, the videos with my uncensored face and voice in it got MORE VIEWS than the videos that didn't."

The original poster (OP) shared that she wants to take the channel down altogether behind her mom's back.

On Reddit, people in the comments rallied around the young girl. They offered advice, like to report the videos and have them taken down. "If the channel features your face (without your permission), you have every right to delete those clips featuring you. Maybe don't delete the channel itself, but you are justified in deleting your image clips from that channel," someone wrote. The girl responded that the issue is that every single video has her in it.

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The teen told people, "I’ve tried reporting her channel and videos tons of times, but either YouTube doesn’t take it seriously or just takes forever to actually process the report. Also all my friends do is joke about how I’m famous (my mom has 300 subscribers)," she complained. While many suggested that she take legal action, some people had more practical advice for the teen.

"Every time she films you, just keep saying, 'I don't consent to being filmed,' over and over. Ruin every single shot you are in," they said. Or, they suggested that she play copyrighted music so that the video platform takes the videos down itself and the girl doesn't have to confront her mom.

She responded, "Smart idea."

Several states have put legal precautions in place to protect "child influencers" and underage content creators in recent years.

Illinois passed a law in August 2023 requiring parents to compensate child influencers, becoming the first state to do so.

In September 2024, California passed a law protecting the finances of child influencers with the backing of former Disney star Demi Lovato. The new law built off the Jackie Coogan Law, which required parents put 15% of a child actor's earnings into a trust for the child to access after they turn 18. The new law included child content creators under that jurisdiction.

Minnesota modeled its own trust fund program after California's and added a stipulation that if children appear in at least 30% of a content creator's content, records must be kept on the minor's participation and financial compensation. The bill also allowed minors featured to request that content with their likeness be deleted anytime after they turn 13, per the Minnesota House of Representatives website.