The dark side of travel bloggers' children

In a photo posted on Instagram, the Morrisons family of four posed cheerfully at the Mardi Gras festival in New Orleans, USA, attracting the admiration of many people.

Another photo shows the four of them sitting on a hotel sofa. Mom and Dad are clinking champagne glasses. They are all smiling for the camera. These are the images that people often see when they visit the Morrisons' personal page. They are like "secret agents" with a double life: a simple family living in the suburbs of Arizona, USA, during the week and world explorers on the weekends.

The Morrisons have their own YouTube channel, American Travel Family, with more than 11,000 followers following their trips to destinations like London, the Dominican Republic, and Disneyland.

Morrison family of four. Photo: Instagram — Morrison family of four. Photo: *Instagram*

Most people know kids who go on endless trips with their parents to all corners of the world, learning new things and leaving comments like “I’m so jealous of you guys” or “What a great trip.” But few people know that the lives of kids who are constantly taken on vacation by their parents also have a dark side.

Chris McCarty, a student at the University of Washington, launched the Quit Clicking Kids 2022 campaign to stop adults from using their children's photos and posting them on social media for money. McCarty believes children deserve privacy and are too young to make decisions about allowing their parents to post photos of them online.

Full-time travel bloggers are one of McCarty’s targets. These are parents who spend most of their time traveling with their children, documenting their lives, destinations, and family trips online. Some families travel in luxury, while others take their kids on the road in a van. These content creators are popular around the world, easily earning six to seven figures a year from advertising revenue.

This money is often used by parents to cover living expenses and save. But according to McCarty, the children also need to be divided commission and deposited into a trust account in the bank.

Little-known facts about the lives of travel bloggers' children — Children of travel bloggers often have their photos posted online by their parents. Video : *CNN*

In May 2023, the US Surgeon General's Office issued an advisory on social media and children's mental health. "There is growing evidence that social media use is associated with adverse mental health outcomes for young people. For too many children, social media use is impacting their sleep and precious face-to-face time with family and friends," said US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, the US's chief public health officer.

Stacey Steinberg, director of the Center for Children and Families at the University of Florida Levin College of Law, said parents have the right to decide what is best for their children. But Steinberg also pointed out that children appearing in family photos or videos traveling to serve their parents’ financial purposes are no different than children working on farms in previous centuries.

Brooke Morrison, the mother and YouTube host of American Travel Family, started her current job in 2020. At the time, her son Parker was 13 and her daughter McKenzie was 10. The couple set aside 15% of their earnings to put into a trust account for their daughter. Now, her daughter takes the initiative to create her own videos and enjoys being in front of the camera, so Brooke pays her a few dollars per video.

"Not every family is like ours. Many parents only see money and use their children to increase their income," Brooke said.

Caz Makepeace, who runs Y Travel Blog with her husband Craig, says she uses the family's YouTube channel to teach her two daughters about life. They pay them and teach them how to negotiate. "They hate it when I haggle with them about money. But I want to teach them that if they don't stand up for themselves, no one else will," Makepeace says.

Now that their kids are older, the Makepeaces are taking more trips just the two of them. They want their kids to have a break from creating content and diversify their videos to reach different audiences.

Anh Minh (According to CNN )

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