Jennifer Valentino-DeVries and Michael H. Keller posted for the New York Times:
“A Marketplace of Girl Influencers Managed by Moms and Stalked by Men:
Seeking social media stardom [i.e., money] for their underage daughters, mothers post [risqué] images of them on Instagram. The accounts draw men sexually attracted to children, and they sometimes pay to see more [i.e., the mothers accept money to show more of their daughters].” (Feb. 22, 2024)
Per, Valentino-DeVries and Keller, Elissa began posting photos of her 11-year-old daughter on Instagram in 2020. Consequently, Elissa’s daughter has over 100,000 followers. Some of whom subscribe for $9.99 per month for exclusive content. Other nymphets obtain goods and money via Amazon and CashApp. While others earn: “[...] shopping sprees, gifts like iPhones and iPads, and cash.”
Elissa has been running her daughter’s Instagram account since 2020, when the girl was 11 and too young to have her own. Photos show a bright, bubbly girl modeling [...] She has more than 100,000 followers, some so enthusiastic about her posts that they pay $9.99 a month for more photos.
Some girls on Instagram use their social media clout to get little more than clothing discounts; others receive gifts from Amazon wish lists, or money through Cash App; and still others earn thousands of dollars a month by selling subscriptions with exclusive content.
In addition to photos, some parents sell “exclusive chat sessions” with their daughters. And they sell their daughter’s “worn leotards and cheer outfits”. Interestingly, Valentino-DeVries and Keller wrote that the buyers, some of whom spend thousands on nymphets, are “mostly unknown followers”. Does that mean that some of the buyers are friends of the family?
Some parents are the driving force behind the sale of photos, exclusive chat sessions and even the girls’ worn leotards and cheer outfits to mostly unknown followers. The most devoted customers spend thousands of dollars nurturing the underage relationships.
In addition to money from men, moms and daughters can earn more money and free products from brands. And more followers (i.e., men), can mean more money and free products. And via Instagram’s algorithm, more followers (i.e., men) can lead to even more followers (i.e., men). #feedbackloop
The large audiences boosted by men can benefit the families, The Times found. The bigger followings look impressive to brands and bolster chances of getting discounts, products and other financial incentives, and the accounts themselves are rewarded by Instagram’s algorithm with greater visibility on the platform, which in turn attracts more followers.
Should we be surprised that, per Valentino-DeVries and Keller, approximately 33% of preteen nymphets desire to be influencers, when the: “[...] creator economy surpasses $250 billion worldwide, according to Goldman Sachs, with U.S. brands spending more than $5 billion a year on influencers.” And: “Some of the child influencers earn six-figure incomes, according to interviews.”
Consequently, due to the large sums of money, some parents can’t stop exploiting their daughters on social media (e.g., “[...] girls in skimpy bikinis whose parents actively encourage male admirers and sell them special photo sets.”)
“I really don’t want my child exploited on the internet,” said Kaelyn, a mother in Melbourne, Australia [...]
“But she’s been doing this so long now,” she said. “Her numbers are so big. What do we do? Just stop it and walk away?”
Valentino-DeVries and Keller related that parents shared that: “[...] their children enjoyed being on social media or that it was important for a future career.” However, some nymphets, like 17-year-old Kaelyn, whose “childhood [was] spent sporting bikinis online for adult men”, may feel that the logical next step in their young careers is to make (teen) OnlyFans account like Sami Sheen - the daughter of Denise Richards and Charlie Sheen.
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| DragonWing | NYFW 2024 |
The moms, daughters and their men are not the only benefactors from this industry. Brands and accounts like LA Dance Designs, DragonWing*, and Original Hippie benefit financially from nubile nymphets as well.
In the dance and gymnastics worlds, teens and preteens jockey to become brand ambassadors for products and apparel. They don bikinis in Instagram posts, walk runways in youth fashion shows and offer paid subscriptions to videos [...]
For many of them, child influencers have become “walking advertising,” supplanting traditional ad campaigns, said Kinsey Pastore, head of marketing for LA Dance Designs, a children’s dance wear company in South Florida.
How much can a nymphet (and her mother) make from a brand for a (suggestive) Instagram post? “The most successful girls can demand $3,000 from their sponsors for a single post on Instagram.”
And how much can a nymphet (and her mother) charge for an Instagram subscription that comes with: “[...] ask me anything” chat sessions and behind-the-scenes photos.”
In 2022, Instagram launched paid subscriptions, which allows followers to pay a monthly fee for exclusive content and access. The rules don’t allow subscriptions for anyone under 18, but the mom-run accounts sidestep that restriction. The Times found dozens that charged from 99 cents to $19.99. At the highest price, parents offered “ask me anything” chat sessions and behind-the-scenes photos.
Instagram’s $19.99 subscription fee is quarters compared to the $250 “Elite VIP” subscription fee some moms charge and the “$14,000 in subscription revenue” some teens earn on Brand Army’s “junior channel”.
“Message me anytime. You will have more opportunities for buying and receiving super exclusive content😘,” read a description for a $25 subscription to a [Brand Army] minor’s account. For $100 a month, subscribers can get “live interactive video chats,” unlimited direct messages and a mention on the girl’s Instagram story.
The Times subscribed to several accounts to glean what content is being offered and how much money is being made. On one account, 141 subscribers liked a photo only available to those who paid $100 monthly, indicating over $14,000 in subscription revenue.
And what are men getting for spending hundreds of dollars to subscribe to a 17-year-old’s Brand Army “junior channel”?
Some of the descriptions also highlight the revealing nature of photos. One account for a child around 14 years old encouraged new sign-ups at the end of last year by branding the days between Christmas and New Year’s as “Bikini Week.” An account for a 17-year-old girl advertised that she wasn’t wearing underwear in a workout photo set and, as a result, the images were “uh … a lot spicier than usual.”
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| Original Hippie |
Interestingly, Valentino-DeVries and Keller wrote that a large number of accounts with over: “[...] 100,000 followers had a male audience of over 75 percent, and a few of them over 90 percent, the analysis showed.” Consequently, Dean Stockton, the owner of Original Hippie, stopped deleting the male followers of Original Hippie’s Instragam account as it became a sisyphean effort, but most importantly Stockton’s male followers are very important to Original Hippie’s positioning on Instagram.
Dean Stockton, who runs a small clothing company in Florida called Original Hippie, often features girls from the Instagram accounts, who earn a commission when customers use personalized discount codes. After initially deleting many male followers, he now sees them as a way to grow the account and give it a wider audience because the platform rewards large followings.
“The Bible says, ‘The wealth of the wicked is laid up for the righteous,’” he said. “So sometimes you got to use the things of this world to get you to where you need to be, as long as it’s not harming anybody.”
Grippingly, Valentino-DeVries and Keller used the word pedophiles nine (9) times in their piece; however, per the clinical definition of pedophilia as related in the documentary Are All Men Pedophiles? (2013), Valentino-DeVries and Keller, like most humans, used the word incorrectly:
As I related previously, there’s a difference between the general public term for pedophilia and the technical professional term of pedophilia. The public’s definition is associated with someone who is sexually attracted to girls under the age of 18; however, the clinical definition of pedophilia is:
A sexual preference for pre-pubertal or early pubertal children
For six months or more the person has acted on those urges or suffers from distress as a result of having the urges
And the individual must be at least 16-years-old and at least five years older than the subject of desire
Thus, arguably, Valentino-DeVries and Keller should have used ephebophiles or hebephiles in reference to the men from whom moms and daughters willfully accepted Amazon wish list times, CashApp deposits, shopping sprees, iPhones and iPads.
Of course, the New York Times isn’t the first outlet to report on this phenomenon. For example, we related that Olivia Carville posted on BloombergBusinessweek “TikTok’s Problem Child Has 7 Million Followers and One Proud Mom: Young creators like Jenny Popach are posting suggestively sexual content, sometimes with parental approval, leaving moderators and executives unsure what to do.”
And, of course, even before the advent of social media, parents used their children to earn goods and money. For example, we related that Demi Moore shared in Inside Out, her memoir, that when she was 15, her alcoholic mother paraded her in bars. Consequently, unable to resist the allure of a nymphet, an approximately 48-year-old wealthy Greek man paid Demi's mother $500 for sex with the future actress. And I wrote about a New York Daily News story about a mother whom was arrested in 2014 for (allegedly) traveling from Florida to New York City to prostitute her 15-year-old daughter during Super Bowl XLVIII.
Lastly, Valentino-DeVries and Keller’s piece is about social media accounts run by moms for their daughters, but we previously wrote about salacious social media accounts run by daughters without their mother’s consent. For example, we shared that Alexandra S. Levine posted on Forbes "How TikTok Live Became ‘A Strip Club Filled With 15-Year-Olds’" (Apr 27, 2022) with the intro\kicker: "Livestreams on the social media app are a popular place for men to lurk and for young girls — enticed by money and gifts — to perform sexually suggestive acts.”
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