Breanna, nine, wants to be a YouTuber when she grows up.
On Saturday, September 6 at 6:30am, she joined thousands of tweens and their parents who lined up inside the parking garage of American Dream Mall in East Rutherford, New Jersey, as they eagerly waited to meet 15-year-old YouTube sensation Salish Matter.
Salish, along with her father Jordan Matter, has a whopping 32 million subscribers on her dad’s YouTube channel. Their video content is largely catered to kids – with 30-minute episodes each centered on some outrageous challenge or prank, and clickbait titles like ‘My Daughter’s Secret Crush’ and ‘My Daughter Becomes School Principal for 24 Hours.’
That Saturday, Salish launched her own exclusive skincare line with Sephora, called Sincerely Yours.
To celebrate the launch, they hosted a free one-day pop-up shop inside American Dream Mall. The first 100 lucky fans in line would either receive a limited-edition Sincerely Yours sweatshirt or get the chance to meet Salish.
Little did the organizers know, however, that the meet-and-greet would ultimately attract an estimated 87,000 children attendees spread across three levels of the second-largest mall in America.
Salish Matter, 15, attracted more than 80,000 people to American Dream Mall in New Jersey on September 6 for the launch of her exclusive Sephora collection
The event, which kicked off at 10am and was supposed to last until 6pm, encouraged fans to line up as early as 6am for limited-edition merchandise and giveaways. State police shut down the event at 3pm over safety concerns
In videos from the event obtained by the Daily Mail, fans were seen pushing against barricades, leaning on glass partitions and sitting on their parents’ shoulders to get a better view of their favorite content creator.
The event, which kicked off at 10am and was supposed to last until 6pm, encouraged fans to line up as early as 6am for limited-edition merchandise and giveaways.
A spokesperson for American Dream Mall told the Daily Mail, ‘Although the massive attendance did impact the original schedule, Salish was still able to connect with many of her fans in person and through her on-stage performance.’
But the unexpected turnout meant that some children – like Breanna, whose mother Eileen spoke to the Daily Mail – were waiting upwards of 12 hours to meet Salish, which never happened.
At just 15 years old, Salish – with the help of her photographer dad, who began featuring Salish on his YouTube channel in 2010 – has already attracted the star power and fanbase of an A-list celebrity.
But she’s not the first teen content creator to land a major brand deal, millions of subscribers, and the adoration of adolescent boys and girls with access to social media – and she definitely won’t be the last.
‘Kidfluencers,’ the name given to children content creators under 18, have taken over the internet.
In an era increasingly dominated by social media, kidfluencers have become the new age of entertainers – whether it’s through 30-minute prank videos, ‘get ready with me’ style vlogs, or being featured in content made by their influencer parents.
At 15 years old, Salish – with the help of her photographer dad, who began featuring Salish on his YouTube channel in 2010 – has already attracted the star power and religious fanbase of an A-list celebrity
‘A kidfluencer is anyone under the age of 18 who goes onto a social media platform and promotes products or services, either organically or paid, and influences – whether it’s their five best friends or five million followers – to buy a product or take an action,’ said Titania Jordan, a child safety advocate and the chief marketing officer of Bark Technologies, a parental control app.
YouTube, which launched in 2005, allowed for ‘family vlogging’ – when content creators document their daily routines, typically with their children as a focal point – to really take off.
Idaho father Shay Butler rose to fame on the platform when he began uploading videos of his children in 2008 on his ‘Shaytards’ YouTube channel, which currently has over four million subscribers.
Ryan Kaji, 13, has been developing his online fanbase since 2015, when he was four years old. His toy-unboxing YouTube channel Ryan’s World, which has nearly 40 million subscribers, has made Ryan the richest tween on the internet, with an estimated net worth of $35 million.
Ryan’s YouTube fame has also spawned his own toy line, which has generated an estimated $1 billion, according to Forbes, and his own 90-minute feature film, which streams on Hulu.
An entire generation of content creators, and their children, have been exposed to the internet for nearly the last two decades. That’s perhaps the reason why we’ve already begun to see some of the negative effects that can come with having your entire adolescence documented online.
Piper Rockelle, a YouTube star who turned 18 in August, was recently the subject of a chilling Netflix docuseries titled Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing. The documentary focuses on the alleged dark side of The Squad, a gang of kid content creators based in Los Angeles, as they made allegations of verbal and sexual abuse against Piper’s ‘momager’, Tiffany Smith.
Smith denies all allegations against her, while Piper does not speak in the documentary and has only made cryptic remarks about its release.
Ryan Kaji, now 13, has been developing an online fanbase since he was four years old. Today he’s worth an estimated $35 million, according to Forbes. Seen with his parents Loann Kaji and Shion Kaji in 2020
Piper Rockelle, a YouTube star who turned 18 in August, was recently the subject of the Netflix docuseries Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing. Piper does not speak in the documentary and has only made cryptic remarks about its release
In August 2023, mommy vlogger Ruby Franke was arrested in Utah after the YouTuber’s 12-year-old son escaped and ran to a neighbor’s home to raise the alarm about their treatment, living in what prosecutors have described as a ‘concentration camp-like setting’.
Franke, who chronicled her family’s typical Mormon life under the YouTube channel 8 Passengers, was sentenced to up to 30 years in prison in February – alongside her business partner Jodi Hildebrandt – for brutally abusing two of her own children.
The disgraced vlogger had amassed more than two million subscribers before her arrest. Her eldest daughter, Shari Franke, has since published a New York Times bestselling memoir about growing up on-camera. A self-described ‘victim of family vlogging,’ she continues to advocate for legislation to protect child influencers.
Ruthy, a food content creator based in New York City, said she felt ‘icky’ when she included her two young children, now aged nine and 11, in her first influencer campaign.
‘It just never felt okay that I had gotten paid for something that they were in,’ she told the Daily Mail.
She recalled how strangers in her neighborhood began to recognize her daughter and son on the street from her online videos, which made her feel even more ‘uncomfortable.’
‘The more I thought about it, the more I didn’t like their faces being online,’ Ruthy said. She decided in 2020 to completely remove her kids from her content.
For some parents, the decision to erase their children from their online presence is a difficult one; after all, kidfluencing has proven to be quite lucrative.
Mormon family vlogger Ruby Franke, who had over two million subscribers on YouTube, was sentenced to up to 30 years in prison in February for abusing her two children
Pictured in 2020: YouTube’s ‘The Squad’ are just some of the ‘kidfluencers’ making online content while under the age of 18
While each social media platform has its own way of compensating creators, the amount of money that a child can rake in typically depends on how many followers or online engagement they have.
A kidfluencer with a smaller following can charge about $600 per post, but a child with at least one million followers could earn as much as $10,000 per sponsored post.
The FishFam is a popular YouTube channel known for its family-style vlog posts and run by parents Madison and Kyler Fisher. The channel, which has over four million subscribers, largely features nine-year-old twins Taytum and Oakley Fisher.
In a 2019 CBS documentary, Madison and Kyler revealed that completing three to four brand deals in one month brought in over $150,000 for the family. When asked about setting aside the money that the twins earned themselves, dad Kyler acknowledged they do have a savings account for their children, yet retorted: ‘Who gets to decide who does the work? My girls are in a picture and that qualifies as work?’
Child safety advocate Jordan admitted that ‘the sky’s the limit’ as to how much a kid can earn from social media influencing.
‘The more followers you have, the more engagement you have, the more views your content gets, the longer the watch time and the more money you can make,’ she said. ‘There are a lot of kidfluencers out there who are raking in thousands, tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars each month.’
As such, lawmakers have begun to create legal protections for these kidfluencers by regulating exactly how much parents can earn off their children’s online content.
The California Child Actor’s Bill, also known as Coogan’s Law, was enacted in 1939 and initially only applied to actors under the age of 18. The law requires that 15 percent of a child’s earnings be placed into a trust that they can access once they turn 18.
After the pop-up ended three hours early, Salish thanked her fans for coming and said state police shut down the event due to safety concerns
In November 2024, that law was extended to child influencers.
Today, California, Illinois, Minnesota and Utah have all passed legislation that protects children involved in online, monetized content creation, with similar legislation passed in New York.
Following the launch of Salish’s new Sincerely Yours skincare line, all products at Sephora reportedly sold out within one hour after they dropped online.
The 15-year-old YouTuber addressed the chaos at American Dream Mall on her Instagram page, thanking all her fans who showed up for the pop-up event. She said she was told by state police that they had to shut down the event three hours early due to safety concerns.
‘I was so excited to meet all of you guys but the police told me that it would be unsafe for me to go out and talk to you guys, because they were worried about somebody getting hurt and I didn’t want anybody to get hurt. So for that reason, they told me to leave to keep everybody safe,’ Salish said in the video.
While Eileen’s daughter Breanna was ‘so upset’ she didn’t get to meet Salish that day, it won’t stop her from following her dreams of being a YouTuber like Salish.
‘That kind of worries me because I think, what if she ever did become big like that? I don’t think I can handle that and it’s dangerous,’ Eileen told the Daily Mail.
‘But all these kids now want to be YouTubers.’
The Daily Mail has contacted Salish and Jordan Matter for comment.
