Who Owns a Child Influencer’s Earnings? Re-Examining the Coogan Law in the Age of Social Media

A six-year-old records her daily life, school mornings, skincare tutorials, a day in my life reels, and earns up to 30 million a year in advertising revenue. A TikTok prankster who is only eight years old is signing six-figure sponsorship contracts, even though he cannot even sign his own name. These videos can generate substantial revenue, yet in many jurisdictions, the child has no automatic legal right to the income their labour produces. Child exploitation has been a long standing issue as evidenced in the1938 case of Jackie Coogan, where California passed a groundbreaking law after child actor  he discovered that his parents had squandered his $4 million earnings. The legislation mandated that a portion of a child performer’s income be placed in protected trust accounts, insulated from creditors’ claims. Almost a century later, when children are making more money than ever before through and on social media, a disturbing question arises: do these protections of the Depression era apply to the most vulnerable workers of the digital era, or have we created a legal loophole that allows the systematic financial exploitation of millions of child influencers?

I.              Coogan Law Framework: The Basics of Protection and Its Restrictions.

The California Child Actor Bill set three fundamental safeguards: mandatory set-offs of 15 per cent of gross earnings to blocked trust accounts; work permits to guarantee educational standards; and contracts that had to be approved by the court to prevent unconscionable terms. The law was based on the definite employment relationship studios employed child actors, production companies paid them wages, and labour could be objectively measured and controlled. Nevertheless, the statutory wording reveals a severe limitation: these legislations define the term' child performer' in terms of conventional entertainment forms. Family Code Section 6750 of California defines artistic or creative services provided in motion pictures, television, recording or photography productions. Section 6750, therefore, functions as a definitional threshold: only children who offer services in the four industries specifically listed are considered child performers and are entitled to statutory protection. The definition is not illustrative but exhaustive, and any creative labour that does not fit into these categories is not addressed at all. The definitional issue becomes evident when applied to the creation of social media content. This is not only a technical gap, but a pertinent issue to be addressed. The child who makes advertising money by creating content daily on YouTube or TikTok is economically identical to a child actor, but is not afforded any such legal protection, no earnings protection, no hour restrictions, no financial rights, simply because the platform is not listed in the categories of the statute. A child recording a video for YouTube at home is not engaged in a production, in the classic sense since there is no studio, no crew and no third-party employer. The parents take on multiple roles as the creative directors, producers, managers and also the primary financial beneficiaries. This vertical integration questions the very basis of the employment assumptions on which the Coogan Law protections are based. In addition, current laws include exemptions that may inadvertently exclude social media work. These include the family business exemption, where parental-operated channels are regarded as informal domestic arrangements; the non-existence of a third-party employment relationship; and casual labour exemptions, which apply in situations where content creation is more of a hobby than a trade. Numerous jurisdictions exempt casual employment or work done in the parent's business. In the case of parents running a family YouTube channel as an LLC, the pressing question is whether the child performer exemption continues to apply or whether the parents' business exception swallows the rule? In situations where parents are running a family YouTube channel in LLC, it is not clear in law whether the child performer exemption still applies or it is practically replaced by the business exception of the parents.

II.            State-by-State Legislative Response: Innovation, Inertia, and Inadequacy

By early 2026 , just four states had passed laws specifically concerning child influencer protection and 16 of them expanded protection for child performers under existing laws . Illinois was the first state to impose earnings protections in 2024 with Senate Bill 1782, which mandates that children who are the subject of at least 30 per cent of monetised content receive proportional compensation deposited into trust accounts. Although commendable, the law is limited to Illinois residents, which forms an incentive to relocate. The 30 per cent mark is arbitrary and can be easily doctored. The enforcement mechanisms are unclear, with children expected to petition the courts once they attain majority. In 2023, Washington State enacted a similar law, but restricted protections to children under 16 who feature in "vlogs." This creates unnatural differences: a child in family vlogs is protected, whereas the same child in Instagram Reels might not be. California did not cover social media influencers under Coogan Law until 2024, when the definition of "regularly" was raised to more than 10 per cent of content in 30 days, creating incentives to rotate children or prolong production times. In addition to the laws enacted, both New Jersey and New York have gone further and moved bills out of their respective houses, New Jersey in the General Assembly and New York in the Senate though neither has been signed into law, an indication of a developing legislative consensus that the current protections are ineffective.

More importantly, 46 states have not enacted any specific safeguards for child social media performers. In such jurisdictions, children who earn millions of dollars have less legal protection than those who work minimum-wage jobs.

III.          Critical Gaps: Why Current Frameworks are Ineffective on Child Influencers

The inherent weakness of existing protective systems stems from four key gaps.  To start with, conventional child performers perform on a contractual basis with third-party employers and with the court's permission. Child influencers do not have a third-party employer to verify parental authority. Parents make unilateral decisions regarding what to produce and how to divide the income. This constitutes domestic commercial exploitation, parents using parental power to obtain labour out of children who are not capable of making any meaningful consent, and no one is watching.

Second, child actors act in scripts; child influencers act as themselves. Their true character, relations and growth are forever on the record. The existing systems emphasise financial safeguards without considering deep privacy and dignified harms. No jurisdiction grants children retroactive rights to content removal when they become adults. The new legal phenomenon of sharenting is not well-known in formal law. Sharenting, the act of parents posting the personal information of children online without their consent, has significant consequences for privacy rights, online identity, and financial abuse, but has not been adequately addressed by current laws, leaving an unaddressed vacuum.

Third, the creation of social media content does not conform to the conventional jurisdiction analysis. A Georgia family shoots a video, uploads it to servers in California, is viewed by audiences around the world, and is paid by a platform headquartered in Delaware. The borderless nature of the platform economy provides regulatory arbitrage opportunities. The platforms are not liable, YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram are not legally responsible for ensuring that child performers receive fair compensation.

Fourth, there is practically no enforcement mechanism. The three states that have protections are based on the fact that, once the child reaches the age of 18, they will find that the parents did not set aside the necessary earnings, did not have sufficient evidence, and did not have the financial means or emotional ability to sue their own parents. All financial records and platform analytics are under the control of parents. No state has established an active regulatory body to monitor compliance.

IV.          Towards Comprehensive Protection: A Framework of Reform

To protect effectively, it is necessary to leave the Coogan Law system of employment behind and fully regulate it. Instead of leaving the enforcement to victimised children themselves, the legislation ought to place the responsibility on the platforms. YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram may be obligated to detect accounts of minors in monetised content, confirm that earnings set-asides are in place before monetisation, and remit a statutory percentage of revenue directly to court-supervised trust accounts. Sophisticated systems to detect copyrighted content and harmful material are already in place on platforms. It is technologically possible to have similar systems to protect child performers. Child influencer content is highly lucrative for platforms, so it is not unreasonable for them to provide basic protections.

Financial safeguards are not enough. The laws should give the children affirmative rights to privacy, such as the right to remove content, which can be exercised as soon as they reach the age of majority, and a ban on the monetisation of content that describes intimate situations. The patchwork system of state-by-state is simply incompatible with the borderless nature of digital content. Federal laws that create minimum protections would avoid regulatory arbitrage.  Monetary protection is not enough. Children should be granted positive rights to privacy, such as the right to delete content upon reaching majority age, and rights against the commercialisation of intimate content. Federal minimum standards are required to seal the gaps that allow child digital performers to be commercially exploited and remain legally invisible.

The existing legal system is a significant failure.  We permit parents to commercialise the whole childhood of a child less than we would a teenager who goes to work in summer. In the case of the wasted income of Jackie Coogan, in 1938, when his parents squandered his income, the outrage of society was enough to create a new law-making legislation, which showed that society, when faced with the exploitation of a child actor, had the moral clarity and the legislative ability to act. Millions of child influencers are still exploited today in the same way; their photos are monetised, their income is not secured, and their privacy is given away, but our laws are still ineffective and disjointed. Coogan Law was created out of political desire. It is not whether child influencers should be afforded the same protection that the tragedy of Jackie Coogan won almost a century ago; they obviously should. The issue is whether we will all willingly extend it.

Author: Ananya Sharma is a second year B.A. LLB. Student at Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya National Law University (RMNLU)

Editor: Khushi Patel