Nowadays, short videos of cute babies have exploded, and there are more and more accounts showing “Cute babies” as the main content on social media. However, with the increase of homogenous content, many accounts have begun to “different ways”… Some parents’ “baby drying” model has gradually become deformed, with 2-year-old children eating and broadcasting, and cute babies wearing diapers to cooking in the kitchen, etc. Patterns, related topics arouse attention.

Experts said that parents need to be more rational and objective to share and record their children’s growth process through online platforms, pay attention to protecting their children’s privacy, and guard their children’s beautiful and happy childhood. Parents can properly guide their children to show themselves, but they must grasp the degree and should not force their children to do untimely things, let alone use their children as a tool for making money.

Putting on makeup, eating and broadcasting, being tricky… the child has become a tool for making money

Recently, many minor videos have appeared on short video platforms, which is astounding. Including eating and broadcasting, dressing up beautiful makeup, interpreting plot paragraphs… In addition, there are also children walking a tightrope without protective equipment, girls with wet hair and sexy clothes, parents deliberately feeding babies with pungent food, and filming babies. Emoticons please the audience and other video content.

As early as 2020, eating and broadcasting blogger “Peggy” was fed 70 kilograms by his parents at the age of only 3, which triggered a heated discussion on the Internet. Some media reporters contacted Peggy’s parents. They said that they were not true to their doubts about allowing their children to “eat and broadcast” to make money. Although they did “earn a few hundred yuan”, the video was made purely for fun. After many netizens complained about Peggy’s EatBroad account, the relevant platform said it would ban her videos and accounts.

Is cute baby precocious? Behind it is the “careful design” of adults

The keywords of cute baby videos are no longer just “cute, simple, cute”, is it just that these children are precocious? In fact, behind the “precocious” behavior of children, there are “shadows” of adults.

From “showing baby” to “nibbling baby”, children have become the “money cow” for parents.

According to Tribune South Africa: With the explosion of cute babies, some accounts attracted tens of thousands of comments and likes, and some even gained a group of iron fans. The traffic monetization and business cooperation of “Mengwa” have brought considerable income to their parents. This has also allowed some parents to smell business opportunities and start to build their children into “Internet celebrity children” as a business to operate. Relying on children for food has become the wealth of some parents.

According to information from a data platform, an account that mainly displays two cute babies at home has a sales volume of nearly 5 million yuan in live streaming in the past 30 days. Some maternal and child parent-child accounts make money through fans swiping gifts, live broadcasts, and commercial advertising cooperation. In most of these accounts with small traffic, the contact information of “business cooperation” and “cooperate with me” will be listed. Parents who operate children’s short video accounts said that they can earn 150,000 yuan a month by relying on their babies.

According to many industry insiders, behind some seemingly warm parent-child videos is a complete business chain. The contracted company will equip the account content creators with choreographing, planning, post-shooting, business, middle and back-office teams, etc. There are a large number of “parent-child accounts” on some platforms, from account names, copywriting design to video content pipelined imitating Internet celebrity accounts, and a large number of so-called tutorials on “how to operate parent-child accounts” and “how to realize parent-child accounts”. In the comment area of ​​a tutorial video, some parents asked the so-called self-media experts for help, and the experts gave comments such as “You can’t just post daily”, “You need to set the little adult’ style”, “I think it’s useless to make the audience feel cute” and so on. , And even bluntly said that only by turning children into natural “actors” can they succeed. , Realize traffic monetization by receiving advertisements. Parents who operate children’s short video accounts said that they can earn 150,000 yuan a month by relying on their babies.

Backed by trillion-level maternal and child marketing company assembly line to incubate “net celebrity children”

According to News Websites in South Africa &  media surveys, some Internet celebrity incubators have signed contracts with their children’s parents to allow account fans to exceed one million in a short period of time. There are specific one-to-one plans from opening an account, determining “personal design” to operating promotion. Under the operation of the company, many short videos of “Internet celebrity children” have received hundreds of thousands of likes, thousands of comments from netizens, and millions of fans. These flows are the capital for advertising and commercial cooperation.

Take the rice cake mother as an example. She takes her children to do parenting science, has more than 10 million fans on the short video platform, and often carries maternal and baby products. Ahead of MCN staff revealed to Times Finance that the rice cake mother has a team of over 300 people.

The maternal and child market is huge. The “2021 Maternal and Child Industry Insight Report” released by Babytree and Nielsen shows that by 2020, the domestic maternal and child market has reached nearly 4 trillion yuan, and online channels are becoming mainstream. As of June 2021, online sales of maternal and infant products accounted for 38%.

According to the Figure data report, in the first half of this year, the popularity of TikTok maternal and child content continued to rise, with more than 7 billion likes. Accordingly, the sales scale of maternal and child products is also rising steadily. As a result, countless parents brought their babies together. Some insisted on operating their own accounts and opening e-commerce stores, and some signed MCN. A typical case of the former is Tao Qiqi, whose Douyin fans are close to 8 million.

“No company, no team, only you.” From Pi Tao Qiqi’s Douyin account, it can be seen that it specializes in outputting funny videos of cute babies at home, and has special business matching contact information. There are more than 30 recommended windows. Items, including snacks, milk, baby skincare products, etc.

At the same time, there are also many celebrities who have signed MCN. Take Hunan Fake Culture Media Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Fake Media) as an example. It focuses on incubating mothers and babies, cute babies, and parent-child masters. The official website shows more than 50 cases, including Q Bao, SASA’s Marukomei, Special Sugar, small bamboo, etc.

Frog Media announced through official channels that the company’s daily incubation team is equipped with business, choreographers, operations, pitchers, etc., so that talents can easily gain followers. The choreographer is responsible for content positioning, scripting, storytelling, etc., including line design.

On Xiaohongshu, many maternal and child MCN institutions and their leaders wrote notes to share how to increase fans and monetize, such as the notes of a company in Guangzhou, “Mengwa people are based on 0-1 operating ideas, 2000 fans can receive business “Single”, it is mentioned that Mengwaren can be planned in the initial stage of account establishment and is easy to use. It is reported that the company’s Mengwa account signing threshold is 5000 fans.

Curb the hype “net celebrity children” and protect children’s healthy childhood

In recent years, there have been constant calls for banning minors from live broadcasting and shooting short videos. The protection of minors also requires multi-party cooperation.

On November 29, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism issued the “Opinions on Strengthening the Protection of Minors in the Online Cultural Market” and pointed out that some online cultural platforms have “child cult” content and the use of “net celebrity children” for-profit and other undesirable phenomena and problems. , Has a wrong influence on the values ​​of minors and seriously hinders the healthy growth of minors.

The “Opinions” stated that it is strictly forbidden to use “Internet celebrity children” for profit. For minors appearing alone or brought by adults for more than a certain period of time and are approved to use minors to accumulate popularity and profit from live broadcast rooms or short video accounts, or use child models to pose indecent poses or make sexual suggestions Actions and other accounts that attract traffic and bring goods for profit shall be severely dealt with in accordance with the law.

The “Opinions” clarify that the responsibilities of market entities must be consolidated, including practically strengthening user identification, strictly protecting personal information, resolutely blocking harmful content, strictly prohibiting the use of “net celebrity children” for profit, effectively regulating “money rewards”, and continuously optimizing function settings; It is necessary to increase industry supervision, including efforts to standardize administrative approvals, research and improve the regulatory system, effectively unblock reporting channels, continue to strengthen inspections and enforcement, and increase credit supervision; to optimize network content construction, including enhancing positive value guidance, enriching quality Content supply; it is necessary to guide the strengthening of industry self-discipline, including actively carrying out ethical reviews and standardizing the management of network anchors.

On June 1st of this year, the newly revised Law on the Protection of Minors stipulates that no organization or individual may organize minors to perform activities that endanger their physical and mental health. Webcast service providers shall not be minors under 16 years of age. People provide webcast publisher account registration services.

In order to make a profit, “cheap the little ones”, in fact, they are “pit babies”

It is under the stimulus of realizing market demand and quick benefits that some parents regard the creation of “children’s internet celebrities” as a “shortcut” for their children and themselves to succeed, holing their minds to cater to netizens.

Little does it know that such “chewing small” means “pitting small”. Parents prematurely instill the impetuous mentality and utilitarian thinking of “shortcuts” into their children, which will not only affect the children’s physical and mental health but also convey a deformed outlook on life and form a bad value orientation in society.

On the one hand, pushing children in front of the camera and “selling cute” according to the script will overdraw their physical energy and expose their privacy, which can easily cause psychological anxiety. On the other hand, prematurely participating in business activities such as live broadcast short videos can also cause distortion of values, which can lead to successful thinking and impetuous mentality.

Behind the phenomenon of the Internet, celebrity children are that some children’s rights have been harmed. According to Zhang Xinhua, director of the Guangdong Youth and Children’s Mental Health Development Committee, children being pushed to the camera to complete the “personal setting” as required can easily cause psychological anxiety and tension. “For example, the setting of the little adult, seemingly funny, is actually ripening the child.” Some behaviors of Internet celebrity children are also easy to cause other children of the same age to imitate. In some videos, the content of showing off wealth and worshiping money, selling extravagance and ugliness to gain attention will even form a bad guide for minors.

“Some extreme cases such as requiring children to overeat or forcing them to perform intensively on the camera have been suspected of breaking the law,” said Zhang Li, a professor at the School of Civil and Commercial Law of Southwest University of Political Science and Law.

The negative impact of some online comments cannot be ignored. Some online celebrity children’s videos have violent messages in the comment section. “For children who are forced to become public figures, being criticized by netizens may harm their growth,” said Xinhua Zhang.

Yao Hua, director of the Institute of Sociology of the Guangxi Academy of Social Sciences, said: “After the phenomenon of baby drying spreads to form an industrial chain, more parents will enter the so-called industrial chain. If we all consume children in this way, it will affect society. The atmosphere produces certain adverse effects”.