By Lawson Vaughan

On August 30, 2023 former YouTube creator Ruby Franke was arrested in Utah for the suspicion of abuse and neglect to her children outside the house of her business partner Jodi Hildebrandt. One of her eight children, Russel, age 12, had run over to neighbors with duct tape around his ankles, open wounds, and signs of malnourishment, yet all he asked for was food and water. The police investigated the house from which the child had fled and found another child in serious condition. Both children were taken to the hospital. 

The mother of these children, Franke, is a 41-year-old who began creating YouTube videos of her children in 2015. Since then, she has vlogged the lives of her children on her family’s channel, including the good, the bad, and the messy aspects of her family’s life. Like many of the family vlogging channels that arose in the late 2010s, ”8 Passengers” featured new drama with every upload. Whether it was a hectic back-to-school shopping experience, flooding in their basement, or one of the kids was sick, there was always some drama in the family Franke would vlog about. It was hard to determine which parts of their lives were on camera and which parts of their lives were left to their own privacy.

The Franke children. Photo credit: @Sharifranke on Instagram.

Starting in 2020, the channel attracted controversy, as some of Franke’s parenting techniques began to be questioned by her YouTube audience. She sent her oldest son Chad to a wilderness survival camp, because he was not acting like the young man she wanted him to be. She took away Chad’s bed after he pulled a prank on his brother Russel, forcing him to sleep on a bean bag for seven months.  Franke also filmed herself refusing to bring her youngest child Eve her lunch to school, because she had forgotten to make it. Eve was only six when this happened. 

In 2022, Franke deleted her channel, and now all of the videos have been taken offline. There are, however, compilations of some of her vlogs still online. After the deletion of her channel, Franke started to give life advice with co-host Hildebrandt on their exclusive facebook group called “Moms of Truth,” where they gave parenting advice. Both Hildebrandt and Franke were arrested on six felony accounts of child abuse in August.

Ruby Franke in court hearing. Photo credit: Court TV.

Ruby Franke’s story shows how easy it is to vlog the lives of children online, and make your life seem perfect, when in reality it is far from it. Many online content creators create “online personas” to differentiate their online personality to their actual personality. Personas are used by different kinds of YouTubers, like gamers and artists. But the purpose of vlogging channels is the absence of that separation, which can get tricky when it comes to families vlogging. Those in charge of what is posted online are the parents, yet most of what is posted is all the drama in their kids’ lives. Like seen in the “8 Passengers” vlog, the vlogs will benefit from showing the hectic lives of their children.

Franke wouldn’t hide the embarrassment that her children felt from being vlogged about and often would vlog them describing their negative thoughts and emotions. When talking to her oldest son Chad and her second oldest daughter Abby, the children explained that because of the life they live, being exposed online, they have no friends. These older kids highlighted the negative effects of having your whole life online. 

Viewers may wonder: Is this amount of vlogging legal? A normal family vlog channel that is up and running, such as “The Norris Nuts” or “The LaBrant Fam,” will post anywhere from 2-3 times a month to 1-2 times a week on YouTube. In addition, channels may post almost daily videos or photos of the children on TikTok and other social media platforms. When thinking about the work weeks of these children, it can be confusing to understand how much they truly work. 

Child labor laws, such as those that apply to Disney or other entertainment companies that employ child actors, are very restricted for each age. For child labor laws that corporations must follow, most ages don’t work over nine hours and are only on a production set for about five hours, meaning they can only be filmed up to five hours a day, unlike the lives of the children on family vloggers. If you view a vlog, you’re watching the child’s whole day. That means that the child has been filmed all day.

The Labrant Family. Photo credit: @sav.labrant on Instagram.

The trend of exploitation is seen in the lives of the channel “The LaBrant Fam” on a less extreme scale than “8 Passengers.” They are a YouTuber family who have been making content since around 2016. Their content is mostly family vlogs or skits of their lives. The kids—Everleigh (age 11), Posie (age 5), Zealand (age 3), and Sunday (age 1)—are all featured on their multiple social media accounts. The LaBrant Fam first started to grow their popularity from their father Cole Labrant, who was a Vine personality before the video app shut down in 2016. Cole and his future wife, Sav, started dating a few years later and would eventually make their own channel. Savannah Labrant, Cole’s girlfriend, already had a daughter from a previous relationship. And Cole found that when he featured Everleigh in videos on his YouTube channel, his views would skyrocket. His most popular video from 2017, and still his most-viewed video, is “4 YEAR OLD GIRL AND DADDY DO CUTEST CARPOOL KARAOKE EVER!!!.” 

Since then, the channel has continued to feature Everleigh, their first daughter, in almost every video, even footage of her when she’s sick in bed or at her doctor’s appointments. Almost every moment of her life has been filmed and shared on YouTube, during their peak viewership. Beyond the exploitation of Everleigh’s day-to-day life, the Labrants have attracted criticism the past few years for some of the actions towards their kids. The first time they garnered controversy was in 2019, when they played an April Fools prank on Everleigh, age seven at the time, a little too far. Cole and Savannah pranked Everleigh that they would be giving their dog away, causing Everleigh to cry and become very emotional. In the video, you can see the sadness, and she even puts her face on the couch next to her, probably trying to hide her emotions in front of the camera her parents have just shoved in her face. The Labrants eventually tell her it is all an April Fools prank, but Everleigh doesn’t really react, and she is left quite speechless. 

In a report on this incident, Inside Edition had clinical psychologist Dr. Azmaira Maker speak on the effects of trust this prank may have on a child, more especially while being filmed. A prank like this can leave Everleigh with a sense of inability to trust the world and her parents, for she was given a false sense of insecurity, all while being filmed. The effects of child exploitation can go beyond just embarrassment but can affect the child psychologically. 

One of the LaBrants’ most recent controversies, around a year ago, was taking their oldest out of school to be a “second set of hands when the new baby comes,” according to the mother, Savannah, in a video. Titled “We have to make a big decision with Everleigh..,” the video shows couple talking about how Everleigh is a very social child and loves to go to school, but her dance life and life online have taken a toll on how many days she can attend at school. Everleigh being homeschooled now has given the LaBrants the opportunity to even film her while she is “at school.” In the past year, they have made multiple videos of the children doing homeschool activities in videos such as “Everleigh’s First Day Of HomeSchool,” which blurs the boundary between life and work for the kids. 

The use of kids’ emotions for views is a common tactic for family vloggers, and it is quite common to use thumbnails of the children crying to gain more views. A lesser known YouTuber named Jordan Cheyenne made a video where they had found out that their new dog had contracted parvovirus , and her child had begun to cry in fear that the dog didn’t have much time left to live. Cheyenne saw her son crying and decided it was the perfect time to snap the perfect thumbnail. She even tells her son in the video to “Act Like You’re Crying.” The reason this was caught on camera was because she forgot to edit out the part of the video where they made the thumbnail. Her viewers were outraged, and she responded that she was “disgusted and horrified,” and from now on she would be “completely offline, canceling all videos and monetization, and prioritizing my child.”

Exploitation of children happens throughout social media. TikTok recently featured a trend called the “Egg Crack Challenge.” Parents would crack an egg on their toddler’s head and see how they reacted, filming the exchange. Since most children are hit and confused, the parents’ reaction was usually to laugh at the confusion to their child. The parents would compare how their child would react with most children being frustrated and or crying. Trending videos like this show that some parents are willing to do harmful things to their children for clicks and likes.

Ruby Franke appeared in court in September for a hearing after her arrest, and her older daughter Shari testified against her. After the arrest, Shari posted a picture to her instagram story, saying, “justice is being served.”  Body cam footage has also been released of Ruby’s arrest. Her ex-husband Kevin, who divorced her in 2022, is now fighting for the custody of the four children in the family who are minors. The six counts of felony child abuse could result in Franke going to prison for up to 16 years, as well as Hildebrandt. Those involved in researching the case have reason to believe that Hildebrandt was the one that gave Franke the idea to abuse her children, or, in fact, conducted the abuse. Law enforcement has revealed that Franke and Hildebrandt used cayenne pepper and honey to dress the wounds of Russel and other children. 

In a plea deal, Franke plead guilty to four counts of child abuse on Dec. 18, 2023, and she will be sentenced on Feb. 20.

Government authorities have stepped up to address concerns about child exploitation. In the Washington State legislature, House Bill 1627 has been proposed by State Rep. Kristine Reeves. It was created by college student Chris McCarty after he watched a YouTube family adopt and exploit a toddler from China, named Huxley, who had complex special needs, just to give him up after using the child for views. This bill is meant to bring awareness to the struggle of children for the financial growth of their parents. The bill represents the rights of the children to have control over their online presence.

Technology has blurred boundaries between what is put online and what is personal. Those viewing the content should acquire a deeper understanding of what power social media influencers have, and how children are most vulnerable to exploitation.