89: The Disturbing World Of Youtube Family Channels
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In April of 2020, James Stauffer uploaded a video of the inside of his car to his YouTube channel, Stauffer's Garage. This was a side project to his family's usual YouTube channel called The Stauffer Life, where he and his wife, Micah, extensively documented their ever-growing family. But all of that was about to change with James' new upload.

Within minutes of it going live, comments started flooding in, not about what was in the video, though, but what was missing from it. See, in the backseat of James' car were car seats for his four children. They were neatly snapped in place in the second and third rows of his family-sized SUV, except...

One of the car seats was very obviously missing, the one that belonged to his four-year-old son, who I'll call H. "Where is H's car seat? Why is his the only car seat missing?" comments read. People were commenting so fast, it was hard to catch them all. But fans noticed that any comments referring to the missing car seat started disappearing. They were being intentionally erased by someone on the other side.

Though for fans that had watched closely as the family had recorded and uploaded every milestone, growth spurt, accomplishment, and transition in their life, they felt like this unaddressed gap in the Stauffer's backseat was actually indicative of something the family didn't want them to know. I mean, they had watched weekly videos of H integrating in the Stauffer's life. He was a huge part of their content.

So where was his car seat? The truth of the matter was the four-year-old's car seat was missing because there was no longer a four-year-old that would need it.

H was not a part of the Stauffer family anymore. And the story of what happened to him was much more confusing and heartbreaking than anyone expected. Within the next few months, that missing car seat would go on to make headlines. Ones that read, "'Why did these YouTubers give away their son?'

This is Heart Starts Pounding, and I'm your host, Kayla Moore. And today, I want to tell you the story of something I've been darkly curious about for quite some time. How children get exploited on the internet. How we live in an age without rules and regulations on what parents can make their kids do for views and likes. And what happens when that gets taken advantage of. And as always, listener discretion is advised.

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I feel like I've been bombarded with family influencers ever since I signed up for social media. It's usually a beautiful and, at least in my experience, shockingly blonde family doing some sort of choreographed dance or perfect lip sync to a trending audio. Mom and dad are usually making overly enthusiastic facial expressions, and behind them are their children, sometimes ones that look only

only days old participating in the video. And whenever I get these videos, I'm always shocked at the view count. 5 million views, 10 million views, some over 25 million. This is wildly popular content. And as a result, it's wildly lucrative. It was once estimated that the LeBrant family YouTube page generated $15,000 a day.

But recently, I've noticed that audiences are pushing back on this kind of content. People seem legitimately worried about the intentions of some of the parents putting their kids on the internet for all to see. There's no privacy for these children. And not to mention their work schedules. When parents upload videos of children doing four choreographed dances a day, does that leave any time in their schedule to just be kids?

So one of the highest profile cases in this arena and one of the first big YouTube family scandals is the case of the Stauffer family. There is a new documentary coming out about their scandal, and that's probably because their case feels more relevant today than it did when it happened back in 2020.

But let's start at the beginning. Myka Stauffer always wanted to be a YouTuber. When she met her husband James in 2012, she was 25 years old working as a nurse in Ohio and had recently started uploading videos to YouTube.

Most of her original content was about mommy weight loss and cooking meals for her vegetarian two-year-old, whom she had with a previous partner. It wasn't making a ton of money, but YouTube was helping her pay the bills. And when she met James on OkCupid that year, not only was he down to be a stepdad to Micah's daughter, but he was down to continue making lifestyle content with Micah.

According to their now defunct website, thestauferlife.com, Micah and James wrote this about their backstory. Quote, "'Our family journey on YouTube all started back in late 2012, right before our second child was born. Those first years of videos were a learning opportunity and our way of sharing our daily lives as a family with you and the world.'"

YouTube, for us, is a way of life, a method of documenting life's challenges and victories as a family. It's also a way for our children to remember their childhood and the adventures they went on. This journey we all are on is truly magical, and by sharing ours with you, we hope to inspire others to embrace each and every day to the fullest. We all have a story to tell, and this is our way of doing it.

If they were really looking to make YouTube a way for their children to remember their childhood and the adventures they went on, like their website claimed, this seemed like a strange, albeit lucrative way to do it.

Micah was posting everything to YouTube, including things that wouldn't have been discussed with her children, like her journey with pregnancy, her cleaning routines, and even what giving birth was like for her. Her videos were brightly lit, colorful, and focused on her journey building her family, heavily featuring her children.

But her hard work was paying off. By 2014, Micah was doing YouTube full-time while James stayed at his job. YouTube is a funny beast, though. When you're creating content for YouTube, you're really creating content for an algorithm. If you don't, your videos won't get pushed out to people. You'll lose sponsors. And well, in Micah's case, you'd have to go back to your nursing job.

So everything about the videos must be optimized for the algorithm. Thumbnails need to feature bright, cheery faces so they get clicked. The content needs to be dramatic and titles need to be really eye-catching.

It seems that to stand out amongst a sea of other kids and family content, some families have tried to go for shock value. Take, for instance, the LeBrant family, another shockingly blonde young family with five kids. In 2021, a video with a thumbnail featuring their children was posted to YouTube with the title, quote,

she got diagnosed with cancer. In the thumbnail, the dad is looking down at his youngest daughter. Millions of concerned fans tuned into the 42-minute video devastated for the family, only to learn in the first 10 minutes that their daughter did not in fact have cancer.

The video was referring to the fact that some other children have cancer. The title and thumbnail were some form of twisted clickbait to hit the algorithm. Needless to say, fans were not happy and the comments are now turned off of that video.

But Micah was in the same predicament. How could she use the algorithm to her advantage to get her content to grow? Well, in the kids and family space, one thing the algorithm loves is family milestones. Most family YouTubers seem to get their biggest engagement when they're announcing something really big, like a pregnancy journey they're going to take their audience on, or in the LeBrant's case, when they make everyone think their child is being diagnosed with an illness.

So on July 6th, 2016, Micah announced a very big milestone that she would be documenting for her audience. Now, with three children in tow, she and James were looking at adding more to their family by means of adoption.

In a video titled, Big Announcement! All Caps! Three Exclamation Points! Dash Baby Number Four Micah Stauffer, a title which seemed to be primed for search engine optimization, might I add, Micah and James sit on the couch holding a nearly naked infant and tell their audience they're going to be adopting a little boy from China.

No, they hadn't officially started the process, but they wanted to share that they had, well, decided to start the process.

Micah had always wanted to adopt after having three kids, she said, but she decided that it was necessary for her to adopt a child with special needs. And this became part of the Stauffer's content upload cycle, videos of every single detail of their journey to adopt a young boy from China. In one video, Micah announces that she, quote, "...stumbled upon an adoption site that featured a boy who stole their heart."

I'm going to continue to refer to this boy as H. Yes, his name is out there, but so many personal details have been shared about this poor kid without any consideration for him that I just can't bring myself to identify him.

Micah explains in one video that she was told by the adoption agency that H had special needs. It was explained that he most likely had a small brain tumor, but that he would be completely functional and had the potential to live a fairly normal life. All in all, there were 27 videos about their adoption journey, including a specific 13-part series answering questions,

sharing their emotions and at times fundraising money for H's special needs without explicitly detailing how the donated money would be used.

For every $5 donated, Micah would show another sliver of a 1,000-piece puzzle that eventually would show a complete picture of H's face. Donors' names would also be written in H's baby book. This tactic of breadcrumbing exclusive content of children for paid followers is not unique to the Stauffers. In fact, it's something that probably happens more today than it did in 2016.

In 2021, a TikToker named Zoe Laverne was offering exclusive photos of her newborn to her 21 million followers for a $15 fee. Then there was the case of Hannah Naley, who ran a social media channel on behalf of her 12-year-old daughter who wanted to be an actress.

Hannah was offering tons of exclusive access to her daughter via different channels. A Patreon was set up with tiers ranging from $8 a month to $100 a month, and it offered exclusive access.

pictures of her daughter. There also was a $125 gold VIP package that sold photos and videos of Hannah's daughter with another girl. The tier included, quote, 50 plus exclusive pics of us having a blast and quote, 15 videos of dancing, swimming, and other fun activities. Mind you, there were no laws in California where that account was run to prevent her mother from doing that.

So after the paid puzzle of H was confirmed, he started appearing in videos on the family's channel with the Stauffer family channel's quote, adoption day video garnering over 5 million views. I told you, YouTube loves big milestones.

After this, four-year-old H is a staple in videos for the family. He's brought into the fold just like the other children. Only there's something deeply sinister about H's involvement in these videos, pretty much right off the bat. It becomes apparent early on to the Stauffers and to the audience that H's disabilities are affecting his life more than the adoption agency disclosed.

He would bite the family and bang his head against the wall. He was prone to meltdowns that really concerned doctors. And he had a lot of trouble communicating, meaning he couldn't say what he was feeling about how comfortable he was about being filmed, any of it.

And these challenges were being broadcast to an ever-growing audience. Though Micah insisted there were details left out of the videos, it felt like every piece of information doctors told the Stauffers, she was telling the audience.

Like how the Stauffers brought the young boy in for more testing and were told that he did not have a brain tumor. He actually had a stroke in utero. In one video where Micah and James wear sweatsuits and talk directly to the camera, they explain that H was diagnosed with, quote, severe autism.

Think about it. If your doctor went on YouTube and made a video about you to an audience of 700,000 subscribers and told them your personal medical history, they would be fired. But that protection, HIPAA, doesn't apply to parents.

Earlier this year, we saw the fallout of this when an 18-year-old who asked to go by the name Cam testified to support a Maryland bill protecting children forced into influencing. In that testimony, Cam shared that their mother was a social media influencer who shared deeply personal and intimate details about Cam to her followers, including when Cam got their first period.

Cam is now terrified to go by their real name because a cursory Google search would amass hundreds of photos of them as a child.

H never had the chance to speak out about this though. So videos documenting his progress continued. Micah would hop on camera and complain about the difficulties that came with raising the boy and would try to show her audience her methods for disciplining him. And her audience and brands ate up the content. In one photo posted to Instagram, Micah is cuddling H while a basket of laundry sits behind them.

In it, the detergent is strategically placed with its label forward. The caption indicated that it was a sponsored post. And under another sponsored photo, she wrote that that detergent had actually helped her relationship with H grow.

I guess, according to Micah, H didn't need specific therapies, he just needed detergent. The oversharing was packaged as authenticity to help other families, so it seemed really suspicious to followers when H started slowly disappearing from the Stauffer's YouTube videos sometime around February of 2020.

By April, fans noticed that his car seat was no longer in James' car, causing a lot of concern.

And finally, on May 26th, Micah uploaded a video to the Stouffer Life channel titled, quote, In it, Micah and James look somber in their well-lit master bedroom. They explain to the camera that they made the decision to give H to a better family equipped to handle his specific needs.

They go on to say that they still loved H with every ounce of their being. They ask at the end of the video that their privacy be respected at this time.

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We'll be right back.

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It's ironic to ask for privacy at the end of a years-long saga where they shared deeply personal details about their son's medical history with millions of strangers. When they put a camera in his face before he could even understand what YouTube was. But this was the first time they would face any real backlash over their actions. So they were asking people to not criticize them, disguised as privacy.

This scandal immediately blew up, reaching an audience much larger than their own YouTube subscribers. People were infuriated and accused the Stauffers of adopting a child just to make content and money off of him. A petition demanding the family to unmonetize videos featuring H reached 150,000 signatures. And soon, the videos with the boy in them were all made private.

The family kept the rest of their videos up until backlash became so severe that the Stoffer Life, as well as Micah's personal channel, were voluntarily taken down. To accuse a family of adopting a special needs son from another country with the sole intention of monetizing him is a very serious accusation. Regardless of the family's intention, though, videos featuring H were incredibly profitable.

It's hard to guess exactly how much the Stauffers were making. YouTube pays a different amount to every creator, and it's changed a lot over the years. But in a pretty perverse video, Micah is laying on the beach telling her followers she was electing to get H cheaper therapy. And one follower noted that the bracelet on her arm in the video was valued at over $6,000.

I'll end this segment on this fact. H has been confirmed to be with a new loving family and is currently doing very well, far away from the Stauffers.

But I bring up this story because it really highlights the dangerous pipeline of family YouTubers. The more their content stands out, the more views they get and the more money they bring in for their families. Wash, rinse, repeat. In the Stauffer's case, adopting a child and taking the audience on that journey really helped them stand out amongst their peers. But some channels chose other, more extreme methods to stand out.

Take for instance the now deleted Daddy05 channel. Daddy05 was a pretty successful channel run by parents Heather and Michael Martin. The idea of the channel was to vlog and do fun family pranks on their five kids and upload them to their 750,000 fans.

Heather was the stepmom to Michael's children, but participated in the family vlogs and pranks and encouraged the creation of the channel. Pranks started out small, albeit strange. When I think of pranks, I think of silly harmless things like putting saran wrap over a toilet or that one where you call your mom on Thanksgiving and ask her how long you need to microwave a turkey for. I don't know, silly little dumb stuff that doesn't hurt anyone.

But the Daddy-O-Five pranks were not that. The pranks typically consisted of the parents angrily accusing one of their children of something until that child was very upset. And then they would laugh at them and tell them that they were only kidding.

In one early video, Michael accuses his daughter, who looks like she's under 10 in the video, of kissing boys at school. And when she starts to get upset and say that no, she wasn't doing that, he pushes the idea harder until he's yelling at her that her brother saw her do it.

The young girl starts shrieking, saying that she wasn't doing that and that her brothers must be lying until her father tells her that he was just kidding. Yeah, I don't really see how that's a prank either. It's not funny or enjoyable to watch. And yet their family channel kept growing.

Over time, Heather and Michael realized that the more intense their pranks got and the more upset their children seemed on camera, the more views they would get.

But here's the thing. Views weren't just coming from fans. At this point, other YouTubers started making videos calling out DaddyO5 for their bad behavior, but that brought more people to their channel who would watch in horror and comment their concerns, thus adding to the video's engagement and driving views.

Michael admitted in one video that his daughter's reactions weren't really extreme enough for his liking. In one prank video, you can hear Michael explain to two of his young sons that they needed to make sure to, quote, keep it going, get her as mad as you possibly get her.

It was clear that he was trying to heighten her reactions so they aligned better with his vision for the channel. However, she remained pretty stoic and so he stopped featuring her as much. And unfortunately for Michael's youngest son, a lot of the focus was then turned on him. So I'm just gonna take a second right now and let you know that the youngest son now lives with his biological mom and he is safe. She's confirmed that he's doing well. I just want you to keep that in mind as we continue the story.

So the youngest child had been diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder, which is described as, quote, a frequent and ongoing pattern of anger, irritability, arguing, and defiance towards parents and other authority figures. ODD also includes being spiteful and seeking revenge, a behavior called vindictiveness.

The little boy was prone to intense and emotional breakdowns. He needed tools and resources to handle his emotions, but instead his parents gave him a camera in his face.

Michael seemed to love his son's outbursts. They were the exact emotional response he was looking for to his pranks. And by this time, other creators on YouTube were making even more videos calling out the behavior of Daddy05. It was no longer a secret that the channel was abusing their children for views.

But this all crescendoed in a video called Invisible Ink Prank Epic Meltdown. Yes, his son's behavioral disorder was used for SEO. Don't even get me started. In the video, Heather holds a small bottle of black ink, which is labeled as invisible ink, up to the camera, and says that she's going to prank Michael's youngest son with it.

She proceeds to dump the contents of the bottle on his carpet and the black ink makes these horrible stains on his otherwise white floor. It looks terrible. I have no idea why anyone would make a mess like that intentionally. And then she and Michael call the boy into the room, camera positioned perfectly to get his reaction, and they start screaming at him.

What is this? What happened? They yell at the boy who looks totally shocked. And not only is his floor ruined, but he has no idea what happened. He starts getting really emotional, a completely warranted reaction in this scenario. But Heather and Michael keep heightening their anger. Then they start swearing at the boy. Soon, another one of their sons and their younger daughter are in the room, having come to the youngest's aid. And they're like,

they all start crying, unsure of what's happening and why their parents are so mad. Eventually, when all the kids are distraught and comforting each other, Heather and Michael break out into a fit of maniacal laughter. "It's just a prank, brah." Michael sneers at his son, who is not laughing. This video horrified hundreds of thousands of viewers and eventually caught the attention of mainstream media who went public with the story.

In 2017, Heather and Michael were sentenced to five years probation and lost custody of two of their children, including the youngest son. And like I said, now he lives with his biological mother and she says that he's healing. The DaddyO5 YouTube channel, however, has been completely banned from the site.

Experience the magic of the holidays at Meadowlark's Winter Walk of Lights. An elegant garden trail aglow with 500,000 sparkling lights. Take an evening walk through the enchanting Meadowlark Botanical Gardens, adorned with lighted trees and displays featuring nature, winter, and holiday themes. It's perfect for a date night or family holiday outing. Stay warm sipping on a hot beverage with or without spirits, or

♪♪♪

with lighted trees and displays featuring nature, winter, and holiday themes. It's perfect for a date night or family holiday outing. Stay warm sipping on a hot beverage with or without spirits or gathered around a fire making s'mores. Beat the crowds by visiting early starting November 8th. Get your tickets at winterwalkoflights.com.

I'd like to say that the Stauffers and Daddy O5 are relics of the past, of a time where content creation involving children was a lawless place. But the sad reality is it's still very much a lawless place, and these issues continue to crop up. Currently, at the federal level, children have, quote, "...zero protections in regard to their privacy, labor, or income from online content."

The laws that do exist regarding kids and the internet, like the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act and the Children's Internet Protection Act in the US, focus on illegal data collection and exposing obscene content to minors, not in the acts of their own family members.

Influencing is a completely unregulated $16 billion plus industry, as opposed to other areas like entertainment, where child labor is strictly monitored. The highest earners in social media can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars.

thousands of dollars from views alone on YouTube before hundreds of thousands more in brand deals. And this income is completely controlled by the parents. This is different from child actors who are protected in some states by a thing called the Coogan Act.

The bill strictly enforces the amount of hours that a child can work and school hours that have to be completed, which depends on their age. In California and New York, infants can only be on set for two hours and work for 20 minutes, while a six to eight year old can be on set for eight hours and work for four hours when school is still in session and six hours when school is out. The

The Coogan Trust requires that 15% of a child actor's income needs to be put away in a blocked trust in their name that can't be accessed until they turn 18 years old. But the Coogan Act hasn't been updated to apply to YouTube. So families can make content with their children for unlimited hours and pocket all of the money for themselves.

H, who was heavily featured in profitable YouTube videos, whose medical history was the subject of ad-sponsored videos, is not guaranteed any of the money from them. And he needs it the most.

Because of the lack of regulations, I would say it's only a matter of time until we have another Stauffer or Daddy-O-Five situation on our hands. There's a lot of money to be made in the family content space, and I don't think people are just going to leave it on the table.

We can be mindful of the content we consume. If something feels wrong, you can block creators. People only make money when we watch things, so use your best judgment there. And remember, everything is controlled by an algorithm, and when you watch and interact with it, it fuels it.

But this is not to put the onus on us. We're not the ones doing this. Laws need to be put in place to make sure that this stops happening. But what do you guys think? Have you come across this kind of content that just feels wrong? Let me know in the comments or wherever you listen to this episode.

Heart Starts Pounding is written and produced by me, Kaylin Moore. Heart Starts Pounding is also produced by Matt Brown. Additional research by Marissa Dow. Sound design and mix by Peachtree Sound. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grayson Jernigan, the team at WME, and Ben Jaffe. Have a heart pounding story or a case request? Check out heartstartspounding.com. Until next time, stay curious.

Experience the magic of the holidays at Meadowlark's Winter Walk of Lights, an elegant garden trail aglow with 500,000 sparkling lights. Take an evening walk through the enchanting Meadowlark Botanical Gardens, adorned with lighted trees and displays featuring nature, winter, and holiday themes. It's perfect for a date night or family holiday outing. Stay warm sipping on a hot beverage with or without spirits, or

♪♪♪

Perfect for a date night or family holiday outing. Stay warm sipping on a hot beverage with or without spirits or gathered around a fire making s'mores. Beat the crowds by visiting early starting November 8th. Get your tickets at winterwalkoflights.com.