YouTube ‘kidfluencers’ are promoting junk food to other kids
Kid influencers on YouTube are promoting junk food and sugary drinks to other kids who watch their videos.
unbranded – Lifestyle
Ring lights, camera, action! Netflix’s “Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing” (now streaming) delves into the seedier side of young YouTube personality Piper Rockelle’s rise to internet fame and more than 12 million YouTube followers.
Rockelle, now 17, started in pageants as a toddler, Patience Rock Smith, younger sister of Piper’s mom, Tiffany Smith, says in the three-episode docuseries. Smith, a single mom, was the driving force behind Rockelle’s career. In footage of Lifetime’s reality series “Dance Twins” shown in “Bad Influence,” the momager can be seen pushing her young daughter to the top. “This is a really good time for you to get first place,” Smith said. “I would like that.”
Producers also interviewed former members of Rockelle’s “Squad” — fellow kid influencers who collaborated on videos and skits and even feigned relationships — and their parents. “We were filming 10, 15 videos a day,” Sophie Fergi, 17, claims in “Bad Influence.” She said they’d begin filming at 11 a.m. and end at 1 or 2 a.m. “I would go to bed for, like, two to three hours, get up around 6, 7-ish and do school, close my tablet and then I would have to get ready to film,” she said. “We did not get a break at all.”
Those who left the Squad allege they were blackballed from the group and suspect Smith was to blame when their online views and subscribers subsequently tanked. In 2022, 11 plaintiffs (ages 10 to 16) filed a civil lawsuit against Smith, Hill and Piper Rockelle Inc. describing horrifying conditions while participating in “hundreds of videos” for Rockelle’s channel from 2017-2020.
They suffered “emotional, verbal, physical, and at times, sexual abuse” at the hands of Smith, according to the suit and claimed they were not compensated even though their appearances on Rockelle’s channel resulted in windfall income, “oftentimes upwards of several hundred thousand dollars per month.”
Smith countersued for $30 million. In October, the parties settled the lawsuit for $1.85 million. According to filmmakers, Smith, Rockelle and Hill denied the allegations raised in the docuseries and lawsuit and refused interview requests.
Rockelle shot down accusations against her mother in a statement emailed to USA TODAY Monday.
“Honestly, I just want to move on from all of this because it’s really painful to deal with every day. And not surprisingly, my mental health has suffered more than anyone knows,” she said. She claimed the accusations are “mean, untrue, and honestly all about money. My mom did not do any of those things that they said. And I’ll stand by my mom to the end.”
USA TODAY also reached out to a representative for Hill, but was unable to identify a rep for Smith. Here’s what the trio has been up to lately.
Piper Rockelle now: ‘It takes a lot out of me’
Piper Rockelle is still maintaining a livelihood from social media with 6.1 million followers on Instagram and 14.7 million on TikTok, where she films herself dancing and with her boyfriend, a fellow influencer who goes by the name Capri.
Though YouTube demonetized her channel in 2022, shortly after the lawsuit was filed against Smith, Rockelle still adds videos for her 12.1 million subscribers. One uploaded in November gave viewers a behind the scenes look of her life as an influencer.
“Obviously I film vlogs like this, but I don’t really get a lot out of it besides the satisfaction from knowing you guys enjoy watching them…” she said, explaining that she pays her bills with brand deals and TikToks.
“I have no room to complain about my life because things could be a lot worse,” she said in the video. “But what I do have to say is it is hard work on my end. I’ve never had a normal job, but whatever I’m doing right now, it feels like a job. It takes a lot out of me.”
Tiffany Smith and Hunter Hill now
Compared to her daughter, Smith leads a much more private life.
“I do not want to be in a TikTok,” Smith objected in the prank video for Hill’s YouTube channel. “I do not want people making little edits of me and making fun of me.”
For the video, uploaded on December 16, 2022, Hill attempted to flirt with Smith to capture her discomfort on camera. “Flirting with Tiffany is going to be very awkward,” he said. Hill was positioned as Rockelle’s brother on social media, but Smith and Hill, now 28, were in a relationship.
Hill last uploaded a YouTube video for his 656,000 subscribers in May 2024. He has 339,000 followers on Instagram.
