Mauvaise influence: Les dérives du kidfluencing

Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing is a three-part docu-series that centers on Piper Rockelle, a teen YouTuber who gained fame through videos featuring her group, "The Squad," managed by her mother, Tiffany Smith. While their content appeared lighthearted, former Squad members alleged there was a much darker side to what was going on. It wasn't my favorite Netflix documentary. Felt like it could have been better. It did bring up the reality that there needs to be better child labor laws for social media kid influencers. Because the one thing I kept saying to myself was, don't these kids go to school?!

It is the story of a girl who became a sensation through social media platforms. It is the journey of Piper, who became a breadwinner for her single mother.

The title of the latest documentary series on Netflix aims to draw society's attention to the grim side of the lives of kid influencers. The doc dated back to 2017, when YouTube was slowly becoming a thing. The birth of a Momager, Tiffany, who created havoc across the internet through her kids and another adolescent, making them a SQAUD.

The three-part deliberately maintained the attention over the creepy life parts where a bunch of growing kids start losing life as they slowly become a money-making machine.

In 2025, when internet celebrities are roaring louder than ever, the series chronicles the early stage of the phenomenon. It talked about that time when the internet was still not cheap and peasants were slowly becoming more accessible.

The case of Piper shot at its peak when other members of the famous SQUAD brought serious allegations against Tiffany.

Three episodes include snippets from the past when children used to live under one roof, while being filmed under different circumstances. The act of kissing, a fake love trope, has been used to reflect the toxic environment these kids grow up. With the intervention that happened back in 2022, things started changing.

When we expose our real life to the world, things start changing. Life starts acting differently, and the comments and reactions received from strangers play a decisive role in life. Making your child a source of income is not a decision that parents should take. By making them as your source of income, you are not jeopardising their childhood or adolescence, but stopping them from finding what they are seeking from life.

I've seen a lot of Netflix documentaries and this one definitely is a stand out. With these types of docs, I'm used to my time being wasted and treated like i'm barely even watching. Surprisingly almost every bit of this documentary is disturbing and telling. It is a problem I was vaguely aware of but not nearly to this extent or what was really at play. There are many jaw dropping moments and it has a lot of substance to really think about. While at times the interviews are a bit frustrating because of the lack of accountability and blame shifting, I think it leaves a lot of food for thought and effectively reveals the truth.

This documentary offers a sobering look at the dark side of family content creation on YouTube, highlighting how easily people can become consumed by the pursuit of fame and money. It reveals the alarming greed of certain parents, the disturbing ease with which others look the other way, and the profound, lasting damage inflicted on the children involved. The emotional and psychological toll is both eye-opening and heartbreaking. If you're a parent, aunt, uncle, or have any teens in your life, this is an essential watch. It's also clear that the filmmakers intentionally left out some of the most horrific details-likely to protect the children-which makes what they do show all the more chilling and powerful.

So the topic of this docu-series was very interesting, very eye opening, but the way it was executed felt wrong and honestly kind of strange. The parents seem to not really take much accountability for putting their children in these awful situations, the people they chose to interview seemed to be biased about the topic and seemed to still think it was okay to have your children plastered all over social media. This whole docu-series just seems like even more exploitation. I think they should have taken this topic a bit more seriously. I felt gross throughout the entire duration of this new Netflix "expose" which at this point just seems to be more click bait without any real consideration for the topic at hand.