New Minnesota law sets guardrails for children of content creators featured in monetized videos
Parents who make a profit from online videos featuring their children may have to think twice before posting them because of a unique Minnesota law that took effect Tuesday.
The statute puts guardrails around "content creation" and how minors are compensated for appearing in monetized videos on social media. Children 13 and younger are now prohibited from participating in those specific posts, and older teenagers who are featured — or make their own videos — must be paid revenues from that content into a trust account available to them when they turn 18.
"They set it up as almost a child labor law. It's not about what you can say. It's about kids needing to be able to be paid for work that they do," said William McGeveran, dean of the University of Minnesota Law School, whose scholarship focuses on the First Amendment, data privacy and technology. "And if they're 13 and under, kids can't work in the ice cream shop and they can't work in their parents' content creation either. That's the way the law looks at it."
The law defines a content creator as a person who creates "video content performed in Minnesota in exchange for compensation." The rules kick in about minors if they are included in at least 30% of that paid video content produced within a 30-day period.
The law also empowers individuals featured in videos as children to demand that content is removed from platforms when they're older.
McGeveran said other states have similar policies, like California, where state legislators recently expanded the to include content creators.
But Minnesota is the only state to go so far as to set an age limit, he said. Fourteen is the general minimum age to work most jobs, .
"There's a formula about how much you have to make, but if you're making any kind of serious money from the content you're posting as a parental influencer, then you're covered by this law," he explained. "But the ordinary person who just posts photos of their kids on Instagram or talks about them is not covered because they're not doing it for profit."
State Sen. Erin Maye Quade, a Democrat who authored the law, said she and others in the Legislature tried to strike a balance between what she described as "low-level" versus "professionalized" content featuring children, which is highly orchestrated. The latter was the focus when they put the bill together, she said.
She also noted that not all content parents' post generates enough money to hit .
"It doesn't mean people can't use their kids in non-monetized content. It doesn't mean that folks can't use their kid in monetized content for fewer days and hours. It just means that a kid's whole life can't be working for any industry, including this one," Maye Quade told WCCO. "Why would we make an exception here when we haven't for all the other kinds of work that I'm sure people would love kids to do, but it's not appropriate for kids to do?"
Jenna Greer, who described herself as a content creator focusing on motherhood, documents her life as a parent on TikTok and Instagram to more than 460,000 people across both platforms. Many of those videos feature her three children under the age of 6.
"The whole goal of me starting [the accounts] was the intention of being able to stay home with my kids and make a financial contribution to my family, and it has turned into that and so much more, which has been a blessing," she said in an interview.
She explained that she makes some money through those platforms' creator funds, but the majority of the income she makes comes from paid partnerships with brands and that content may feature her kids.
The new law will likely change what that looks like for her, but she said she understands and supports the goal of protecting children and ensuring they are fairly compensated.
"It will be a learning curve. It could potentially affect us in just the way that we go about communicating with brands to secure those deals," Greer said. "If I have to come up front and say, 'My kids can't be in this,' we might lose that on specific kid-focused brand deals. So there is a chance that changes our income. I don't think it will be severe, but it will affect [it]."
