Within the world of YouTube influencers, Piper Rockelle and her “squad” weren’t doing anything too radical. Rockelle and her friends filmed multiple videos a day where they sometimes attempted extreme “challenges,” pranked each other and posted “crush” content about their latest romantic interests and dramas.
But here was the rub: These burgeoning stars, with millions of followers, were all minors. And behind the scenes, they were allegedly being abused by Rockelle’s mother and manager, Tiffany Smith, as an explosive civil lawsuit from 11 former members of the “squad” alleged in 2022.
That story is now the subject of a Netflix documentary series, Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing, which releases on the platform on Wednesday. The series uses interviews with former “squad” members and their parents to weave the story of a former child pageant star and her “momager” rising to YouTube fame with the help of a circle of fellow child performers. As profits poured in, these kidfluencers allegedly logged punishing working without appropriate compensation while being subjected to emotional and occasionally sexual abuse from Smith.
Smith and director and editor Hunter Hill denied wrongdoing as part of a $1.85 million settlement with the 11 teens reached in 2024. The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to Smith and Hill’s attorney for comment.
Bad Influence is the latest in a number of projects exploring the murky world of social media fiefdoms predicated on videos about children, a list that includes Hulu’s An Update on Our Family and Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke.
In an interview, co-directors Kief Davidson and Jenna Rosher discussed the dangers of YouTube stardom for children, addressed a recent critique of these “kidfluencer” documentaries and spoke about the measures they took to work with minors on the series.
How did you first come across the story of Piper Rockelle and her “squad”?
Kief Davidson: I came across this story a while back. There was a lawsuit that was already getting a good amount of coverage in the press, and it was about these 11 families that were all suing Piper’s mom, Tiffany. For me as a filmmaker and also as a parent, I immediately thought that there was a big story here to tell. The first thing I did was I talked to my own kid about the story, thinking that he would fully embrace the idea. His response was, “If you do this, I’ll be so angry at you.” He’s like, “Well, do you know how hard these influencers work to make money?” So it really became sort of a door opener for a conversation between the two of us about the dark side of this and realize that this was such a great opportunity for parents and kids to connect.
How open did you find these former child influencers and their parents when it came to appearing in this series?
Davidson: The first thing we did after reading the article [about the lawsuit] was we contacted the lawyer of the families. That ultimately launched what would be close to an eight-month process of us trying to gain the trust of the families, to get them to understand what kind of project we were making. The families were already getting some heat over this because some of the reporting that was out there was [concerning] how could you put your kids in the situation to begin with? So there was a lot of concerns on their side about how do we do this without making things worse for [their] kids. They saw the greater good in this, but it was a long process getting them to understand what our point of view was, that we weren’t making a reality show on this and this was really going to be [their] forum to be able to put this message out there and bring awareness to an industry that people know very little about.
What ages were the members of the “squad” when you interviewed them?
Jenna Rosher: A few of them are adults, a few of them are minors. And we approached that with a lot of care. We went into it trying to create a space where they felt safe and could be heard. And spending months building the trust and really earning the trust and providing support, training, anything that they needed in having to revisit these moments in their life. But it was matched with such courage and, from these kids, a real strong desire to tell their story. Their biggest mission was to not have any kid go through what they went through. They felt really strongly about getting it out.
Can you offer some specifics of the support that you talked about?
Rosher: We had set teachers there. In terms of interview [length], we would limit to whatever their comfort was. If they needed a break, they needed to just not talk about something, we wanted them to feel like they were in control. Therapy was another thing that was offered as support. We really went into it saying to them, “What can we do to support you in this process? We want you to know that you’re the one setting the limitations here.” Being in “the squad,” they didn’t have those sorts of freedoms, and so it was really important to do pretty much the opposite of that in the sense of allowing them to feel that they could share their story in the safest place possible.
Davidson: We also had the parents [present], particularly for certain conversations that were very difficult for the kids. There was talk of abuse that happened — we had a parent in the room for that and we really let them lead it. Our goal in this was not to leave anyone any more traumatized than they were going in. That was our number one concern, to make sure that that would not happen.
The New York Times Magazine published a critique yesterday of two documentaries that have recently been released about the use of child influencers, raising the potential that the projects may potentially be re-exploiting them. What are your thoughts on critiques like that?
Rosher: As Kief said, there were months and months of discussions about this because that was the concern. Will the kids feel retraumatized? Will the parents feel retraumatized? What was conveyed to us is that the kids have been spilling out their guts deposing and going through this civil lawsuit. They’re wanting to go through this again and share their story because they feel so strongly about not having other kids go through what they went through. As a parent, I went into it constantly communicating with the parents about “How are we doing today? How are we feeling about what we’re going to talk about? Please guide us in telling us how we can support them.” I would say the communication was very fluid, constantly, about how we were going to handle things.
Davidson: Even with the families in the lawsuit, a number of them were like, “This will be too traumatizing for our kids.” There are two parents who are in the film but their kids are not because of that concern exactly, that this may be too difficult for them to talk about. But their kids were okay with their parents talking about this from their point of view and on their behalf.
What surprised you most in the process of making this series?
Davidson: I’m so surprised as to just how much money there is to be made. I’m also surprised as to how many brand deals are out there for these kids and I’m surprised at just how dangerous this can be. It was a real sobering realization that an article that we refer to in the documentary [reports] that 92 percent of the audience [for young female influencers] were men.
Rosher: A lot of the kids, they’re playing themselves. Unlike child actors who perform a part, these kids are confronted with these moments of having to perform but be themselves. We learned that there was a sort of identity crisis happening for a lot of them. Who am I? I don’t really feel this way, but I’m supposed to feel this way because it’s for a video. When you’re dealing with developing brains, that gets real tricky real quick. That was an aspect that I found very surprising.
The end of the series discusses an ascendant movement in certain states to start regulating this space. Do you think further regulation is needed?
Rosher: There’s a lot of work that needs to be done. It’s baby steps right now. We featured an individual by the name of Chris McCarty who has an incredible organization, Quit Clicking Kids. Chris has been successful in creating legislation with the help of Demi Lovato and had legislation passed by Gavin Newsom to create Coogan accounts for child influencers. That’s one step.
When you look at child actors, there are labor laws, there’s the amount of hours that kids can work, there’s set teachers put in place. These things have not been at all brought into the kid influencer industry, and one might argue, how would you regulate such a thing? That’s the challenge that presents itself, but when you look at the corporations and the brands, who’s signing the checks, is there a way to integrate some kind of monitoring before that check gets cut? I’m no expert, but I think not enough has been done.
Davidson: We had set teachers on set for our kids and some of the kids were like, “Set teachers”? It was the first time they’ve ever seen a set teacher. And when you look at the number of hours that they worked, it’s shocking. The regulations being put in place are incredibly slow. This is happening all in real time really, really quickly, and I think there’s a real urgency to it. The kids keep telling us they’re really looking forward to this coming out because we need to get this message out right now. Whether this will have any impact on regulation, I mean, who knows? Personally, I doubt it, but I do think that this might have an impact on families that are potentially going down this road really making decisions with knowledge as opposed to how it’s been before.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
