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How 2020 Has Made Child Stardom Even More Toxic
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A life beginning with child stardom has always been a game of sink or swim. Our favorite young actors and performers undertake the responsibilities of a full-time career before they’re eligible to work most minimum-wage gigs, and the adoring eyes of the entire world can turn scrutinizing with one age-appropriate slip up. From early favorites like Lindsay Lohan, the Olsen twins, Justin Bieber, and Tia and Tamera Mowry to up-and-comers like Millie Bobby Brown and her Stranger Things counterparts, it’s safe to say that the world loves rooting for young talents while also praying on their downfall.
Some of these stars had a smooth transition to adulthood, while others struggled—or still struggle—through addiction, toxic conservatorships, and legal trouble. As the online world becomes its own modern Hollywood, though, child stars of the next decade face an even more precarious path to success than those that came before them.
For young stars of the early ‘90s and ‘2000s, a famous life could remain healthy and controlled with stable parental guardianship. Parents could make important decisions on their child’s behalf, controlling their involvement in Hollywood based on what they saw fit. After all, children needed help from adult negotiators to solidify their contracts and a ride in their mother or father’s backseat to make it to auditions.
A parent’s own desire for fame was also a large determinant of their child’s success or downfall. It’s easy for parents to overrule their children when they say they don’t want to act or sing, leaving children with a toxic feeling of resentment towards their day-to-day life and family.
“I’ll never forget, even before Sister, Sister I was doing commercials, and I was doing a Barbie commercial. This family clearly didn’t need money. There was one other girl and she did not want to do it,” Tia Mowry said in 2013. “You could tell her mom was pushing her to do it. The kids will tell you, ‘I don’t want to do this.’ You would see the moms push their kids.”
Mowry’s parents always told her and her sister that they could quit acting at any time and even encouraged the two to pause their careers to attend college at Pepperdine University. On the other hand, Lindsay Lohan has publicly spoken about her mother’s enthusiasm for the entertainment industry, putting Lohan in 60 commercials before she reached the age of 11.
What’s changed since the golden age of Lohan and her peers, though, is the accessibility of fame. Putting oneself on display for a worldwide audience is more democratized than ever thanks to one main driver: social media. As modern child stars either become famous through platforms like Instagram and TikTok or use those platforms to interact with their fans, autonomy is not only easy. but automatic.
Unless parents or managers work tirelessly to monitor their child’s social media activity at all times, which can be overbearing and divisive, young stars are largely in control of how the world perceives them, and at ages 13-16, they’re making quick, on-the-go decisions about their own protection and privacy.
At just 16 years old, TikTok star Charli D’Amelio is the most followed person on the app with over 100 million followers. She gained this incomprehensible audience in just a year from posting spontaneous dancing and lip-syncing videos, and even her 34 million Instagram followers surpass the audiences of her famous peers like Stranger Things’ Finn Wolfhard and 17-year-old Jojo Siwa.
When D’Amelio posts a TikTok video, her view count reaches a higher number in one day than, say, Stranger Things’ third season in four days. In 2019, Netflix reported that Stranger Things’ third season reached a record-breaking viewership of 26.4 million US viewers through the four-day July 4 weekend. A video D’Amelio uploaded one day ago already has 28 million views.
Social media fame on a giant scale was accessible to D’Amelio from her bedroom at her own devices. Her mother didn’t drive her to movie auditions or recording studios; she simply gave her an iPhone. A newer avenue to fame for tweens and young teenagers doesn’t mean any less harsh of a perception of child stars, however. Even though gaining a following requires less creative talent than in the past, the public still holds famous people to the highest of standards, as if a large platform makes teenagers less vulnerable to the same mistakes of their non-famous peers.
For instance, D’Amelio recently lost one million followers in just one day after becoming the subject of internet ridicule. In a “Dinner with the D’Amelio’s” YouTube video, a chef serves the family snails, which she responds to by asking if there are any chicken nuggets in the house. She also discusses surpassing the upcoming milestone of 100 million followers, saying, “I wish I had more time, ‘cause imagine if I hit 100 mill (followers) a year after hitting a mil.” Millions of TikTok users, children and adults alike, turned against her, calling her ungrateful, spoiled, impolite and a horrible role model.
After a few days, the scandal blew over and D’Amelio finally reached her 100 million followers, but not before breaking into tears while trying to explain the situation in an Instagram live broadcast. Preferring chicken nuggets over snails might be something to keep to yourself in a YouTube video, but it’s certainly not uncharacteristic of a 16-year-old. Neither is thinking 100 million followers would be cool—teens post videos every day on the app hoping to catapult themselves to stardom—but having a large platform suddenly makes these thoughts seem malicious and immature.
In 2020, we often equate followers with approval. If someone has a large audience online, it’s probably because a lot of people like them, and if a lot of people like them, they must be an exceptionally great person.
“Childhood is about finding out who you are and being able to relate to others, and those things are harder to learn when you’re famous. That amount of public scrutiny makes it hard on kids to do that. They can’t mess up. So they have to adopt a very self-assured, precocious identity very quickly,” said Eileen Kennedy-Moore, a New Jersey-based clinical psychologist.
The reality of a digitally driven world is that an audience is not an endorsement of talent, morals, or exceptionalism. It takes a click of a button to become a “follower” of someone: no sacrifice, no risk. D’Amelio doesn’t play different roles in feature films or television shows; she only plays herself, a 16-year-old dancer with a phone and a meteoric rise to online fame.
Charli D’Amelio lives within a completely different type of fame than a young Lindsay Lohan or Ashley Olsen did. So why is the internet still holding digital child stars to the same rigid expectations as seasoned Hollywood celebrities decades their senior, whose rise to fame looked significantly different?
The internet makes it easier than ever for fans to hold their favorite stars accountable for their actions, but it also elevates normal young creators to levels of super stardom and unprecedented scrutiny. If we expect to get to know the personalities and private lives of our favorite creators, we better be prepared to watch them mess up—and prepare to be okay with it.
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createdAt:Wed, 25 Nov 2020 18:45:55 +0000
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