There’s a long history of kids going viral on the internet. The most notorious of the early examples was David After Dentist, in which a dad uploaded a video of his young son who was wildly woozy on the way home from having a tooth removed. The video’s virality caused me to reflect on my own then young children’s shortcomings in a post called, My Kids Refused to Go Viral. But more recently, kids are going viral less often because of random, funny home videos caught on camera and more often through planned campaigns to turn them into influencers, models, and celebrities. And it’s getting really disturbing. “Elissa and her daughter inhabit the world of Instagram influencers whose accounts are managed by their parents. Although the site prohibits children under 13, parents can open so-called mom-run accounts for them, and they can live on even when the girls become teenagers. But what often starts as a parent’s effort to jump-start a child’s modeling career, or win favors from clothing brands, can quickly descend into a dark underworld dominated by adult men, many of whom openly admit on other platforms to being sexually attracted to children.” (Is there an internet user on the planet who wouldn’t have predicted as much?) NYT (Gift Article): A Marketplace of Girl Influencers Managed by Moms and Stalked by Men.

+ NBC News: The next generation of influencers are here. And they’re less than 10 years old. At one point in his after-dentist moment, a dazed David asks his dad, “Is this real life?” Sadly, in this case, the answer once again is, “Yes.”