NYT investigation: a marketplace of girl influencers managed by moms and stalked by men

A New York Times investigation published February 22, 2024, by reporters Jennifer Valentino-DeVries and Michael H. Keller documented how Instagram accounts run by parents for their underage daughters — often started to pursue modeling opportunities or brand deals — can become a marketplace where adult men pay for photos, exclusive chats and even the girls' worn leotards and cheer outfits.

The investigation's findings were corroborated in a response published by the Child Mind Institute, a children's mental health nonprofit, which described the Times piece as documenting "the dark side of these child influencers, highlighting their vulnerability and exposure to sexual predators and pedophiles."

The exact scope of the Times's methodology — how many accounts or posts were reviewed, and how many parents, children or men were interviewed — was not established in the sources retrieved for this account. That detail exists in the original Times investigation itself, which was not one of the pages fetched this session, so it is not repeated here as a specific figure.

How the dynamic works, per the coverage

According to the reporting summarized by outlets covering the investigation, some parents become the driving force behind monetizing their daughters' accounts, selling access and items to a following dominated by adult men — including men who, per the investigation's findings, do not conceal a sexual interest in the children on these platforms.

The response from child psychologists

Responding to the investigation, Child Mind Institute clinical psychologist Emma Woodward said children "can't legally give consent for what their parents are posting about them" and are, in effect, "being exploited by their own parents." Fellow psychologist Jessica Janze said parents have a responsibility to teach boundaries, and that monetizing these accounts teaches children "that their bodies are not their own," according to the Child Mind Institute's published response to the Times piece.

What it signals

The investigation and the clinical response to it together frame a specific, previously under-examined risk: that a legal, parent-run commercial activity — child-influencer marketing — can double as a pipeline connecting predatory adults directly to children, without violating any platform's stated terms of service on its face. Neither retrieved source establishes what, if any, policy or enforcement changes Instagram's parent company made in response.

The Child Mind Institute's response treats the investigation as a prompt for parents specifically, rather than only a platform-moderation problem: its psychologists frame the core failure as one of parental judgment and consent, not solely of Instagram's enforcement. That framing implies any fix would need to address the parents running these accounts, not just the men following them, since the accounts and their monetization are, in the cases described, parent-initiated and parent-operated to begin with.

US In News compiled this archived account from contemporaneous coverage of the New York Times investigation and the Child Mind Institute's published response to it. It restores a story originally published on this site in February 2024; figures are as reported at the time.