Currently, kids who star in social media posts and videos that generate income aren’t guaranteed any of that money — it all goes to their parents. But that’s about to change in Illinois.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed a bill on Friday that requires young social media influencers to be paid a portion of the earnings of monetized videos that they appear in. Senate Bill 1782, which takes effect July 1 of next year, applies to all video content made in the state of Illinois that generates more than 10 cents per view. Kids under 16 who appear in at least 30 percent of such content over a 30-day period must receive a portion of the revenue, to be set aside in a trust until they are legal adults.
The idea for the bill started with 15-year-old high school student Shreya Nallamothu, who “after finding that users could make money off of platforms such as YouTube and TikTok, I learned that, often, these kids are made to participate in videos without any guarantee of the income generated from the content,” she said. She wanted “to protect the money that these kids have rightfully earned,” and so worked with the bill’s sponsor Illinois Sen. Dave Koehler to bring it to fruition.
