Children featured in commercial content by family vloggers or mom and dad influencers can face serious mental risks, such as developing fear of failure, stress, or depressive feelings.

To better protect these children, the cabinet is working on a legislative amendment that will bring them under the Working Hours Act. The cabinet aligns this as much as possible with the laws and regulations already in place for artistic work under the age of 13, such as in films and musicals. For 13- to 15-year-olds, no permit is required. For this group, there are statutory working and rest times that employers must adhere to.

Vlog families and kidfluencers can be a modern form of child labor. To protect children against this, I am adjusting labor legislation. I also want to tackle the revenue model behind family vlogs. Agreements must be made with advertisers. They too must realize the risks involved in working with child vloggers, says State Secretary Nobel.

No negative effects

Parents who apply for a permit must ensure that child vloggers do not experience negative effects from their commercial online activities and have enough time to relax, learn, and play sports.

The Labor Inspectorate will assess the permit applications. Permits will be mandatory for children under 13 who vlog themselves or appear in videos of parents. This concerns social media accounts with at least 50,000 subscribers or followers. Beyond this threshold, income can be so high that there is a profit motive, and the risks of harmful effects increase.

Parents who do not comply with the new rules may receive a fine. Currently, fines range between 1000 and 2000 euros, but parents only have to pay a quarter of that. This reduction will be removed. Additionally, the State Secretary is considering how to further increase the fines.

Information campaign

To ensure parents are more aware of the risks children face from creating paid online content, a campaign will start in the new year. This will inform parents in the target group about possible harmful effects of vlogging with their children and the practical choices involved in doing this responsibly.

Within six months, the cabinet aims to publish the bill for consultation.