Within the world of YouTube influencers, Piper Rockelle and her “squad” weren’t doing anything too radical. Rockelle and her friends filmed multiple videos a day where they sometimes attempted extreme “challenges,” pranked each other and posted “crush” content about their latest romantic interests and dramas.
But here was the rub: These burgeoning stars, with millions of followers, were all minors. And behind the scenes, they were allegedly being abused by Rockelle’s mother and manager, Tiffany Smith, as an explosive civil lawsuit from 11 former members of the “squad” alleged in 2022.
That story is now the subject of a Netflix documentary series, Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing, which releases on the platform on Wednesday. The series uses interviews with former “squad” members and their parents to weave the story of a former child pageant star and her “momager” rising to YouTube fame with the help of a circle of fellow child performers. As profits poured in, these kidfluencers allegedly logged punishing working without appropriate compensation while being subjected to emotional and occasionally sexual abuse from Smith.
Smith and director and editor Hunter Hill denied wrongdoing as part of a $1.85 million settlement with the 11 teens reached in 2024. The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to Smith and Hill’s attorney for comment.
Bad Influence is the latest in a number of projects exploring the murky world of social media fiefdoms predicated on videos about children, a list that includes Hulu’s An Update on Our Family and Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke.
In an interview, co-directors Kief Davidson and Jenna Rosher discussed the dangers of YouTube stardom for children, addressed a recent critique of these “kidfluencer” documentaries and spoke about the measures they took to work with minors on the series.
How did you first come across the story of Piper Rockelle and her “squad”?
Kief Davidson: I came across this story a while back. There was a lawsuit that was already getting a good amount of coverage in the press, and it was about these 11 families that were all suing Piper’s mom, Tiffany. For me as a filmmaker and also as a parent, I immediately thought that there was a big story here to tell. The first thing I did was I talked to my own kid about the story, thinking that he would fully embrace the idea. His response was, “If you do this, I’ll be so angry at you.” He’s like, “Well, do you know how hard these influencers work to make money?” So it really became sort of a door opener for a conversation between the two of us about the dark side of this and realize that this was such a great opportunity for parents and kids to connect.
How open did you find these former child influencers and their parents when it came to appearing in this series?
Davidson: The first thing we did after reading the article [about the lawsuit] was we contacted the lawyer of the families. That ultimately launched what would be close to an eight-month process of us trying to gain the trust of the families, to get them to understand what kind of project we were making. The families were already getting some heat over this because some of the reporting that was out there was [concerning] how could you put your kids in the situation to begin with? So there was a lot of concerns on their side about how do we do this without making things worse for [their] kids. They saw the greater good in this, but it was a long process getting them to understand what our point of view was, that we weren’t making a reality show on this and this was really going to be [their] forum to be able to put this message out there and bring awareness to an industry that people know very little about.
What ages were the members of the “squad” when you interviewed them?
Jenna Rosher: A few of them are adults, a few of them are minors. And we approached that with a lot of care. We went into it trying to create a space where they felt safe and could be heard. And spending months building the trust and really earning the trust and providing support, training, anything that they needed in having to revisit these moments in their life. But it was matched with such courage and, from these kids, a real strong desire to tell their story. Their biggest mission was to not have any kid go through what they went through. They felt really strongly about getting it out.
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