Proposed Topic
How does family vlogging influence children’s behavior and mental health?
Problem Background
Social media has been a revolutionary technology because it provides an avenue for individuals to generate content to satisfy different social and communication needs. Family vlogs have become an attractive venture for content creators (Chen & Darmawan, 2020, p.101). One study indicates that family vlogging primarily focuses on the content creators filming their daily activities, often including their children in the vlogs (Talukdar, 2020, p. 749). They are usually paid after they reach the 1000 subscribers mark and 4000 watch hours (Talukdar, 2020, p. 749). Although monetizing the content can improve lifestyle conditions, parents often treat their children like assets.
In the study by Talukdar (2020), it has been argued that children who are usually involved in family vlogs can be compared to Instagram puppies because the parents will use them to attract attention and improve the number of subscribers (p.749). In family vlogging, there is no distinct boundary to establish where parenting ends and monetization begins. Some parents tell their children to behave in a particular way throughout the day. Others subject their children to pranks to record their reactions for the viewers (Talukdar, 2020, p. 749). This can contribute to mental health problems such as depression and even PTSD (Talukdar, 2020, p. 749).
Another critical perspective when investigating family vlogging is the possibility that it represents child labor. For example, successful family brands will use their children for sponsored advertisements during filming (Carrêlo, 2022). This contributes to a distortion in the life that a typical child should live.
Finally, family vlogging involves sharing the details of their children with strangers. It increases the vulnerability of children to harm as their images can be used in different types of communities. One study suggests that there are cases where children’s photos and videos have been shared in pedophile communities (Riggio, 2020, p. 510). The impacts of these vlogs, as such, might not appear immediately but will become evident as the children grow.
Research Hypothesis
- Ho: Family vlogging is safe for children and does not have any adverse effect on their behaviors or mental health.
- H1: Family vlogging exposes children to psychological and physical dangers that affect their mental health and behaviors.
Arguably, children are subjected to different types of psychological challenges as the parents try to create a desirable persona for the camera. In turn, the children might show mental health issues such as depression. The lack of privacy is also likely to contribute to mental challenges such as hypervigilance and paranoia. The results are also expected to show a change in the children’s behavior as they become accustomed to the camera. This will further be elevated by a change in the parenting style as parents try to provide content for the viewers.
Participants
There are several family vloggers on different social media channels, such as YouTube and Instagram. The researcher will recruit family vloggers from the USA who have monetized their content through YouTube. The USA represents an essential location for the study because of the abundance of family vloggers. One study indicates that the abundance of family vloggers in the country is based on the fact that several states exempt children from labor laws (Pacht-Friedman, 2021, p. 366). In turn, it will be relatively easy to find family vloggers that might be willing to take part in the research.
The families will range from those with a subscriber number of as low as 100,000 to those with subscriber numbers that are in the millions. Having such a range of family vloggers is vital in identifying how the number of subscribers influences content generation and how it can affect the health of their children. As for the recruitment process, it is arguable that YouTube provides a channel through which the viewer can contact the content creator. Through such an approach, the researcher will contact a list of family vloggers in the USA and request their participation in the study.
Sampling Method
The purpose of the current research is to establish the mental and behavioral impacts of family vlogging on children. It aims to unravel how the vlogging environment is likely to influence the short-term and long-term mental health and behavioral outcomes of children. A non-probability sampling approach, in turn, will be used to recruit the participants. It is a suitable strategy for the research because it provides a subjective approach to recruiting family vloggers that satisfy different criteria ranging from the number of subscribers to their level of activity in the channel.
The type of non-probability sampling suitable for the research, nonetheless, is quota sampling. Quota sampling focuses on ensuring that the researcher has realized specific quotas for the different subunits of the population sample (Yadav et al., 2019, p.73). For example, in the current research, it might be necessary to recruit 10 families that have less than 1 million subscribers, 10 families that have between 1 million and 5 million subscribers, and 10 families with more than 5 million subscribers. These quotas will ensure that the researcher can analyze more variables and provide a more conclusive research study. Studies acknowledge that quota sampling is essential when the researcher is trying to collect a representative population sample (Iliyasu & Etikan, 2021, p.25).
Additionally, the quota sampling technique is suitable for dissertations and theses because of the speed and efficiency of collecting a representative sample without using a sampling frame. Finally, quota sampling ensures an adequate representation of each stratum within the sample. This means that it also eliminates the possibility of overrepresentation of some samples. This can be attributed to the fact that the study population is divided into different strata, and participants are selected based on their ability to satisfy other criteria.
References
Carrêlo, C. (2022). YouTube Family Vlogging as a Promoter of Digital Child Labour: A Case Study on ‘The Bucket List Family’. Malmo University. Web.
Chen, J. L., & Dermawan, A. (2020). The Influence of YouTube beauty Vloggers on Indonesian Consumers’ Purchase Intention of Local Cosmetic Products. International Journal of Business and Management, 15(5), 100. Web.
Iliyasu, R., & Etikan, I. (2021). Comparison of Quota Sampling and Stratified Random Sampling. Biometrics & Biostatistics International Journal, 10(1), 24–27. Web.
Pacht-Friedman, J. (2021). The Monetization of Childhood: How Child Social Media Stars Are Unprotected from Exploitation in the United States. Cardozo J. Equal Rts. & Soc. Just., 28(361), 362-387.
Riggio, A. G. (2020). The Small-er Screen: YouTube Vlogging and the Unequipped Child Entertainment Labor Laws. Seattle UL Rev, 44.
Talukdar, N. (2020). The Adverse Effects of Family Vlogging on Children. International Journal of Research and Analytical Reviews (IJRAR), 7(1). Web.
Yadav, S. K., Singh, S., Gupta, R., Yadav, S. K., Singh, S., & Gupta, R. (2019). Sampling methods. Biomedical Statistics: A Beginner’s Guide, 71-83. Web.