Child Influencers on Instagram Attract the Worst Kind of Attention

Instagram supposedly requires children to be 13 to create an account but in reality lots of younger kids lie to get on the site. Their goal is to become an influencer, someone who makes a living from the platform by gaining lots of followers. On Instagram in particular, this means posting lots of images, often of a sexualized nature.

This turns out to be a business model which attracts a lot of adult men, not only as customers but as photographers and social media experts. An investigation by the NY Times found many of the men volunteering for these jobs have a background as pedophiles.

The Times viewed thousands of Instagram accounts and tracked months of conversations by professed pedophiles on Telegram. Reporters also examined thousands of pages of police reports and court records and interviewed nearly 200 people associated with the child-influencer industry, including felons and alleged victims who had never before spoken publicly.

The investigation uncovered reports of dozens of men offering services to child influencers as either a business or hobby. Almost all of them declared a sexual interest in minors or fostered relationships, both online and in person, with the children and their families.

In North Carolina, a photographer named Larry Vincent Wagner, who had run a site called Starlight Nation that offered photos of girls, is now in prison after pleading guilty in January to charges of possessing illegal images of children.

If you’re wondering where the parents of these girls are, it turns out in most cases they are heavily involved acting as their children’s agents and frequently agreeing to sell unpublished photos of their kids to make money. It’s the mothers of these young girls who get approached first.

In one technique, they message mothers on Instagram, asking to buy additional photos not featured on their accounts. The requests seem like safe, easy money, said a mother in Florida, but she later learned they could disguise a sinister intent.

“They’re doing that to groom that parent, to see if they could get something more,” said the mother, who related several examples of mothers being lured.

In a disturbing twist, the creeps approaching women for access to their children often sell themselves as protectors.

He and other men have regularly styled themselves as protectors against other pedophiles, claiming to have special knowledge of how to navigate the dark side of the internet.

Ultimately though, the real appeal of these male “experts” is money. They offer cash and for some of the moms that is enough to get them onboard.

Mr. Durtschi, who resided in Texas, said he was drawn into the child-influencer world through a combination of his sexual attraction to children and the ease of approaching them through Instagram. In 2021, he said, he was browsing Instagram and came across an 8-year-old cheerleader who lived nearby. He reached out to the mother and proposed a photo shoot.

The first sessions consisted of innocent shots in a park, he said, but after a few weeks, he suggested they sell racier photos to make money. The mother was interested, he recalled, but insisted it be kept quiet. He reached out to pedophiles on Telegram. “It went to the guys I most trusted,” Mr. Durtschi said.

That mother is now serving a 32-year sentence. But in some cases it goes beyond photos. Some of these men initiate relationships with the mothers in order to get closer to the children. Others have been accused of sexual assaulting girls they are photographing. The story ends by noting that three former child models for one photographer eventually became prostitutes because they had a fanbase of men willing to pay.

The bottom line is that Instagram has privatized and democratized the kind of abuse that used to be the province of Hollywood. It’s a place where mothers post photos of young children to attract a clientele of creepy male adults, often aided by pedophiles who get paid to work as photographers or career advisors. 

Any parent with any sense would keep their kids away from this site and direct them to a more useful career goals than being an influencer. Sadly, some of the parents are just as creepy as the clients. The commenters on this story agree.

I don’t have kids myself but it seems like Parenting 101 to not let strange men take pictures of your 12 year old in her underwear. Maybe I am hopelessly out of touch with this generation but, hey, that’s just me. The parents, the people running Instagram, the perverts taking the pictures all need to be locked up. This is sick stuff.

Blame the mothers for allowing this:

What. Is. Wrong. With. These. So called “mothers”? Out to make money off the backs of their young daughters?? They are no better than pimps even if they manage to resist selling unclothed pictures of their children. I cannot understand how it is legal for a mother to have her daughter become an influencer and financially benefit. Who in their right mind could possibly think this is ok????

One more:

This article is so sickening, I’ve had to stop reading it several times. 

In what universe does a parent think it’s a good idea to sexualize and monetize the sexualization of their minor, often pre-pubescent, daughters?

The article is about the men who gravitate toward “helping” and ultimately grooming these wannabe child influencers. But I’m looking at the parents. THEY are the ones with the moral obligation to protect their children. THEY are the legal guardians who are selling their children’s innocence for forty pieces of silver. 

It’s giving me physical revulsion.

This is revolting and putting a bunch of these mothers in jail would help send a message to the other idiots out there.