Four-year-old Jerome had an Instagram account before he was born.
His mother Nina, a model and influencer, had 40,000 followers and multiple brand deals at the time.
When she got pregnant, her account grew even bigger as people tracked her progress.
"I've had three prams for free … bassinets, socks, clothes … blankets, swaddles, name plaques," she says.
"I don't think there's a single thing I actually needed to buy."
Getting Jerome his own account felt like a natural progression.
"As soon as he was born I just looked at his face and I'm like, 'Aww, here we go'," she says.
"You're my son, you're just going to be a little mini copy of me."
Nina, who lives in Queensland, says Jerome's account blew up when she posted this photo.
Now Jerome has almost 100,000 followers and brand deals worth about $20,000 a year, according to his mum.
You might even recognise him — he has modelled for iconic Australian brands and appeared in traditional ad campaigns for children's clothing.
But as much as Nina loves her son being a child influencer — or "kidfluencer" —she knows you might be judging her.
"There's a lot of ups and downs with putting your kids … on social media and [people saying] 'it's not safe' and 'you're exploiting your child', and things like that," she says.
"But as a mother, I believe I'm doing everything possible to protect him and do it all safely."
The 'contagion effect' of social media influencers
More and more children are becoming influencers and vying for attention on your social media feed.
Before social media, those seeking the limelight might have got an agent and pursued acting or modelling, but now influencing is a way to cut out the middleman and reach audiences directly.
For many, it's an avenue to becoming famous and a popular career choice.
One in three children want to be YouTubers when they grow up, compared with just one in 10 who want to become astronauts, an international survey found in 2019.
"It's almost like a contagion effect," says Lyn Swanson Kennedy, who has been looking at kidfluencers in her role with Collective Shout, a group against the objectification of women and children.
"This growing group of children … promoting brands, promoting their own content, wanting success and fame."
For brands, children help sell things through "cute bait", says Professor Crystal Abidin, a digital anthropologist at Curtin University.
"Everybody loves a good chuckle from a child having a cute moment," she says.
"That's the segue or the clickbait for us to find out more about what's being advertised."
But this contagion has created a growing ethical minefield about whether children can consent to being social media stars and if they understand what it could mean in the future.
Some fear it could even be placing child influencers in danger.
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The families Four Corners has spoken to have seen some of these dangers and say the benefits outweigh the risks.
A 'big personality in a little person's body'
Ava's Instagram posts and reels are full of gymnastics tricks, modelling and brand promotions.
The 10-year-old from South Australia, who loves Dolly Parton and cracking jokes, has had an Instagram account since she was eight.
"Ava's a big personality in a little person's body. She … loves cheerleading and dance," her mum Zoe says.
"She just loves to perform for other people."
With more than 14,000 followers, Ava doesn't make much money from brand work, but she does get a lot of free stuff — from hairbrushes to dresses and cushions.
She also makes about $500 a month, according to her family, from social media subscribers and people who make donations to support her.
Ava is clear on where she wants to go.
"I want to be famous," she says.
"I feel like I can keep going and … I would never stop."
Ava's even started her own fashion brand — a line of workout clothing that she designs with some help from her mum.
When Zoe is asked if she's driving something Ava doesn't want to do, she is firm.
"No," she says.
"She's very much got her own personality. Sometimes she tells me how it is."
Ava looks over all of the posts before they go out and tells Four Corners she likes being on social media.
One of the reasons Zoe is encouraging Ava's passions, like kidfluencing and cheerleading, is because her daughter finds reading and writing difficult.
"I think Instagram has helped … boost her confidence a bit and [show her] there's other avenues that she can do," Zoe says.
But there are negative sides to being on social media that Ava is just beginning to learn about.
Like many child influencers who are into gymnastics, dance or modelling, Ava has attracted unwanted attention from accounts that appear to be run by men.
Her mum Zoe spends each morning before Ava gets up blocking certain followers on Ava's account.
She has been sent several explicit images and sexual messages.
"The first time I ever received one, I felt sick to my stomach, felt really sick," Zoe says.
She says their family discussed the messages and decided to continue while being more vigilant, including being careful about posting any location information.
"She could be anywhere, on or off of social media, and there can be paedophiles. It happens at schools, it happens anywhere," Zoe says.
"As a parent, I think we need to be vigilant and aware … but we keep going because it's what she loves."
AFP Commander Helen Schneider from the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation says the risks increase once children start having public profiles and have people following them that they don't know.
"When you put a public image out there, it can be used in any way, by anyone, for any type of nefarious purpose," she says.
Nina has experienced this with Jerome, finding copycat accounts made using his photos on Instagram.
She says when she contacted one account holder to take down the photos, they doubled down and claimed Jerome was their son.
The four-year-old's photos were also found on a fake US adoption website, being used to advertise a child.
"They portrayed themselves to be legitimate. They had an address of an adoption agency in America and were posting my son among with many other children," Nina says.
"As soon as I saw that, my heart sank. It was a really, really scary moment."
The scam has since been taken down.
'I didn't think I was an influencer'
Bobbi, a Queensland child influencer who is now 15, has also experienced the downsides of Instagram.
Her mum, Kym, started Bobbi's account when she was seven to promote her dance talents and help her get work.
"I didn't think I was an influencer at that age," Bobbi says.
"I wasn't caring about the followers or the likes — I was just a little kid just showing off what they do."
Her account grew a huge audience of 250,000 followers, which Bobbi says led to brand deals and sponsorships.
In the dance world, children often wear small costumes and make-up, but Kym says she tried her hardest to portray Bobbi as "the child she was at the age she was".
Despite Kym's efforts, Bobbi's account still drew unwanted attention and sexual comments from men.
Kym says at one point, she spent hours a day trying to vet new followers and block people.
People were messaging Bobbi's account asking her to do certain dance poses and sending sexual images using her photos.
Kym had complete control of the account, so Bobbi never saw these messages or comments.
Copycat and fan Instagram accounts also started popping up, with users egging each other on with sexual comments about Bobbi.
Kym says she complained multiple times to Instagram about the fake accounts, which she says remained live.
Then one day, she woke up to find Bobbi's real account, with hundreds and hundreds of posts, had been deleted by Instagram.
Losing Bobbi's account meant they also lost their followers, which caused brands to desert them, Kym says.
"That was like, 'are you kidding me?'" she says.
"That's her whole career and they just wiped it."
When we ask Kym whether she thinks she contributed to sexualising Bobbi, she says no.
"Do you watch the Olympics? They do gymnastics, they do swimming. Bobbi, a lot of the time, is more covered than that," she says.
"It's like telling a woman, 'You shouldn't go out in public dressed like that because you could get raped.'
"Why? That's teaching my daughter to feel ashamed.
"I'm not responsible for other people having a judgement or opinion. That's their own business," Kym says.
"I know what we're doing. Bobbi knows what we're doing. She's safe, in my eyes."
When Four Corners asked Instagram owner Meta about the inappropriate fan pages of Bobbi, some of them were taken down.
It did not answer questions about why her account was deleted.
Social media companies profiting from the 'sexualisation of children'
Meta estimates about 100,000 children using Facebook and Instagram receive online sexual harassment each day, including "pictures of adult genitalia", according to a US court case.
Australia's eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, says there is a perverse incentive for social media companies, including Instagram, to keep catering to these male audiences.
"The more explicit the imagery of the young people, the more attention they get, the more likes they get, the more dollars they get," she says.
"They're all driven by profit motive, and sex has always sold."
She says if there was any will, they could make it stop.
"We actually need them to be … proactively building safety into their platforms rather than profiting from the sexualisation of children," she says.
In a statement, Meta said it was categorically untrue that it profited from the sexualisation of children.
"We have clear rules against child sexual exploitation and sexualisation, and we take strong action whenever we become aware of it," a spokesperson said.
The company said it had developed a range of tools to help people protect themselves from unwanted contact, including blocking and reporting.
Instagram says children must be at least 13 to have an account, but younger kidfluencers can get around this by having their accounts run by their parent or an agent.
Collective Shout's Lyn Swanson Kennedy, who does not believe any children should be kidfluencers, wants this to change.
"There is no way to protect these children from [sexual] exploitation. We want all of those accounts removed," she says.
The three families Four Corners spoke to disagree.
Exposure, dreams and future careers
All three families say the positives of child influencing outweigh the negatives.
Zoe loves running Ava's Instagram account — and Ava says she loves it too.
"You can start really small, but if you keep going on you get really big," Ava says.
"So I just think about the good positive stuff that's in the future."
Despite what happened with the fake accounts, both Kym and Bobbi say what they got out of having the Instagram account has been overwhelmingly positive.
"It's given her more exposure around the world for the future, and it allows her … to possibly have more opportunities and to realise that she could go [down] many different avenues," Kym said.
Bobbi also says despite sometimes finding social media frustrating as a child, she's happy she persevered.
"I am glad that I did it, because obviously it got me in a good place," she says.
Bobbi mainly uses Instagram for personal things now, but still has a big following of over 100,000.
Nina has gone back and forth about the right thing to do with Jerome.
After the copycat pages and the adoption scam, she shut down his account for a time, but ultimately she decided to keep going.
While Nina knows she can't stop people stealing Jerome's images, she is careful not to post topless photos of him to prevent them being misused. She also doesn't share any location information.
She points to the head start Jerome is being given, saying that 90 per cent of the $20,000 a year he makes is being put into an account for him when he's an adult.
"At the end of the day, it's up to me. And if I believe I'm protecting him while doing it, that's the best I can do," Nina says.
"When he gets to a certain age where he decides, 'Hey, I don't want to do this …' [he] can stop."
Watch the Four Corners documentary, Kidfluencers now onABC iview.
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