Liza Anokhina was 11 when people started recognizing her in the street. Now a year older, she is one of Russia’s most popular child bloggers with 2.3 million followers on Instagram.
In a Moscow park, her producer jogged backward, using his smartphone to film as Liza ran and blew raspberries. Tall and slim, and wearing thick makeup for the shoot, she squealed with laughter when she viewed the result.
“We’ve done [Instagram] ‘stories,’ now we’ll do TikTok,” 25-year-old producer Ivan Bushmelev told her, referring to her main social media platform.
Photo: AFP
Russia has about 40 million Instagram users, behind only Indonesia, India, Brazil and the US, according to data firm Statista.
The photo-sharing platform is, as elsewhere in Europe, particularly popular among children, analysts have said.
Instagram and other platforms have spawned a generation of young “influencers,” leading to concerns that parents might exploit children for financial gain.
Another risk is that the desire to accumulate “likes” might be psychologically damaging for children.
Such concerns have forced social media companies to react, with YouTube and Instagram moving to make such blogs less attractive to advertisers and to make “likes” invisible to users other than the creators.
Yet, many Russian parents encourage their children to blog and even send them to classes to improve their skills.
The youngest child bloggers unwrap toys or sweets. Older ones like Liza speak on camera and film sketches.
They earn from ads and by promoting products, as brands value their connection with their peers.
Liza clutched her smartphone in a pink plastic case, admitting that she uses it eight hours a day.
The clips on her Instagram account, anokhina_elizabeth_2007, are ultra-polished and looping, with visual effects and music.
Asked how her earnings have changed her family’s life, she gave what sounded like a well-practiced answer: “It has changed our life for the better. I prefer to keep the topic of my earnings a secret.”
Revealing few details, she said that her mother is a lawyer and her father is a former military man.
She vowed to keep creating content, even as social media platforms prepare to bring in changes that could hit her channels.
To combat cyberbullying, Instagram is experimenting with hiding the number of “likes” on others’ posts, and from next year YouTube would bar targeted ads in videos aimed at children.
“It is a problem because of the way viewers are: They’re used to seeing numbers,” Bushmelev said of the potential Instagram changes. “Not just viewers, but advertisers, too.”
Fans, both girls and boys, walked up to take selfies with Liza.
“She speaks well, she’s clever, she makes interesting videos,” 12-year-old Natalya Usacheva said, while Veronika Kosynkina, also 12, said that she aspires “to dress just as stylishly” as Liza.
For Moscow-based child psychologist Viktoria Karavayeva, top child bloggers, just like school sports stars, could develop “dependence on popularity — that is, likes, comments, people talking about them.”
This could lead to “dependence on outside reactions and approval, tunnel vision only on this,” she said.
While it is normal for teenagers to value their peers’ esteem, those who are “very sensitive to comparisons and outside judgement” might come to crave online likes, she added.
At a video blogging class at Moscow’s Coddy programming school, 11-year-old Artyom Shalovey has big ambitions.
“I’m constantly waiting for the moment when I get 1 million subscribers,” he said, planning to blog on computer games, pranks and BMX stunts.
He has a way to go, with only about 130 subscribers.
“For me, it’s important both earning lots of money and having lots of subscribers,” he said.
During the two-hour class, children discussed topics, wrote scripts and filmed with their smartphones.
Their 23-year-old teacher, Amela Shabotich, is a student at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics.
She said that she enjoys seeing children’s blogs develop, with topics ranging from fashion modeling to learning English.
Karavayeva said that parents tend to be more concerned with rationing the time their children spend on gadgets than with the content, and some children see material that scares them.
Parents should follow their children’s favorite bloggers and “discuss things that bother them,” she added.
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