SPRINGFIELD – As the lead sponsor of the nation’s first law protecting child influencers from financial exploitation, State Senator Dave Koehler is celebrating California joining Illinois in passing legislation ensuring young content creators will earn fair financial compensation for the use of their image.

“Children everywhere deserve to be protected from exploitation on social media—not just those who live in our state,” said Koehler (D-Peoria). “I am excited to see California follow Illinois’ example by codifying protections for kid influencers and establishing guidelines so the young people featured will be able to access money they earned from this content as they get older.”

Earlier this year, Koehler’s measure, Senate Bill 1782, went into effect. The law requires parents or guardians that feature a minor in at least 30% of their content that is earning at least $0.10 per view to create a trust account for the minor, where they will deposit at least half of the earnings made from a video the minor is featured in. The initiative was championed by a high school student in Koehler’s district, Shreya Nallamothu, who noticed child influencers going viral on social media and was concerned that their parents could be pocketing all of the profits from the child’s content creation.

Recently, California’s Senate Bill 764 was signed into law. Similar to Koehler’s legislation, the law requires content creators who feature minors in at least 30% of their content to set aside a proportion of their earnings in a trust that the child can access as an adult.

“As an emerging industry, content creation does not have many regulations, including protections for child influencers, some of the most vulnerable in this field,” said State Representative Sharon Chung (D-Bloomington), the House sponsor for Illinois Senate Bill 1782.  “Illinois and California are setting a national precedent that minors are owed compensation for their content creation work, and I am hopeful that more states reach for this standard so their young people are better protected.”

Koehler and Chung are proud that other states are following Illinois’ suit and advocating for the safety of child influencers.