As I grew up, I was always very used to the presence of social media, from BBM to Twitter to Instagram and so on. However, my parents would say ‘Isabel, don’t make your account public’ or ‘Isabel, make your username not your actual name’ because when you are a child you need to be protected from predators. But what if I was brought up in this day and age by Jonathon Saccone Joly? Yeh, I know…what a nightmare.
When I was growing up, I watched families on YouTube like the Saccone Joly’s and the Shaytards (the Shay family), who I thought led normal lives. I used to watch them almost religiously, their weekly uploads had me in some sort of chokehold just like Zoella and Sprinkle of Glitter did too. However, since I have grown up and rediscovered these types of families their whole persona and image now is particularly disturbing.
The Saccone Joly family are not the only ones profiting from this type of child exploitation, they just might be one of the families just doing it the longest. In a TikTok, Jonathon is trying to parody and ultimately gaslight how some people are concerned about his special treatment of Edie, his Transgender daughter, and how much he publicises her transition. Where do I even begin? In respect of any child no matter how they identify, would you want to subject them to possible hate? Why should Edie know that their family is under scrutiny for her transition? He is trying to mock how people think she is forced to do things, and this is the complete epitome of it…she is being forced into the limelight and having to defend her dad for his wrong actions.
Where are the rest of your children in your videos Mr Saccone Joly? Or have you not found a reason to exploit them yet…oh wait you have done recently. How could I forget this TikTok of Emilia you posted of her singing Sam Smith’s latest song ‘Unholy’? The lyrics indicate sexual connotations and are completely inappropriate for his daughter to be repeating to an audience with nearly 9 million views. Not only this but allowing the comment section to be on, which is full of slanderous comments about Emilia’s singing which could damage her if she ever sees them. When I was younger, I loved to sing, I definitely thought I had a chance on X-Factor, but my family knew all too well that that could just be left to me at home where no one could damage my innocent little bubble.
When I am scrolling through TikTok it is refreshing seeing people call out these types of families, like in a snippet of H3’s podcast, where the host (Ethan Klein) states he does not want his child on social media due to the implications this could incur in the future. Although this article has mostly expressed my feelings towards one certain family, this does not scrape the barrel with other families who do even worse, such as @wren.eleanor on TikTok. This mum sexualises and promotes her daughter’s body on the internet. Dressing her in clothes not one bit appropriate for a toddler to wear, eating phallic looking objects and putting it as the cover picture–don’t even get me started on how many people have favourited her videos! Also, there is the ACE family, who are just #badvibes all over, Austin McBroom’s behaviour with his daughters when they were younger is utterly questionable. However, this darker side is for another day.
I do not mind Jonathon spreading awareness for the LGBTQ+ society, but when you exploit your child to get views, shares, and likes it is pretty sad. I hope in the future families like this do not continue to exploit their children and post an excessive number of videos that could have just stayed in their drafts. I have had enough and want to use my platform to speak out against families who quite obviously exploit their children on social media.
I know I don’t usually talk about this; I just review things…but in my usual habit of rating things, this topic gets a -1000/10 <3