Social Media Platforms - Vloggers and Video Content Featuring Minors (Child Influencers Protection Act)
HB 21, the Child Influencers Protection Act, creates a new set of rules for vloggers who earn money from social media video content that features minors. If a vlogger meets the bill’s compensation threshold and a child appears in at least 30% of the creator’s content over a 30-day period, the vlogger must pay the child a share of the gross earnings attributable to that content. The bill requires those payments to be placed into separate trusts for each child, to be held until the child turns 18.
The bill also gives adults who were featured as children in a vlogger’s content on or after October 1, 2026, the right to request permanent deletion of that content. Social media platforms receiving such a request must take all reasonable steps to permanently delete the material. In addition, contracts between vloggers and platforms must notify creators of the child’s rights under the new law. The bill amends Maryland labor law so that minors who are required to be compensated under this new vlogger framework are excluded from an existing exemption for work performed in a parent-owned business.
In practical terms, the bill would add a new subtitle to the Business Regulation Article governing “social media vloggers” and would create enforceable compensation, trust, and deletion obligations for creators and platforms. It would also modify the Labor and Employment Article to ensure that child influencers are not treated like ordinary family-business workers for purposes of the minor labor exemptions. The act takes effect October 1, 2026.
The available context shows no recorded votes or committee testimony, so there is no formal legislative debate to summarize. Based on the bill’s subject matter, the measure appears aimed at child privacy, earnings protection, and regulating monetized family content online, with likely support from child welfare and labor-protection interests. Any opposition would likely center on compliance burdens for creators and platforms, questions about enforcement, and the scope of the deletion and trust requirements.
HB 21 would add new provisions to the Business Regulation Article creating Subtitle 10, “Social Media Vloggers,” and would amend Labor and Employment § 3-203(4) to carve out child influencers from an existing minor-work exemption tied to parent-owned businesses. The bill would require qualifying vloggers to compensate children featured in monetized content, direct those payments into trusts until age 18, and impose deletion and notice obligations on social media platforms and creator-platform contracts.
No committee transcript or vote record is provided, so there is no documented floor or committee sentiment. The bill’s framing suggests a generally protective policy approach focused on children’s earnings and privacy rights in monetized online content, which would likely draw support from advocates for minors and family privacy. At the same time, the measure likely raises concerns among content creators and platform operators about administrative burden, compliance costs, and the practicalities of identifying qualifying content and enforcing deletion requests.
The main points of contention are likely to be whether the bill overregulates family and creator content, how difficult it will be to calculate the share of earnings attributable to a child’s appearance, and whether social media platforms can realistically comply with permanent deletion requests. Another likely issue is the bill’s interaction with existing child labor rules, since it removes certain parent-business exemptions for minors who fall under the new vlogger compensation scheme. Supporters would likely emphasize child protection, fair compensation, and privacy; critics would likely focus on vagueness, enforcement, and burdens on creators and platforms.