News item | 18-12-2025 | 17:47
For children under the age of 13 in commercial vlogs with more than 50,000 followers, a parent or guardian must apply for an exemption. With this change in the law, State Secretary Jurgen Nobel (Participation and Integration) wants to better protect children in commercial family vlogs and so-called kidfluencers against child labor. He also wants agreements with advertisers to tackle the revenue model behind family vlogs.
Children who appear in commercial content from family vloggers or mom and dad influencers can run serious mental risks, such as developing fear of failure, stress or feelings of depression.
To better protect these children, the government is working on a change in the law that will make them subject to the Working Hours Act. To this end, the government is aligning as much as possible with the laws and regulations that already apply to artistic work under the age of 13, for example in films and musicals. No exemption is required for 13 to 15 year olds. For this group, there are statutory working and rest times that employers must adhere to.
“Vlog families and kidfluencers can be a modern form of child labor. To protect children against this, I am amending labor legislation. I also want to tackle the revenue model behind family vlogs. Agreements must be made with advertisers. They must also realize the risks associated with working with child vloggers,” says State Secretary Nobel.
No negative effects
Parents who apply for an exemption must ensure that child vloggers do not experience any negative effects from their commercial online activities and have enough time to relax, learn and exercise.
The Labor Inspectorate will assess the exemption applications. The exemptions will become mandatory for children up to the age of 13 who vlog themselves or appear in videos from parents. This concerns social media accounts with at least 50,000 subscribers or followers. From this limit, the income can be so high that there is a profit motive and the risks of harmful effects increase.
Parents who do not comply with the new rules may be fined. Fines now range between 1,000 and 2,000 euros, but parents only have to pay a quarter of that. That reduction will expire. The State Secretary is also looking at how the fines can be increased even further.
Information campaign
To ensure that parents are better aware of the risks that children run by creating paid content online, a campaign will start in the new year. This informs parents from the target group about the possible harmful consequences of vlogging with their children and what choices you face in practice if you want to do this responsibly.
The government wants to make the bill public for consultation within six months.