Gen Z Doesn't Want to See Your Baby's Face on Tik Tok

Young enough to have had their childhood posted publicly but old enough to be starting families of their own, the world's most online cohort might just kill the multibillion-dollar momfluencer industry once and for all.

- FORTESA LATIFI

It was the early 2000s and the internet was a different place. Moms and dads yearning for a creative outlet simply fired up WordPress and started posting. Their missives offered raw, funny, heartwarming glimpses into life with kids, many of whom became recurring characters in their parents' posts. It was a means to connect, not a business model-not yet, anyway. Any move toward financial gain was seen as "tacky and inauthentic, a sign of selling out," recalls tech journalist Taylor Lorenz in her book Extremely Online.

Then, in 2004, a watershed moment: Heather Armstrong, a Utah mom with a popular personal blog called Dooce, began running banner ads alongside her clicky parenting content. And the payoff was huge. By 2009, she had earned a small fortune thanks to a reported $30,000 to $50,000 a month in revenue, amassed a monthly audience of more than 8 million, published two books, and secured a spot on the Forbes list of most influential women in media. She was a tycoon in a new kind of content industry.

Business opportunities for parenting influencers have only ballooned since, thanks to the rise of video technology and the sprawl of social media. The influencer marketing field as a whole could be worth around $24 billion by the end of this year, with family and parenting content ranking in its top five categories. And that doesn't even include moneymaking avenues like paid subscriptions and in-stream commercials on Tik Tok, Instagram, or YouTube. With dollar signs dangling before them, thousands of these "sharenting" creators have strategized their way to massive followings as they chronicle the deepest intimacies of raising a family, from the moment the pregnancy stick turns blue to the day they send their children off to college.