A controversy over major momfluencer Wren & Jacquelyn sparks a campaign over child predators on TikTok

• A few weeks ago, all the comments on popular TikTok account Wren & Jacquelyn were switched off.
• People had started speculating the videos of the mother-daughter duo were attracting predators.
• It spurred a larger conversation of parents putting their children online for an unknown audience.

The videos on Wren & Jacquelyn, a TikTok account run by Jacquelyn Paul that documents moments from her life with her 3-year-old daughter, Wren, consistently get millions of views. But a few weeks ago, all the comments were switched off. What was once a bustling comment section went quiet as dozens of other TikTokers accused Paul of posting suggestive content of her daughter that could fall into the hands of pedophiles.

The TikTok hashtag #SaveWren, which surged in popularity over the last month and has been viewed over 30 million times as of this week, is filled with videos alleging child exploitation and calling for the account to be shut down. One video criticizing Paul has over 2 million views and shows examples of a handful of comments on the Wren account's videos that sexualize the 3-year-old and request suggestive content.

There is no evidence that Paul is consciously exposing her child to harm, and she did not respond to Insider's request for comment. The backlash over the account, however, has brought renewed attention to the ethics of parents putting their children online for an unknown audience.

Family influencers who place their kids at the forefront of their content often receive intense scrutiny from viewers, who accuse them of exploiting children who are not old enough to consent to being so visible online. The long-term impacts of such visibility are still being studied, but experts point to privacy risks and potential mental-health issues that may have negative repercussions later in life.

There are long-term impacts of children being online their whole lives

TikToks of Paul and Wren dancing together, dressing up, and eating ice cream have earned the duo 17 million followers on the app, and 229,000 on Instagram. Before the comments on both were shut off, fans would praise Paul's parenting and thank her for brightening their days. But this support came alongside intense criticism aimed at Paul, who lives in Nebraska and started using TikTok to document her life during the pandemic, and her decision to raise Wren in the spotlight.

TikToker Emily Elizabeth, who posts under the name earth2emilyxx, has posted a series of videos about Paul to her 17,000 followers. In one, which received 2.3 million views, she claimed that photos of Wren, sometimes edited, were being posted on outside websites and potentially shared among child predators.

Elizabeth pointed Insider to Pinterest, where images of Wren are widely shared. Insider found several Pinterest accounts with male names that commented on images of Wren, saying "cute" and adding heart eye emojis, or had pictures of her in folders alongside multiple pictures of other young girls and babies. One was titled "Girls I like," while another had several images of children tied up and gagged.

Elizabeth also noted how many times the videos on Wren & Jacqueline had been saved — a number that can be viewed on any video underneath the likes and comments buttons. One video from March, for example, shows Wren in the bath, which was liked 880,000 times and saved 22,000 times. Another, which has over 10 million views, shows Wren using perfume, pretending to shave with a razor, and mimicking inserting a tampon, has been saved 385,000 times. Keywords that come up when searching the username Wren Eleanor include several terms that could be deemed suggestive or adult, including "eating corndog," "crop top," "tampon," and "roleplay."

"You're bound to find accounts like these with little girls in revealing clothing and pictures of their feet," Elizabeth said. TikTok removed one of Elizabeth's videos about Wren & Jacquelyn within six minutes for "harassment and bullying," she said. She believes that the platform is "not allowing creators to shed light on these types of people and these types of accounts."

Elina Telford, a clinical psychologist, told Insider that while social media can help parents teach their children about issues such as consent and privacy, life online is also "fraught with danger and unintended consequences."

Children are unlikely to understand the consequences of their photos and videos being out there for millions of people to see, Telford said. It also opens them up to being shamed, mocked, and cyberbullied now or later in life.

Filming young children is also potentially problematic from a developmental perspective, Telford added, because they may become inclined to "people-pleasing" behavior and lose their sense of autonomy. This can lead to mental-health issues down the line and erode self-esteem.

"Uploading videos and images can impede a child's sense of agency, ability, and belief in narrating and owning their life story, with it instead being shaped and told by others," Telford said.

Some parents have decided to take their children's faces offline altogether

Katy Prichard, an influencer with 92,000 followers, decided to stop sharing the faces of her children on social media just after Christmas of 2021, because she was made aware that pictures of them were being used on something known as "role-playing" accounts. The Washington Post reported on a subculture of "baby role-playing" in 2014, and found several accounts that shared sexual-abuse storylines, and others that focused on breastfeeding and being "nakey."

"Oh let me see you need a band aid here *slowly puts a band aid on her booboo*" one comment on a post showing a photo of a baby read, according to The Washington Post.

Prichard found out that her own children's photos were being posted by strangers and given new names, then used as prompts for followers to get involved in their own role-playing fantasies.

Prichard said in a statement on Instagram that while posting images of kids can be "harmless and innocent," it often "turns into a dark fetish involving babies and children."

Prichard told Insider she was "freaked out" and felt "violated" when she realized the extent to which her children's pictures could be shared on the internet, and quickly removed all of them from her profile.

"From there, everything in my life, as far as social media goes, definitely changed," she said. "I'm actually pretty thankful that it happened, because I was able to gain a new perspective on not only the risks of the dangers of children being exploited online, but also just because I think that they deserve that privacy."

Prichard, who still follows many fellow mommy bloggers and influencers, said she is sometimes a bit "triggered" when she logs on, because so many of them still choose to show their kids at the forefront of their content. It's so normalized, she said, but her perspective of what's appropriate has changed.

"It's just a part of them not realizing the harm and the risks and the future outcome of it," Pritchard said. "We don't know the repercussions of what it's gonna be in the future."

A red line for Prichard is family-oriented accounts clearly profiting off the children by putting their faces front and center on every post. When you use your child to monetize your account, like getting branding deals and paid trips, "that's the highest level of exploitation," she said.

"I still think you can share motherhood, because that is who I am," Prichard said, who still posts frequently but with her kids' faces covered or hidden. "But you can do that in a way where you're not exploiting your children."

Once a child's photos are out there, anybody can access them, including predators

Stacey Barell Steinberg, a law professor and children's rights attorney, told Insider it's not just influencers with big followings who struggle with the balance of what to share and what not to, but all parents who have social-media accounts. Sometimes children are happy when their parents share things about them, she said, especially when it comes to their achievements. But influencers' children face unique challenges, and their large audiences and intense followings make it hard for kids to escape exposure.

"The pendulum and public opinion swings very quickly with regards to how parents use their kids online," Barell Steinberg said.

"Sharenting," as some researchers call it, can affect children's mental health, but other tangible harms can include identity theft and pedophiles taking images for illicit purposes, Barell Steinberg added.

"Innocent pictures could be saved, they could be morphed into deep-fake images for child pornography, or just use in inappropriate ways," Barell Steinberg said.

Law-enforcement agencies and advocates have been issuing warnings for years about the dangers of children's online images being sexualized by predators, Telford said, but she believes that many people still don't see it as a genuine threat.

"People need to be educated as to the true and horrific risk of uploading images of their child anywhere online, to allow them to make safeguards to mitigate risk," she said. "Unfortunately, even the most innocent images can attract unwanted attention."