Why Are Family Vloggers Really Leaving California for Nashville?

According to the rumor mill of TikTok, mom influencers and family vloggers are fleeing the state of California because of a recent change in child labor laws which requires them to pay their children. Videos expanding on the theory are going viral, with millions of views and commenters breathlessly speculating on the motives of the content creators who have made the cross-country move. There’s just one problem: the creators themselves say they moved for other reasons.

There are two main pieces of evidence in the theory running rampant in the comments. First, in September, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 764which requires content creators who feature minor children in at least 30 percent of their content to set aside a proportionate percentage of the earnings into a trust fund the child can access once they reach the age of 18. With the passing of the law, California became the third state in the country to legislate protections for influencer kids, joining Illinois and Minnesota. 

The second piece of evidence: Within the last year, major family influencers like the LaBrant Family (who have 12.8 million YouTube subscribers), Cecily Bauchmann (who has 2.2 million TikTok followers,) and Brittany Xavier (who has 5.1 million TikTok followers) have either moved to Tennessee or announced their plans to. In a video, Kristi Cook of the account @spillsesh_yt explained that people believe the influencers are moving out of California “because they want to be able to exploit their children online.” “It’s very interesting timing that a lot of them are family influencers or influencers that have kids at the same time that there has been this new law set in place in California protecting child influencers,” Cook tells Rolling Stone.

In the family vlogger world, there are few families bigger than the LaBrants, made up of dad Cole, mom Savannah and their five blond, beaming children. Though the LaBrants announced their move to Tennessee two years ago with an Instagram post explaining that it’s “where God is calling our family,” videos and comments claim that they fled California to avoid paying their children for their appearances in sponsored and monetized content as required by the new law. In response to a request for comment, Sheri LaBrant, Cole’s mother tells Rolling Stone that the theory is baseless. “Cole and Savannah moved for several reasons,” Sheri says, including being closer to family and the fact that Tennessee doesn’t have a state income tax. “Tennessee aligns more with their conservative values compared to California.” Plus, Sheri says, she can’t be sure about other families, but she says that Cole and Savannah have always put money in a fund for their kids and the family supports the new California law.

Though there isn’t data on the political leanings of family vloggers and parent influencers, the majority appear to be both religious and conservative, says Taylor Lorenz, an internet culture reporter and founder of User Mag, making Tennessee a more ideological fit than California. And, Lorenz points out, California has continued to lose residents to other states, with data showing more people leaving the state than moving to it. Tennessee has also become a hot-spot for all kinds of influencers. “Since 2020, Tennessee has been exploding as an influencer hub,” Lorenz says. “There’s a real network and ecosystem there of more conservative influencers. The cost of living is incredibly cheap and all sorts of influencers are moving there.” 

But in recent years, the ethical considerations of featuring children in monetized content has become a prominent discussion, with detractors claiming children can’t give meaningful consent to an online footprint vast enough to include things like videos of potty-training routines and sponsored posts of their first menstrual cycles. In the publication of the first-ever memoir of a family vlogging kid, Shari Franke’s House of My Mother shone a spotlight on the reality of being a child influencer; Franke told Rolling Stone her family appeared smiling and joyful in videos but the reality of life behind the cameras was starkly different, with her mother, who has since been convicted of child abuse, yelling at the children to cooperate. “It would cut and the next clip would be, We’re happy again,” Franke said. Though the Franke case is an extreme example of what vlogging and child influencing can lead to, advocates for protections for child influencers point to concerns over child labor and privacy. In an environment where viewers — and snarkers — are rethinking the implications of sharing a child’s life online, it’s no surprise that TikTokers are willing to believe that creators are moving their families from one state to another to avoid financial protections for their kids.

Cecily Bauchmann, a viral creator who posts vlogs of her life as a mom of four, took to TikTok to document her family’s move from California to Tennessee in a series of videos compiled in a playlist called “Move With Us.” TikTokers have accused Bauchmann of moving to avoid paying her children in accordance with the new California law. However, a representative for Bauchmann tells Rolling Stone that the new California law “did not influence” the family’s move to Tennessee. “This decision was personal, focused on strengthening family ties and supporting her husband’s career, and was not related to any legislative changes in California,” the representative says. “Cecily supports the new California law and believes it is a positive step toward ensuring fair treatment and compensation for minors. She values fair labor practices and commends efforts to protect young workers.”

Brittany Xavier, a mom creator whose most viral TikTok video has 40.3 million views, was likewise accused of moving from California to Tennessee to avoid paying her kids. Xavier took to the app to clear the air directly. “It has been a wild week on TikTok,” she says into the camera as she does her makeup. She goes on to explain that her family chose Tennessee because they wanted to live somewhere with a strong sense of community, a slower pace of life, and “an amazing climate for farming” which Xavier wants in order to grow her own food. “The assumption that we moved to avoid paying our children is so laughable,” she says as she pats blush onto her sculpted cheekbones. “At the end of the day, people are always going to believe what they want.”