Children in the Public Eye: From Blogs to Brooklyn Beckham
Everyone is talking about Brooklyn Beckham’s statement, and I’ve had thoughts about children in the public eye for a long time - though mine are rooted more in the blogging and vlogging world than celebrity culture.
It was this quote that stood out most to me in Brooklyn’s exposé:
“For my entire life, my parents have controlled narratives [..] about our family. The performative social media posts, family events and inauthentic relationships have been a fixture of the life I was born into.”
You can scroll back through this blog and see that it started around 2009. Before that, I used various precursors to blogging platforms to document my thoughts and memories. Before social media (fuck, that makes me sound so old), blogging was a way to talk to people about… well, literally anything and everything. I shared family pictures, started discussions, and built a small but respectful community.
As the internet developed and my readership grew, I was approached by some forward-thinking brands who recognised the power of blogging. That was the beginning of what is now called “online influencing”.
With that power came great responsibility. I always felt I had to be genuine and honest, so my reviews were balanced. Some of those reviews were family-focused products or experiences, which meant including images or quotes from my children (and later, grandchildren).
But as they grew older, I had to respect their wishes not to have their pictures or thoughts shared online. I was also very aware that the internet had changed - once something is published, you relinquish control.
Bear with me, I’m getting to the point…
As blogging evolved, some of my peers built hugely successful careers from their writing. Some of us moved into vlogging, and we watched the rise of daily family vlogs documenting everyday life. On the surface it sounds mundane, but people wanted to watch other people doing normal things. It gave a sense of comfort, and of normality.
In these vlogs - and in “normal” family life - everything appeared to be shown. But it wasn’t. What we saw was a carefully curated version of reality. An entire day edited down into a 10-minute to one-hour snapshot. The parents controlled the edit. They controlled the narrative. Exactly as Brooklyn is now describing.
Because of my interest in blogging, social media, and vlogging, I’ve followed a number of families who film their lives day in, day out. I’ve watched their children grow from newborns into pre-teens, teenagers, and beyond. I’ve arguably been shown more information about those children than I have about my own grandchildren.
But it’s still a constructed story - one designed to draw viewers back every single day.
I could easily name the worst offenders, but what’s more concerning is how this behaviour has bled onto newer platforms like TikTok. Parents identifying their children by name. Using them in monetised content and product placements. Making a life lived through a phone screen seem completely normal.
What worries me is that those videos - the footage, the captions, the Instagram grids - may end up being the most damaging thing these children face when they eventually step out into the wider world. They’ve been filmed, often without meaningful consent, for most of their lives.
Parents will argue that there are private moments, that the camera isn’t on all the time. But the reality remains: fortunes have been made - real, life-changing money through brand deals and ad revenue - by turning their children into content. Into performers. Into the product.
And once that narrative is out there, it can’t be edited back out.
Brooklyn Beckham speaking out feels less like celebrity drama and more like a warning shot. He’s simply one of the most visible examples of something that’s been quietly normalised for years - parents controlling the narrative of their children’s lives for public consumption. Whether it’s a global celebrity family or a YouTube account filmed in a kitchen, the mechanism is the same. Childhood becomes content, consent becomes assumed, and the edit belongs to the adult holding the camera. The uncomfortable truth is that many of these children won’t realise the weight of what’s been shared about them until it’s far too late to take it back.