“What happened to playing with Legos?”: From TikTok to Roblox, Internet Safety for Tween Influencers & Gamers by Seoyoon Lee

On a slow Saturday afternoon, I strolled into Sephora with a couple of my friends, expecting nothing more than casual browsing. Instead, I was met with a scene that felt jarringly out of place: a group of girls no older than twelve, their loud, high-pitched voices echoing across the store.

 “Oh my God, it’s the dew drops that influencer girl used!” one excitedly raved.

 “The packaging is so pretty. I’m definitely buying this,” another added in a louder voice. 

“The Glow Recipe collection is so pretty. I’m getting every single one!!” The last girl exclaimed in a voice so loud that nearly everyone in the store glanced at them. When I followed the noise, I froze. Each tween girl held an armful of Drunk Elephant skincare products—marula oil retinol, intensive hydramask serums, vitamin C exfoliants—items that together total at least $400 per child. 

In what world would a ten-year-old need retinol? What good would these expensive products do for their already poreless skin? And, how were they affording this? It didn’t seem like they had any adults with them. When I glanced at my friends, they seemed to be just as confused as I was. But, the most incredulous part wasn’t even the shopping–they were talking to the camera and filming the whole process.

“Hey, everyone! Today we will walk you through our Sephora haul!” They said to the camera with bright smiles on their faces. It seemed so natural that I almost thought they were FaceTiming their friends until I heard them say, “Let’s save this in the drafts so we can edit it when we get back home.” 

Why were they filming themselves prepping content for a whole beauty channel? Were they some kind of influencers? My friend turns to me and breaks me out of my stupor: “What happened to playing with Legos?” she quipped sarcastically. What happened, indeed.

I went home and started researching immediately. Searches for “Sephora Kids” across major media platforms confirmed that the earlier encounter was not an isolated incident but rather a widespread viral trend. Video after video showed young pre-teen girls vlogging their Sephora hauls or recording “Get Ready With Me (GRWM)” routines, showing their anti-aging skincare products to the camera. On TikTok, adults voiced their concerns about the newly emergent trend. One comment in particular, made by an adult and garnering 60k likes, said, “Their makeup spending habits are insane. It’s like kids are skipping their tween years and jumping straight to being an adult.” The commenters are not far off the mark: it is predicted that children born between 2010 and 2024 (dubbed Gen Alpha) will become a dominant consumer group in the cosmetics industry. According to global market intelligence agency Mintel, Gen Alpha will accumulate "a spending power projected to reach $5.5 trillion by 2029”.

While this is an exciting prospect for the beauty industry, industry critics and internet safety groups raise concerns. In a 2024 interview with Vogue Business, beauty critic Jessica DeFino warned that there’s “no safe way to market beauty products to children and tweens.” She continues, explaining that while products like cleansers, lotions, and SPFs can teach kids about the importance of skincare, many other products, such as contour sticks, foundations, lipsticks, and highlighters, are more aesthetically focused. This can directly fuel harmful beauty standards and social comparisons online–a particularly damaging habit for teens whose developing brains crave social acceptance and validation. Should caring for one's skin trump caring for one's mental health? As teen and tween consumers in the beauty industry, are these things in opposition to each other? Or, can one attain the flawless smoky eye while also maintaining safety and self-esteem?

And should kids be posting at such a young age, when they’re barely past the App Store's age restriction? Since bypassing the age restriction is so easy, the 2023 U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory reported that “Although age 13 is commonly the required minimum age used by social media platforms in the U.S, nearly 40% of children ages 8–12 use social media. “The simplicity of children circumventing the supposedly strict age barrier made me more perplexed. The more I scrolled, the more blatantly apparent it became that the issue extended far beyond mere shopping habits. The comment sections were split: worried adults, bemused older teenagers, the influencer’s fanbase, and critics who seemed to have forgotten they were talking to children. The same pattern emerged on Instagram, only there, the negativity was far more severe. 

Despite the growing concerns, young kids are drawn to the online platform for merits that extend beyond vanity. For many, digital space serves as a means to find the kind of community they cannot find offline. A few taps on the screen let them easily connect with groups of people who share the same interests, whether that’s skincare, gaming, fashion, or niche hobbies that their peers in real life might not understand. The growing interest does not stop at merely observing successful content creators; some kids become active content creators who build their own communities. A 13-year-old girl, currently in middle school, has said that “nearly everyone in our class is active on at least one social media platform. My friend did not have any until recently, as she begged her mother to let her download Instagram so she would not feel left out.” The merits of social media first come from “simply viewing the content,” she explained. Then, young teenagers are further drawn to the online world as they can “share videos and posts through in-app communication systems such as DM (direct message), and the more time I spend on the apps, the more tailored my algorithm becomes to match my personal taste, allowing me to see content I enjoy the most.” 

She also mentioned that the impact of young emerging influencers cannot go unnoticed. She experienced “a deep feeling of awe upon seeing young girls all successful, hanging out in their own influencer circles, and even a slight feeling of jealousy knowing that they do not have to go to school or do any schoolwork, unlike most 13 year old girls.” Social platforms help them form identity at a critical age; they can express themselves, experiment with different types of creative content, and receive attention and validation from communities. “Looking at how much our society values social media and the power that influencers hold, it’s unsurprising that tween girls want to emulate that,” says Dr. Phillippa Diedrichs, a professor of psychology at the Centre for Appearance Research at the University of the West of England, Bristol. The collective desire among young people to be in the public eye is “not new,” she continues. What's different now is that they can become content creators with the snap of a finger. 

Such content creation opens the door to entrepreneurship. Young teenagers can build audiences, collaborate with brands, and even launch their own small businesses. They can gain skills in marketing, video production, editing, advertising, and branding long before graduating from school and entering the workforce. In this sense, the online world offers endless opportunities for growth and positive experiences, which helps explain why so many young people feel compelled to create an online account at such an early age. 

In response to the growing young teenager demographic, social media platforms have developed ways to give children the same enjoyable experience while imposing stronger protections against harmful content. One case is Instagram, where Meta imposed a new policy on September 17th, 2024, that “users under 16 will now need a parent’s approval to change the restricted settings, dubbed 'Teen Accounts,' which filter out offensive words and limit who can contact them.” Naomi Gliet, Meta’s head of product, explained their rationale in an interview with NPR, stating, “It’s addressing the same three concerns we’re hearing from parents around unwanted contact, inappropriate contact, and time spent.” TikTok has also expanded its scope of teen restrictions worldwide, ensuring that teens, regardless of their region or location, are safely protected under the strict system. Valor International Business, based in Brazil, reported how “the new features will allow parents to set time restrictions and control access in specific situations, such as during family gatherings or in classrooms. They will also be able to see who their children follow, their followers, and blocked contacts. Additionally, all accounts for users under 18 will now come with a default setting that disables the app at night, encouraging healthier sleep habits.” Valor International Business reports that TikTok has implemented “restrictions for teenage accounts, [including] a minimum age requirement of 13, content restrictions, a 60-minute daily screen time limit, and a rule preventing users under 16 from sending direct messages.” 

However, even the strict controls have their limits. When journalists Harriet Robinson and Andy Howard from BBC created fake children's accounts on TikTok to testify to the effectiveness, “15-year-old” Maya’s test profile was still exposed to posts showing bullying, suicide of young children, and women and children being abused by men. A similar trend was found in 15-year-old Harry’s fake YouTube channel, where his feed was flooded with videos reviewing dangerous weapons such as knives, guns, and crossbows, and gruesome videos of animals being shot dead. This experiment showed that the filters on social media are not 100 percent trustworthy. Director of the UK Safer Internet Centre, Mr. Wright, warned that everyone must still stay vigilant, especially parents. He then advised the parents to go through their children’s phones and review the contents, apps, and services they frequent, giving a final warning: just because there are stronger online safety laws does not eliminate all the lurking threats online. 

Nevertheless, in contrast to the authorities' and parents’ never-ending concerns, some children feel differently about the online safety acts. For instance, while popular teen beauty influencer, Evelyn Unruh, spoke with Allure in 2024, expressing that all comments–good and bad–are engagement, Evelyn’s mom, Alex Unruh, interjected, “I have words that are [automatically] filtered out in her comments. I get to her messages first so that if there's anything inappropriate, I can report, block, and delete it very quickly. She looks at it as engagement, whereas I’m concerned about bullying and her mental well-being.” Another case was between a 13-year-old boy and his father. While the boy argued that in-app purchases on Roblox, a popular online game, guaranteed a more pleasant in-game experience. He “once bought [me] a currency called slaps in a game called Slap Battles. You get slaps from slapping other people, but you can also buy them with money. The more slaps you have, the more powerful you are,” he explained. Meanwhile, his father disagreed with him. He viewed the feature as extremely harmful, criticizing, “In-app purchase systems are designed to trigger impulsive behavior in children. Whenever I happen to allow my son’s in-app purchase, I do it reluctantly.”

Just as harmful, if not more, is the emotional toll of unfiltered bullying and hate speech. As mentioned above, children who are still developing their self-esteem and coping skills often encounter hateful comments under their content written by kids, or even worse, adults. Without proper comment moderation, a comment section intended to foster community discussion can easily shift to a hostile environment and significantly damage a kid’s mental health. The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory expresses their concern: “This is a period when risk-taking behaviors reach their peak, when well-being experiences the greatest fluctuations, and when mental health challenges such as depression typically emerge.” Ugly hate speech, paired with deliberately curated, impossibly pristine images of successful young influencers online, might also affect one’s self-esteem. They will constantly compare themselves to superficial figures online and continuously feel pressured to look as good as the influencers do. “We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls,” said one internal Facebook report slide from 2019, summarizing research about teen girls who experience the issues. Together, these threats create an ecosystem in which the youngest bear the heaviest risks, often oblivious to the precariousness until after they are harmed. 

To find out what young users might actually be exposed to, I created a test account on Instagram claiming to be born in 2011 and compared the algorithm’s recommendations to those on my actual Instagram account, where the birth year is set to 2007. Minor accounts on Instagram fall under a special “Teen Account System,” which restricts certain content regulated by the “sensitive control option” available for teenager accounts. This feature prevents violent or provocative posts from appearing in children’s feeds, coupled with a feature that minimizes interactions with strangers, allowing minors to only be tagged or mentioned by those whom they follow. I was stunned to experience the restrictions firsthand. Instagram would not let me sign up at all when I entered 2012 or later as my birth year, and once I created a fake 14-year-old’s account, my account was automatically set to private upon logging in. This was not the case for my actual account, as it serves to protect young teenagers from adults who might reach out to them via DM. Another striking difference was that when I clicked on the search icon, I was teleported to my Feed. The posts mainly consisted of a stream of adorable animals, harmless cooking photos, and travel posts–stuff I rarely encounter on my personal feed unless I actively search for it. 

However, this system had some limits. There was no mandatory two-step verification to confirm that the age you entered matched your actual age, creating a massive gap in a wall that lets children easily bypass the age restrictions. Also, despite the posts having a strong restriction barrier that kept the content child-friendly, the same thing could not be said for Instagram Reels. Barely any moderation was regulated for the short-form videos, causing children to be vulnerable to graphic, suggestive, sexual content, and harmful comments flooded with hate speech. Scroll after scroll were videos of violent, graphic games showing blood, a street-fight video where a guy was getting beaten up, and girls dancing suggestively in short outfits. “Whoa, even my actual feed isn’t this bad,” I thought as I scrolled for 10 minutes. This test allowed me to identify flaws in the system while acknowledging Instagram’s efforts. 

Weak moderation leaves children vulnerable to online predation, one of the most alarming risks on platforms where adults can conceal their identities. In addition to predatory behavior, young, innocent users are regularly targeted by monetary scams, from deceptive in-app purchases to fraudulent “giveaways” that exploit their lack of digital discernment. 

This leads us back to Roblox, a steadily popular platform among children and young teens. Roblox has faced numerous controversies since its first release in 2006, ranging from predatory interactions between adults and minors to excessive in-app spending. In one widely reported case, a child from Denbighshire in Wales spent $3,000 on in-game purchases for Robux, a currency for the platform, before the company refunded the family who expressed their concern online–a rare moment of corporate accountability. These significant and minor incidents compelled me to log back into my Roblox account for the first time in seven years. 

The platform was nearly unrecognizable. Roblox appeared to have acknowledged its overwhelmingly young user base, introducing a variety of parental controls and moderation tools that did not exist when I was a child. According to its official website, Roblox has implemented features like communication controls that limit who a child can chat with on the platform, connection controls that a parent can view, block, and report their child’s Roblox connections in a parent dashboard, and spending controls to set a monthly spending limit for how much a child can spend on Roblox. To me, it almost seemed as if Roblox wanted parents to have complete ownership over their children’s accounts, as that was the most effective way to keep them away from danger. These strategies have been reported to be effective by a 13-year-old Robloxian who spends an average of 6 hours a day on Roblox. He states that he has “never felt like the app restrictions were weak.” In fact, he “felt like it was rather strong, as the game tends to give warnings for trivial matters. For instance, [he] received a warning for setting his name as ‘Guy,’ for an unknown reason.” He has also emphasized the difficulty of building relationships with strangers on the platform due to the enhanced restrictions. “No, I never built a relationship solely with Roblox. I couldn't because of the restrictions, which make it hard to share phone numbers,” he added. The father of this 13-year-old boy has positively viewed Roblox’s parental control systems, considering it to be necessary for children who are “at an age where they lack self-control, thus parents setting restrictions is necessary.” 

From allowing kids to build a steady career path at an early age to having devastating effects of online bullying, the internet is like a double-edged sword with countless aspects that cannot be merely listed down into bullet points. Parents and adults are beyond concerned, while children are innocently and freely exploring the fascinating online space. Haemin Yoo, a father of two children, asserted, “I strongly believe that there is no 'good' age for children to start using the internet. This is especially true of consuming short-form content on social media, which I consider pure evil.” He was confident that many parents would agree with him on his take.  After uncovering the chaos within children’s online communities, I desperately hope that people never end up implementing Wi-Fi into Lego bricks and Barbie dolls. Not everything should need a router. 

Works Cited

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Singh, Dianna. “Tween Beauty Influencer Evelyn Has a Lot to Say.” Allure, 2 Apr. 2024, www.allure.com/story/evelyn-unruh-grwm-tiktok.

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