Dramatising Child Exploitation On Social Media: Caroline Easom’s Sandwich Family Series
“How many times do you have to cry?” “Only twice.”
We already know that family vloggers are problematic. From the deep digital footprints left on social media to unsafe home environments, the evidence set out against them is clear and hard to deny. But if that hasn’t convinced you to unfollow your favourite family creators such as the LaBrant and ACE families, Caroline Easom’s new TikTok series might.
Caroline Easom, @caroline_easom on TikTok, is known for her comedy videos. Following a popular social media trend, her art form manifests in a point-of-view prompt with a matching video skit below. Her first video from 2021 was titled POV the ‘cool’ boy in middle school has a crush on you.
However, she has since covered a range of topics, from pushy parents to cult leaders. With her arsenal of perfect accents and her running joke of writing a location on a white board rather than using a green screen, her 3.3 million followers can’t help but come back for more.
A recent series of hers, POV You’re Babysitting a Family Vlog Kid, has become a viral sensation. Since December 2023, Caroline Easom has been sketching out an increasingly complicated storyline, split into minuscule TikTok-length instalments. The series follows the content-creating Sandwich family, exploring their children’s far-from glamorous life. What started out as a short skit has now evolved due to its popularity into an evocative masterpiece. The story is aimed at raising awareness of the exploitation of online child stars.
A TikTok Drama About Family Content Creators
Sarah Grace is the protagonist, a 13-year-old girl forced to pretend to be a 6-year-old boy for the family channel. In her one-woman show, Easom signals this character by wearing a Yoshi hat and using a baby voice. The child explains that her parents force her to use these things to appear more like a young boy. Whilst this premise seems humorous, verging on absurd, unfortunately Easom’s parody is not far off from the truth. In February 2024, well-known vlogger Ruby Franke was given 30 years in prison for abusing her children. These children formed the backbone of the wholesome family’s content. In real life, carefully curated videos seen on family channels also differ hugely from reality.
As the series expands, new characters appear. Sarah Grace has six sisters, each of whom have names and roles to fit in with the family brand. Sunny (Emily) is the editor behind each video, whilst Silly (Eliza) is perpetually ill. Each of her maladies are shared on the online channel in excruciating detail.
Skippy (Kate) is a prankster who is starting to question the ethics of the publicity stunts arranged by her parents. Smiley (Ella) does pageants. Finally, Snazzy (Rebecca) is an entertainer and has begun to secretly read the comments on the channel’s videos. This leaders her to wonder if the sisters are being exploited.
More Than Just A TikTok Series
Easom skilfully contrasts identities for the camera and real identities, giving these girls a remarkable sense of depth and humanity despite them all being played by one 28-year-old woman. The series demonstrates the toll that performing for a family channel takes on young children. When Sarah Grace asks, “can I use my real voice now?”, we see the pressures that real ‘kidfluencers’ face as the barriers between workplace and home, and online persona and reality, become non-existent.
Easom also includes the character of the oldest sister called Sasha, who has become estranged from the family in her quest to escape the family vlog life. In contrast to her sisters, Sasha seems to be entirely aligned with both her true identity as a character and with her actor in Easom. Like Easom, she is in her late twenties. Like Eason, she goes on news programs to speak out against family vlogs and advocate for the children being exploited in them.
Online Art As A Form Of Protest
Nestled somewhere between a piece of drama and an interactive art exhibition, the series is a metatheatrical masterpiece. Easom innovatively uses an online medium, allowing her content to easily reach the audiences of the same family vlogs that she critiques. Her videos often receive comments from users saying that they’re now looking at their once-beloved channels in a different light.
Caroline Easom’s art is a turning point in discussions of this issue. Other creators such as @mom.unchartered have built a following by detailing the unethical side of family vloggers. However, this has come from a purely factual standpoint. By presenting her message in the form of the young people most damaged by the family influencer industry, she humanises the issue, all whilst avoiding exposing any real children online. Whilst the often-humorous videos may be easy to digest, their subject matter leaves the viewer deeply uncomfortable.
In her quest to catalogue the range of experiences in the Sandwich family, Caroline Easom sometimes makes it complicated for newcomers coming across her work on ForYou pages to understand.
