It might be harder to feature children in some social media content if a bill passes at the Minnesota State Capitol. The House passed the legislation to establish legal protections for “kidfluencers” on Wednesday.

It prevents minors under the age of 14 from creating video content for online platforms for money. It requires compensation for children who are 14 to 18 years old to be placed into a trust accessible when they turn 18 years old.

“It’s a brave new world, members, and it’s one we need to put guardrails on now,” said Rep. Zack Stephenson(DFL — Coon Rapids), who introduced the bill.

He cited a New York Times report that exposed parents who are featuring their children on social media accounts, in some cases getting money from followers for more photos or conversations with their kids. It raised concerns children are being exploited.

“It’s important to note for a lot of these content creators, the reason why it’s big-time money, the reason why they’re able to get so much money, is people want to see the kids,” said Stephenson.

The bill would apply if 30% of the creator’s content in a 30-day period features the likeness, name or photo of a child.  

“We’re trying not to capture every person who ever posted something on the internet so we have both the threshold of frequency and the financial threshold,” said Stephenson.

House members on both sides of the aisle agreed the exploitation of children through social media content needs to be targeted. The bill was criticized, however, for being too broad.

“I think we still missed the mark a little bit with what that hook needs to be and how to protect these children without punishing families that really aren’t doing anything wrong,” said Rep. Anne Neu Brindley (R — North Branch).

Rep. Walter Hudson (R — Albertville) called for more specific language to address exploitation.

“All it does is says ‘We’re going to set some arbitrary limits and impose some arbitrary compensation,’” he said. “If they’re being exploited, let’s stop the exploitation today.”

The bill moved forward with a 103-26 vote.