Mom of TikTok Preschooler Wren Eleanor is Facing Backlash—And Making Parents Rethink Their Social Media Approach

Jacquelyn and Wren have 17 million followers, so what's the issue?

Fact checked by Sarah Scott

If you’ve been on TikTok recently, you’re probably familiar with the name Wren Eleanor. Wren is the preschool-aged star featured on her own TikTok account, run by her mother, Jacquelyn. The account has a whopping 17 million followers, and has become the center of a lot of controversy over the past few years.

Jacquelyn is hardly the first parent to share her child’s likeness on social media. Most parents who are active online have probably revealed their children’s faces, names, and/or birthdays to their audiences. But content surrounding Wren has inspired a level of attention and criticism that feels unprecedented.

Some critics point out that the content Jacquelyn posts centers on only Wren. Unlike family vloggers who share parents and children equally, or lifestyle influencers who feature their kids as part of their lives, this particular page is really all about this sweet little girl. As many point out, she's not old enough to consent to this type of exposure.

Others worry about why content featuring Wren gets so much attention (including thousands of “saves”). They even suggest predators may be using Wren’s images. Some of the videos feature Wren in situations that seem innocent enough, but that some predators may see as suggestive: Wren eating a hot dog, Wren drinking out of straws, and Wren sitting on a whoopee cushion in a dress, just to name a few.

Jacquelyn responded to some of this criticism in a 2022 video, but concerns have bubbled up again recently, with several TikTok creators sharing their own takes on the situation. One of these creators is Tracy Schandler Walder, a former CIA officer and FBI special agent, who shared a viral TikTok saying she believes Wren is being exploited. She tells Parents she's really "combed through quite a bit" about this social media case.

"This is a case where you have basically a 4-year-old as the sole star of the page, and having no say in how she’s being exploited for money," Walder says. "As a former FBI agent, that’s deeply concerning to me, both from child labor laws perspective, but also from pictures ending up on the dark web, child predator perspective.”

Wren's case has parents everywhere, myself included, reevaluating their approach to “sharenting" online. It serves as a wake-up call. Even a picture or video of a child simply being a child can be used in some incredibly nefarious ways if it falls under the wrong set of eyes.

To be very clear: the real predators here are the perverts who are sexualizing kids. But as parents, we have a responsibility to protect our children. Right now, that involves understanding the risks of their images appearing online, as uncomfortable as it may be to confront those risks.

Profiting Off of Kids Can Be a Form of Exploitation

The business of social media influencing and content creation has established itself as a very real force, yet protections don’t exist for the children of influencers.

“Congress hasn’t done much,” says Walder, who points out it's likely Wren's account is making money. "If you look at child actors, they’re protected by labor laws—their money is protected." That is probably not the case for Wren's situation. "I highly doubt there is any law surrounding when she can work and not work, and any money that’s made," says Walder. "And that’s hugely problematic too.”

Wren has become something of a symbol for a much larger conversation. While we’re not here to mom shame, we do have to take a good, hard look at the very real ramifications of sharing kids online, especially in the way of this particular account.

“[This controversy] speaks to a larger issue of parents profiting off of their children’s likeness, parent influencers putting their children in harm’s way in order to make a profit or gain fame, or gain notoriety,” says Titania Jordan, Chief Parent Officer of Bark Technologies.

Jordan continues, “It’s done a lot of times under the guise of ‘well, I’m making money; I’m able to provide for my family this way.' And I get it. But there’s a fine line between sharing enough information about your family to where you can be an effective influencer and then just blatantly putting your kids on display before they can have the ability to consent to that type of exposure.”

It’s Never Too Late to Reevaluate Your Approach

Jordan cites that clip of Wren eating a hot dog, which appears to have been deleted. The clip reportedly had an alarming number of saves, and it begs the question: Why would anyone be saving a clip of a child eating a hot dog?

This particular account is not the only one that leaves children vulnerable to predators, and that’s something we have to reconcile.

“This account is not the only account that exists on the internet that showcases a small child. There’s plenty of accounts that showcase children in bathtubs, or in gymnastics leotards, or other things parents might think are innocent, but predators gravitate towards,” says Jordan, who admits she’s had to go back and redact her own child’s digital footprint as she’s gained more awareness of all the dangers that exist.

Look, social media is supposed to be a reflection of our lives and as parents, our children are the biggest part of our lives. Naturally, we want to share them on our pages. But now, knowing what we know, it’s not too late to go back and rethink, or possibly redact, what you’ve shared. Personally, I did an audit of my pages after digging into this particular controversy.

Of course, once kids get their own devices or social media accounts, there is a whole new set of considerations and concerns to take into account. But when it comes to what we share about our kids on our own feeds? We need to be their protectors, and that requires a sobering look at the very real, incredibly disturbing risks of sharenting.

“If you want to share highlights or wins or important things about your children in a digital way, it should really only be to [our] close friends and family,” says Jordan. “We’ve got to be careful about our children’s digital footprint.”

What Not To Do When It Comes to Social Media

Several experts believe children should not appear on public-facing social media accounts. Walder, for example, has hard and fast rules about sharing her child’s likeness on social media: She will post photos of her child’s face on a private account with a small group of followers, all of whom she knows personally. But on her public-facing platform? Her child’s face is nowhere to be found.

Some parents will block out their kids’ faces with emojis or stickers. But according to Walder, that’s not as safe as it seems. “If you black out their faces, which I’ve seen before—people put stickers on them [for example], a lot of times people can get through that and edit around that,” she says. “That, in my opinion, is problematic.”

Pay attention to the photos you post

“My general take on the situation is that 10 years ago, parents didn’t quite understand the ramifications of posting so much content about their children online. Today, we know better,” Jordan says. “We know how that media can be used against children by predators, through AI and deepfakes, [or] by their peers to bully them. We know better as parents now—and if we don’t, we should.”

Social media is, in the grand scheme of things, still a relatively new thing. It’s also ever-evolving. When we think back to social media’s origins, it used to feel, well, social—a place to keep up with friends and family members. It has become something else entirely, though, and as social media morphs, our approach ought to as well.

“Now, things live forever—and to be doing it without your child’s consent is a huge problem in my opinion,” says Walder. “There is the dark web that is large and alive. There are sites [where predators] take photos that were posted—not for that purpose—and doctor them. And I would never want one of those to resurface of my child.”

Be careful of sharing information, too

One of the first things many digitally active parents do when their children are born is share a birth announcement online. This is, of course, understandable. You’re so over the moon excited to welcome that new baby and share their photo, name, and birth details. Uploading all that to social media is much simpler than, say, texting everyone in your orbit. But those birth announcements reveal too much, according to Walder, who calls the move “extremely risky."

Sharing those popular “first day of school” photos can also be dangerous, especially if your image features your child holding a sign with details about their school, grade, and teacher. Walder, for example, does not tag her child’s school online, and if she and her family go on vacation, she will wait until they get home to post anything about the trip.

“A lot of people like to take their annual holiday photo or the 'first day of school' photo in front of their house, in front of their mailbox,” adds Jordan. ”It’s a bad idea because then people can identify you where you live. And today, there’s AI that exists where you upload a picture and it’ll tell you where it was taken. Anything that can give the Internet personal information about you and where you live and where you spend time, you’ve got to redact it.”

Don't be fooled by a private account

Is a private account truly, truly private? No, says Jordan.

“It is a safety measure,” she says, likening it to a locked door. “Just like a locked door will not 100% keep the bad people out of your home. It is a major, major step that helps to eliminate a lot more bad that can come if it’s public. It’s not 100% foolproof. It just takes one person to take a screenshot, it just takes one person to hack your account if your passwords aren’t safe enough.”

Even on a private account, parents have to be cautious of what they’re sharing when it comes to their kids—and at some point, it’s important to ask our children if they’re okay with photos being shared before we post them.

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Read the original article on Parents.