Influencer Piper Rockelle is on her social media account on the popular app TikTok. Photo courtesy of Piper Rockelle.
Kids at San Luis Obispo High School know about youtuber Piper Rockelle, but to what depths?
The channel was started when Rockelle was 9 years old, by her mother/manager, most known as her ‘momanger’, Tiffany Smith.
In 2018, the channel started to gain attention from the public, this is when Smith began recruiting other tweens to appear in Rockelle’s videos.
The name of the now-sensational ex-friend group is ‘The Squad’, which slowly disintegrated over time, because of the exploitation. This group contained a handful of young YouTube stars who would all create content and cross-promote one another’s videos. Although most children who worked with Piper were gaining attention on their page, they were also exploited and abused off and even sometimes, on camera.
“I think that Tiffany has gone out of her way to do sexual things to the other kids who have been friends with Piper, because after Piper becomes friends with someone over time, they leave and always come back with a story with Piper’s mom in it,” said freshman Yazmin Sklar.
Some students at SLOHS who have viewed this channel or fanned over Rockelle and her squad have noticed these captivating actions. The documentary, “Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing,”talks about how nasty and disturbing Smith was to these children.
“I feel like her mom is focused on money and fame over her well-being because she’s her child, but she doesn’t even care about her,” said sophomore Gracie Sunata.
Most vlogging families that gain attention get carried away with fame and money and forget about their own child’s well-being. The disrupting harm research revealed that as many as 20% of children in some countries were subjected to child sexual exploitation and abuse online in the past year.
“Piper’s mom has been influencing Piper to do things, and because her mom never really cared about her, now Piper is trying to join the Bop House,” said freshman Colin Edwards.
The “Bop House” is a content house popularized on the social media app TikTok, made up of OnlyFans creators. Piper is influenced to do things like wear certain clothes, do certain poses, and make certain videos, but Smith has multiple times convinced Rockelle to do different collabs, even if she is not comfortable with it.
“Tiffany was manipulating them. She was controlling their relationships with their friends, because she wanted what was best for the channel, not what was best for her,” said freshman Kate Fouhy.
The new documentary, “Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing,” explains and gives different voices from former squad members about their stories. The things these kids said Smith did to them are not only disgusting but completely unnerving.
The awareness of child exploitation is increasing, but not as much as it should be. What people don’t understand is that this is still a crime, and sometimes it can be worse than some people think.
With this new documentary that recently came out on April 9, do you think Piper Rockelle’s channel will go under?
Or will this create more attraction to her page?
Sources: weprotect.org