ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 interrogates the moral logics of the KidTech industry by examining how children are naturalized as workers whose creative labors are extracted for value by digital corporations. Kids are positioned as laborers, conscripted into content creation and promotional work through the activities of play. The chapter argues that the kid in KidTech is an imagined entrepreneurial subject always ready to create content and generate value for digital corporations under the guise of fun and play. The marketing industry has described children as “evangelizers” of intellectual properties, as young people’s creativity is increasingly entangled in the promotional ecologies of brands and IPs, and their creative labors are extracted for value. To support this argument the chapter examines examples such as the portrayal of tween content creators on popular tween-coms like iCarly and Bizzardvaark, the short-lived TeenBo$$ magazine, and famous kidfluencers like Ryan Kaji of Ryan’s World.
