CW: Alleged Child Abuse, Mentions of Suicide
In today’s media-saturated digital world, it’s no secret that influencers have unprecedented control over the audience’s gaze. We are utterly captivated by the most mundane activities, as long as it is presented compellingly enough to distract from our own monotony. Most of the vlogging is a harmless form of entertainment that whisks us away into someone else’s world for a much-needed change of scenery.
But other times, these influencers push the boundaries of what viewers want to see. When a family influencer uses her children’s personal lives for clicks or appears to employ an abusive parenting style, do the views and likes continue to pile up? What are we willing to subscribe to – literally?
One such vlogger, Ruby Franke, pushed these boundaries to the limit for years on her family YouTube channel “8 Passengers.” Her videos highlight her unique parenting style as she raises six children in the majority-Mormon town of Ivins, Utah. Starting in 2015, the “8 Passengers” YouTube channel bombarded audiences with daily videos chronicling the lives of a relatively average family, amassing over two million subscribers in the process.
Every so often, Franke’s videos took a punitive turn when one of her children made a mistake that “required” Franke to teach them a lesson. Needless to say, there’s no universally correct way to raise and discipline kids, and parents will always differ in their methods.
Franke’s approach, though, is objectively unusual. Her tactics surpass warranting scattered objections and creep into the territory of being flat-out wrong. For this reason, her Aug. 30 arrest on six counts of aggravated child abuse didn’t come as too much of a shock.
Franke’s malnourished 12-year-old son was found begging for help at a neighbor’s house with “open wounds and duct tape on his wrists and ankles.” His ten-year-old sister was found in a similar condition and they were both so severely damaged that they were immediately taken to a local hospital for recovery.This scene undoubtedly paints a vivid portrait of torture, starvation and abuse.
Ruby Franke’s harsh parenting ideology, posted on YouTube for the world to see, can now be reinvestigated in a much more sinister and villainous light. Several members of her family have made statements regarding the arrest, all of them expressing relief that Franke is facing the punishment she deserves. Her oldest daughter posted on Instagram that she is “so glad justice is being served,” while one of Franke’s sisters commented that “Ruby was arrested which needed to happen…the kids are now safe, which is the number one priority.”
The evidence against the Utah mother has always been right under the audience’s nose, but it was largely written off as a rare example of strict, uncompromising parenting in a generation of otherwise indulgent parents. Franke rules her household with an “iron fist,” unafraid to threaten – and follow through with – punishments that infringe on basic physiological needs such as taking away meals or bedrooms.
In one instance, her youngest child forgot to pack lunch for school, and when the teacher notified Franke of her child’s hunger, she replied with a general lack of concern. In a nonchalant tone, she said “the natural outcome” of her daughter’s mistake is that “she is just going to be hungry” and that “hopefully nobody gives her food…because then she’s not going to learn.”
Franke withholding help from her daughter as a way to “teach a lesson” is not an admirable display of holding her ground as a parent. It’s a strange flex of sadistic power.
One especially jarring example of Franke’s abusive parenting style garnered national media attention in 2020. In one of the vlogs, her oldest son casually mentioned that he was forced to sleep on a beanbag for seven months as a form of punishment for playing pranks on his younger brother. While Franke laughed off her son’s pain and frantically tried to explain that there was a reason for the deprivation, viewers grew increasingly concerned for the Franke children’s safety.
As accusations of child abuse swirled, a Change.org petition calling for a Child Protective Services (CPS) investigation of the Franke family circulated across the internet. When officers arrived at the house, they found no evidence of an abusive home and the case was promptly closed.
In the time between the 2020 CPS investigation and her 2023 arrest, Franke has stayed relatively under the radar and pivoted from family-influencer-fame with “8 Passengers” to life-coaching videos with Jodi Hildebrandt for “ConneXions Classroom.”
She has been vocal about the turmoil her family endured through amidst the accusations of abuse, even playing the martyr and saying in an interview with Insider that the hate she received “could drive someone to suicide, easily.” After exposing all of the harm that Franke has inflicted on others, this shameless appeal to sympathy is devastatingly ironic.
The Ruby Franke scandal prompts audiences to reexamine the influencers they watch and the reasons they are drawn to this type of entertainment in the first place. The niche genre of family influencers has always been somewhat problematic in how parents sacrifice their children’s privacy for a mild dose of fame or money.
In a practice playfully dubbed “sharenting,” a child’s life is broadcasted to the world before they even have the ability to verbalize consent. They don’t ask to be judged by strangers as they grow up in the public eye, and they are not guaranteed compensation for the entertainment they provide.
Fortunately, the unethical nature of family vlogging is slowly being amended. In Illinois, for example, a new law requires content creators to set aside a percentage of earnings from videos using the name, likeness or photo of a minor, which the minor can access once they turn 16.
Maybe we’re drawn to entertainment like “8 Passengers” because we find comfort in watching another family navigate the chaotic ups and downs of daily life. According to parenting psychiatrist Maryhan Baker, Franke’s authoritative stance on parenting is reassuring to new parents who are experiencing uncertainty. She says “parents are scared to make mistakes” and try to learn from someone who is “fully in charge and in control.”
But there’s significant danger in blindly following the advice of someone like Ruby Franke. No matter how polished the edited videos make a family look, there is always a darker truth trapped under the surface.
