Moscow (AFP)
At only eleven years old, Liza Anokhina was already recognized in the street. A year later, she is one of the stars of the web in Russia, with 2.3 million fans on Instagram.
In a Moscow park, she walks and pulls her tongue in front of her producer who captures every move on her mobile phone. The girl, tall, slender and very make-up, burst out laughing when she reviewed the scene, intended for his audience, 8-15 years.
"We have made 'stories' (Instagram), and now we are going to do TikTok," says his producer Ivan Bouchmelev, 25, referring to the social networks where she is most active and her generation, in Russia as elsewhere , uses to communicate, inform and entertain.
Here, the king network is Instagram. Russia ranks in number of users behind Indonesia, India, Brazil and the United States, countries that are more populous, according to the company specializing in Statista statistics.
And many users of this image-sharing platform are minors who from an early age can idolize "influencers", generating significant revenues.
Coached by parents who have taken the digital shift rather than aspiring to careers as models or actors for their children, some of these web stars are not even old enough to go to school and are already garnering millions of views with videos where we see them unpack toys or sweets.
Like Nastya Vlog, a Russian girl living in Florida whose YouTube channel has 35.5 million subscribers. His father is a central character of the circulated sketches.
Pre-teens and teens have built their success with videos and comments in which the parent paw is not visible.
Liza Anokhina, who admits to using her mobile phone eight hours a day, publishes on her Instagram account anokhina_elizabeth_2007 very licked little movies, with a lot of visual effects and music.
Among his great successes, this staging where a young girl annoys him, looping the same song while she is sitting on a bench, she goes shopping or is at her computer. The next scene, the blogger drags the lifeless body of her executioner.
- "secret" income -
"She speaks well, she is smart and she turns interesting videos," says one of her fans Natalia Oussatcheva, 12, who rushes to the young blogger to take a selfie with her.
By her side, 12-year-old Veronika Kossynkina also says she wants to "dress up with the same style" as a blogger who wears skirts or shorts in all sorts of t-shirts, sweaters and blouses, where brands are very visible.
Advertisers soon saw an opportunity in the influence of the girl, allowing him to earn sums of money seems consistent.
Daughter of a lawyer and a former soldier, Liza remains eloquent on the subject: "It changed our life for the better", she admits, but "I prefer to keep my secret income".
As for the exact role of her parents, she says little more than that they help him and they have "a very good approach" to his career.
Still, health professionals are worried about the destabilizing effect that such a success could have on the well-being of children or adolescents. Even the giants of social networks are beginning to look into the subject.
This summer, Instagram has started to hide "likes" on its platform in several countries, to fight cyberharassment. For its part, YouTube will ban from next year targeted advertising in videos targeting children.
And if it is normal to seek the recognition of your peers, we must also protect those who are "very sensitive to comparisons and judgments," warns the psychologist for children, Viktoria Karavayeva.
Moreover, bloggers, as well as child actors or sports, can "develop an addiction to their popularity, + likes +, comments, the fact that we talk about them," she notes again from AFP.
Because the potential manna that a star of the web can represent is dreaming. But sometimes she obsesses.
- Quest for the million -
In Moscow, private centers have opened courses to improve the control of social networks and thus to gain followers. This attracts children in search of digital glory and their parents.
"I am constantly waiting for the moment when I will finally have a million subscribers," proclaimed Artiom Chalovei, an 11-year-old student at the Coddy Children's Computing School in Moscow.
"For me, it's very important both to earn a lot of money and to have a lot of subscribers," says the boy who wants to talk in his video games blog, BMX. For the moment, it has 130 subscribers.
The teacher of the course, Amela Chabotitch, also a student at the prestigious Moscow State University of Economics, says that she appreciates above all that children learn to blog about their passions, be it fashion or English classes. .
For psychologist Viktoria Karavayeva, parents worried about the digital over-consumption of their children must learn to review their relationship to technology.
Thus, instead of restricting access to devices, we must focus on the content consumed at the time of the smartphone.
Yulia, a mother of three who prefers to keep her family name, admits she was taken aback by the video choices of her 7- and 10-year-old children on the Internet.
"I thought kids liked watching Winnie the Pooh, but no, when you give them access to YouTube, they're going to watch a video or someone opens hundreds of chocolate eggs in series" to access the toys , she says.
More seriously, the psychologist also explains having had patients who had "developed fears" related to the content consumed. So parents should encourage dialogue on these topics.
"Because prohibitions will not eradicate parental concerns or generate mutual understanding within the family," notes the therapist.
© 2019 AFP