With nearly 2 million followers on TikTok, 421,000 on Instagram and 349,000 subscribers on YouTube – this famous social media family can’t walk out of the house without getting recognised.
Emily and Adam Abraham are founders of Knightsbridge pre-loved designer boutique Love Luxury — alongside this they create social media content which has garnered over 80 million views.
Often, their 11-year-old daughter, Moo, features in videos as the ‘billionaire’s daughter’ with videos such as ‘how much does a billionaire’s daughter’s outfit cost.’
HuffPost UK spoke with Emily to understand how her daughter’s presence on social media from a young age has had an impact.
How their social media career started
The Abrahams started creating short videos for the products they sold on YouTube initially, way before their TikTok fame.
Emily explained: “YouTube was one of the top search engines. We always had Instagram when we started business and were predominantly dealing with Facebook and I kept saying to husband we need to get on TikTok and he was like I’m not doing the silly dances, I’m too old for that, I said trust me.
“He decided we would take the YouTube videos and cut them down into portrait and create smaller snippets, it was more educational than entertainment and it didn’t do very well.
“It was picking up but slowly. After that he decided to listen to me and employed someone to work on TikTok and that’s basically where it all started.”
Moo’s rise to fame
Out of all the kids, Emily explains that their daughter Moo is the only one involved by choice, as the other kids don’t want to be seen.
It all started when Moo was coming to work every Saturday and the person who was creating the family’s TikToks asked if she wanted to be in a video.
Emily says: “She was like yeah and really eager — the rest is history. The first one was her pretending to shop in the Love Luxury store and bringing me a long receipt that I fainted at. The next one went super viral, it was the outfit check.
“She started when she was around nine and a half. I didn’t have concerns about showing her face, but I did have concerns about her name so we use her pet name. If someone knew her real name, because children don’t think logically like adults do, my concern was she might think that person knows her.”
Though her daughter Moo is in the public eye, Emily says she is not going to push any of her children to do the same.
“It’s always a conversation, one of them teeters on the edge and is more of an introvert, the idea of being known seems great but in reality is scary. My other daughter said a couple times I might want to be in a video now but chickens out at the last minute. If Moo decides it’s not for her that’s her decision.”
Dealing with being recognised in public
Often, The Abrahams get spotted when outside. Emily says in the beginning Moo was very shy when she was recognised, but as time has gone on, she’s used to it.
“People are always polite, everyone is so kind, and sometimes they’re nervous which still baffles me as we are normal people,” she said.
Emily revealed that it’s always a positive experience and it happens every time the family goes out. In fact, they now find it quite normal.
She explained: “In London we can’t walk through Knightsbridge without people knowing who we are. Moo takes it in her stride, she’s an emotionally mature young lady and has always been a performer, always done dancing and aerobics and I don’t think it’s out of the norm for her. People will always gravitate towards her.”
Dealing with hate comments
Social media is filled with people passing their opinions on, however, Moo has not experienced hate comments as she’s not allowed on social media says Emily.
The parents do not allow her to read the comments to make sure she doesn’t rely on them for positive or negative opinions of herself.
“We do get hate comments and at the beginning it was intense as it’s the unknown — 90% of abuse was pointed at me and not at her or my husband. Men seem to be able to escape it, to a degree. Women seem to be the target. Then we found out about filtering words, and you grow thick skin over time,” Emily commented.
Advice for parents who show their kids online
On how to keep your child protected, Emily says not using real names is important and not allowing children to have access to social media is vital.
She also believes that you shouldn’t show good comments either, “as we don’t want them to be reliant on positive comments from strangers to make them feel good.”
The mum has also instilled the rule of no social media until the child is old enough to be able to rationalise and deal with those things.
She explained: “I think it’s not necessary to have access to it. We never reveal anything to do with school life, we never show her school, we have been asked by a few publications to let them follow her on her daily life and that would never happen — keeping that private is very important — there are people in the world who don’t have good mental health so it could cause issues.”
What about Moo’s future?
When talking about how Moo’s social media presence might impact Moo’s future, Emily says she feels it will only be positive.
“I don’t think it will impact negatively in the future in terms of jobs, it will help her. I don’t think anyone will look down their nose at an 11-year-old who is now 25. Whatever path she chooses has our full support,” she said.
Social media influencers sharing their kids online has been a topic of debate in the last few years. Last year politicians in France put forward a new bill which would stop mums and dads from capitalising on their kids by posting endless photos and videos of them, The Times reported.
Following this, speaking to iNews, Ed Magee, Chair of the National Network for Children in Employment (NNCEE), who contributed to the House of Commons report on child influencers said NNCEE “will follow this debate with great interest to see if there are any lessons that could be applied to UK legislation”.
He said the NNCEE “has always felt that there should be protections for child influencers or for parent influencers who use their children especially if they are too young to give informed consent for the use of their image”.