Dangerous Influence_SAMPLE by Collins

A note from the author

“Social media is a hot topic. Australia has banned social media for all under-16s, and the UK government has recently launched a consultation on whether we should do the same. But many children have an active social media presence from infancy, thanks to parental influencers. I started off wanting to write about how embarrassing that would be, but I quickly realised the reality for most influencer children is much darker than that. I love working with Barrington Stoke and I love that they’re willing to publish stories about complex topics like this in an accessible format.”

SALLY NICHOLLS

A note from the editor

“The first generation of children to have their lives widely shared online by their parents are coming of age, and some of them are not at all happy about what they consider to be an intrusive violation of their privacy. Parents share videos and photos of their children for a myriad of reasons, but should they seek their children’s consent and what if the child is too young to consent? In this timely, thought-provoking and highly relevant novella, Sally Nicholls explores the experience of one teenager who has suffered the downside of sharenting and just wants to live her life out of the spotlight. But will this be possible when her mum has convinced herself that she’s acting in the family’s best interests and it has become their sole source of income? It’s a brilliant read, with a highly authentic teen voice from an author at the top of her game.”

AILSA BATHGATE

CHAPTER 1

My mum started her YouTube account when I was two years old and my sister Josie was five. In the early days, it was mostly about Josie.

If you haven’t seen my mum’s channel, it’s called “Messages from Motherhood”. It’s all about being a mum. And about us. Me and Josie.

Mum posts two videos a week, on Tuesday and Friday. Sometimes, companies send her things, and she does reviews. When we were little, people would send us toys, and we’d have to say nice things about them. Even if they were too babyish or didn’t work.

Sometimes, she does day-in-the-life stuff. Videos of us playing with our toys when we were little. Videos of us on holiday. Videos where she’s making dinner or talking to us about how we feel about SATS, or COVID, or whatever.

She does lots of silly skits with Josie. (She used to try and do them with me too, but I am terrible at acting.) Often, she just talks to the camera about how hard it is being our mum. Which is nice. Sometimes, she gives parenting advice. I don’t know why someone would ever follow her parenting advice. Can’t people see that anyone who films their kids and puts them on the internet

has to be a terrible mum?

But no. People love my mum. They’re always saying how great she is, how funny she is, how cute we were when we were little. Well. How cute Josie was.

I’m not cute.

I mean, maybe I was cute when I was tiny. A bit. But now I’m thirteen. I’m covered in spots, and my hair is always greasy, and I look weird no matter what I wear.

Mum tries her best. When I was little, she used to spend hours brushing my hair and putting it in plaits and things for videos. Now, she’s always taking me shopping and to fancy hairdressers. It would be nice if she didn’t insist on filming it and doing “shopping haul” videos.

This is the problem with being influencer famous. Nothing is ever just for you. Every time Mum gives me something or does something nice with me, she always has to film it.

When I was little, I didn’t know any better. I suppose I just thought that was what everybody did. That it was normal for Mum to be always asking us to talk to the people in her phone.

“People want to know if you liked our day out at Fuzzy Farm Christmas Adventure!” she’d say, and me and Josie would have to tell the camera about it.

Or, “People want to know if you’re excited about starting school!” And I’d have to tell them.

I guess I just assumed everyone had cameras pointing at them all the time. Looking back, that was kind of a weird thing to think, but I didn’t know any better.

I remember when I was about five, telling my friends how boring it was having to talk to “people on Mum’s phone” all the time. They didn’t know what I was talking about, obviously.

It was around that time that Mum tried to explain to me what she did. I think she showed me some of her videos. I wasn’t that bothered, really. I mean, I was five. I didn’t care what Mum did for a job. I knew what YouTube was, of course. I used to watch Ms Rachel and Numberblocks songs and things like that. But I didn’t understand that Mum was famous.

Well. That’s not quite true. People did stop us when we were out and about. They’d want to take pictures with Mum and tell her how much they loved her videos. They still do, actually. I hated it then, and I hate it now. Mum is always very nice to the people who talk to her, but afterwards she grumbles about it.

“Why is it always when I’m buying tampons?” she says.

She thinks she’s so funny.

I can still remember the day my friends found out about Mum’s videos. I was eight.

Lots of the kids at school watched YouTube. I watched YouTube. The thing is, they mostly watched videos about Minecraft and things like that. A few of the girls had started watching videos about make-up. Nobody watched parenting videos. Why would they?

One day, I went into school, and the other girls were whispering. I went up to them, and they all stopped and looked guilty.

“What’s going on?” I asked. They looked a bit awkward. Then one girl, Ellie-May, said, “Matilda’s mum says you can’t come to Matilda’s party.”

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t even know Matilda’s mum. “Why not?” I asked.

“My mum doesn’t want your mum doing a video about it,” said

Matilda. “She saw that video she did about Ellie-May’s party, and she says you’re not coming to mine.”

“What video?” I said.

Matilda and Ellie-May managed to look both hurt and judgy, the way only junior-school girls can.

“I’m just saying,” Matilda said. “It’s not on, is it? To come to Ellie-May’s party and then be mean about it on the internet? I mean, Ellie-May’s a kid. And your mum’s a grown-up.”

She was repeating something her mum had said. It’s so obvious now.

It wasn’t obvious then.

I didn’t know what to say. I remember just looking at them, then walking away, trying not to cry.

I asked my mum about it when she picked me up. She looked a bit shocked. “She did what?” she said.

“She said I wasn’t allowed to go to Matilda’s party.”

“That bitch! How low can you get? If she’s angry with me –fine, be angry with me. But how much of a cow do you have to be to take it out on an eight year old?”

I felt a bit better, hearing Mum talk like that. My mum wasn’t the bitch. Matilda’s mum was.

“But what did you say about Ellie-May’s party, Mum?” I asked. She wouldn’t tell me.

I looked it up when I got home.

Ellie-May had a pamper party for her ninth birthday. That was the cool thing in Year Four. We all went to a make-up salon. We got a face mask and a makeover. They painted our nails with cool patterns. There were mocktails and cupcakes.

If I’m honest, I was a bit bored. I was always kind of young for

my age. I still liked playing Barbies and building dens. I liked the drinks and the cupcakes, but waiting around for my makeover was boring. And I didn’t like how I looked with make-up on. It felt weird and too grown up. I did like my sparkly nails though. And I liked us all taking silly pictures of ourselves.

When Mum collected me, she set up the camera to ask me about it.

“So, Anna’s just been to her first pamper party! Tell us all about it, Anna! Did you like it?”

“It was all right,” I said. “There was a lot of hanging around. We got make-up. And cake.”

“And cake!” Mum laughed. “That sounds fun. Is that what you want to do for your birthday?”

I shook my head. “No way!”

“No way?” Mum said. “Why not?”

I shrugged. “I dunno. It was a bit boring.”

And that was that.

I didn’t really think about what was going to happen to that video. I knew Mum put them on the internet. But I don’t think I’d realised that anyone could watch. Including Ellie-May’s mum.

The finished video was Mum doing a big rant about pamper parties and how they were far too grown up for little kids like me. She showed all these videos of me playing with my toys, and then she put up the pictures I brought home from the party with my make-up. And then – oh God! – she played the video of me talking about the party.

No wonder Ellie-May wasn’t speaking to me!

I went downstairs. “I saw that video you made about the party,” I said.

Mum’s face tightened. I guess it hadn’t occurred to her that I

could watch it too.

“Why did you put it on the internet?” I shouted. “Where she could see it!”

“I put all my videos on the internet,” Mum said. “You know that!”

“But now Ellie-May hates me!” I shouted. “And her mum hates me. And all the girls hate me! And Matilda’s mum says I can’t go to Matilda’s party!”

“Look, Anna—” said Mum, but I wouldn’t let her finish.

“I hate you!” I shouted. “I hate your stupid videos! I wish you weren’t my mum!”

That was the first time I told her I hated her. It wouldn’t be the last.

CHAPTER 2

I’m not sure what Mum did next. I think she tried to talk to Matilda’s mum, but it didn’t work. Matilda didn’t invite me to her party, and she and Ellie-May stopped being my friends.

I ended up playing with the boys after that. The boys didn’t have pamper parties. They didn’t care what my mum did for a living. They just cared how good you were at football. I wasn’t very good at football. But I didn’t mind being in goal, so they let me play.

That’s what I remember most about Year Five and Year Six. The girls whispering about me, and spending break in goal, letting all the balls in.

Year Seven was better, for a bit. We all went to different schools at the end of primary. Some of the kids from the posh houses went to the private school. Kids who went to church went to the church school. Everyone else went to Bank End School. That’s where Josie and I went. It was fine.

I made two friends called Tilly and Abby. We sat next to each other in lessons and helped each other not get lost. They were both kind of dull, if I’m honest. Tilly was obsessed with this manga series I’d never heard of. She was always talking about it. I had to pretend to be interested because I wanted a friend. But it

got boring pretty quickly.

Things started to go bad about halfway through Year Seven. Some boys in my class found out about my mum. I’m not sure how. Maybe some of the kids from primary told them. Maybe their mums found out. Mum did a video about how expensive school uniform was that went a bit viral. That might have been it. Anyway, I turned up to registration one day in Year Seven, and some boys were looking at a phone and laughing.

“There she is!” one of them yelled as I came into the classroom. I could feel my whole body tensing up. This was bad. I knew this was bad.

The boys all bounded up to me. One of them was holding out a phone. “Is this you?” he said.

You know how kids are – when they start acting nice, but you know there’s something darker underneath it? Like, I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m just asking a question. What’s wrong with that? That’s how he was. And I remember thinking, If I answer the right way, maybe I can still save this. Maybe it’ll all be fine.

I looked at his phone. It was a video – oh God! – a video of me doing potty training. I was two. Why, why had Mum put this on the internet? Why was it even still there?

“Well, is it?” the boy said.

What was I supposed to say?

“Yeah,” I said. “So?”

“Oh my God.” He started laughing. “Is this you too?”

It was another awful video of me, aged about three. I was having a screaming fit about something.

“Why is this on the internet?” one of the other boys said. He was laughing too.

“Her mum’s internet famous,” the first boy said.

“No, she isn’t!” I said, but not very loudly. “She’s just … weird.”

“Oh God, look at this one!” said the other boy.

It went on like that all day. All these videos of me as a toddler. It was all everyone could talk about. Whenever I thought it had died down, they found another awful video, and it started back up again.

The worst one was me and Josie in infant school singing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” in our princess costumes. It’s sort of a cute video. If you like that sort of thing. Of course, the other kids thought it was hilarious. They sang “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” at me for months.

Mum went up to the school, but the head of year said there wasn’t much she could do.

“Can’t you just take the videos down?” she said.

Mum went red. “No, I cannot! This is my job!” she said. Mum was really angry about it. “This is how I make my living!” she said. “I can’t just give up my job because you can’t be bothered to do yours!”

“Being a parent is your job too though,” I said.

I hadn’t meant to say it out loud. Both grown-ups looked at me.

“Well, it is,” I said.

When we got home, Mum tried to talk to me about it.

“I get a lot of nasty comments on my videos,” she said. “You know that, don’t you? People who think I’m nothing because I’m a single mum. Because I used to be on benefits. Because I’m a woman. Because God forbid I dare say out loud that parenting’s hard.”

I grunted.

“If I stop vlogging, that means those people have won,” said Mum. “It means one less woman in the public eye. One less woman telling those stories about what it’s really like raising kids on your

own.”

She sounded so noble. And brave.

But I never asked to be the face of single mums everywhere. Why did I have to be brave and noble too?

In the end, Mum took down the potty-training video and the “Twinkle, Twinkle” video and a couple of other really embarrassing ones. She acted like the whole problem was fixed. It really wasn’t. It’s mostly died down now, but the boys still sing “Twinkle, Twinkle” at me sometimes when they’re bored. And Tilly and Abby stopped hanging around with me. I couldn’t blame them. Nobody wants to be with someone who’s getting that much attention. School is hard enough as it is.

CHAPTER 3

My dad ran off when I was a baby. Well, left, anyway. He found a new girlfriend, who didn’t have kids, and moved to Aberdeen. He still stays in touch. Sort of. He sends me £50 on birthdays and Christmas. He sees us a couple of times a year, when he’s visiting Grandma and Grandad. When we were little, he used to take us to the playground. Now we sit in Grandma and Grandad’s kitchen, and he says stupid things like “How’s school?” and “Wow, you’ve grown!”

Like, it’s fine. He’s fine. He’s not evil or anything. He pays child support. He’s just … he’s not a dad. He’s more like an uncle or something. A rubbish uncle, who doesn’t really like kids.

He doesn’t come into this story. I don’t think he even watches Mum’s videos. I just thought you might like to know where he was.

Mum didn’t set out to be an influencer. At least, I don’t think she did. She always says the early videos were just for fun.

In the very first video she ever did, Josie is four. She’s sitting on our back step, and Mum is interviewing her.

“How old is Mummy?” Mum says.

“Fifteen!” says Josie. You can hear Mum laughing behind the camera.

“OK, um …” You can hear paper rustling. She must be reading the questions off a list, probably copying some stupid internet trend. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

Josie flings her hands up in the air. “A ballerina!”

Mum laughs again, but it’s nice laughing.

“Yeah,” Josie says. “Watch!” And she jumps up and starts doing little-kid ballet, humming to herself to make the music.

It’s a bit boring, but it’s sweet.

All the early videos are like that. Josie dancing. Josie singing. Josie telling a rambling story about some kid in nursery. Josie introducing all her cuddly animals.

“This is Beary … he’s a bear. This is Hamster. He’s a hamster. This is Pencil. He’s a snail.”

“Tell everyone why Pencil’s called Pencil,” says Mum, and Josie jumps straight in. You can see she likes performing. At the end, when she’s introduced all the animals, she jumps up and down and says, “And I’m Josie! Yay!”

“Yay!” says Mum, from behind the camera.

I’m not in so many of the early videos. Mum tries, but you can see I’m not that interested.

“What do you want to be when you grow up, Anna?”

I’m playing with my toy garage. I don’t answer. I push a car down the slope.

“Anna?” Mum tries.

“Car!” I say.

Josie appears from behind me. “She wants to be a car when she grows up!” she says. She puts her arms around me, and I push her away. You can see I don’t like to be laughed at. Watching, I feel a bit proud of little me for seeing through Josie’s fake big-sister act.

Then there’s the first video that went viral. Going viral is

harder than people think. It’s much easier if you already have loads of followers. At this point, Mum had about two hundred, mostly people she already knew.

The video is just Mum talking to the camera. She’s talking about being a single mum and how hard it is. She’s talking about picking Josie’s primary school and how she wishes she had someone to help her make that decision. About how she works part time, but she’ll have to get a full-time job next year when I’m three and the Universal Credit rules change, but she doesn’t know how she’ll keep one when Josie and I keep getting sick all the time. She looks totally fed up and exhausted.

Anyway. A few weeks after Mum made this video, the government announced they were making these big changes to the benefit system that were going to make things even harder for single parents. Several of Mum’s friends shared the video, especially the bit where Mum is talking about how difficult it is to work as a single mum with kids. It kept getting reshared. And reshared. And reshared.

Suddenly, Mum had loads of followers. Several newspapers interviewed her. She was on local radio and a radio station in London. She wrote articles and blog posts for several big sites. And her followers skyrocketed.

A week later, she and Josie made a video talking about the government and the new law. I’ve seen the video, and I have to admit, it’s pretty cute. Mum dressed Josie up as an MP and had her interview Mum about life as a single mum. Josie was clearly having a great time. I had the smaller role of “tiny child playing on the floor”. People loved it. It was shared all over the internet.

A few weeks later, the government announced it wasn’t going to make the benefit changes. Mum always says it was down to her. I’m

not sure it’s true. I mean, loads of charities were fighting it. It can’t just have been Mum’s videos that made them change their mind.

Before those videos went viral, Mum had a part-time job, doing social media and web design for a local charity. I suppose it wasn’t so different from what she does now. She used to make little videos for the charity and run their Instagram account. That sort of thing.

Once she’d gone viral, however, she started doing more videos of me and Josie. And she started making money from them.

How do YouTubers make money? Ads, mostly. Mum has ads on most of her videos, and next to the videos as well. Every time someone looks at them, or clicks through, she gets a couple of pence. It’s not much, but it adds up.

Mum doesn’t just have videos on YouTube, of course. All of her videos are on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, etc. as well. She also gets money from brands who want her to advertise their stuff. They send her free things, and we talk about them in her videos. Sometimes, they pay her to make little promotional videos about whatever the thing is. She also has this thing where her followers can pay her to unlock longer versions of her videos and extra bonus content. Yes, people actually do that. God knows why.

I don’t know exactly how many followers Mum has, but it’s in the millions. Literal millions. It’s bananas. Millions of people watching me being potty-trained or talking about what I want for Christmas.

I mean, why? Why would anyone care?

They do though. People will watch anything. Even just Mum following us around with a camera showing what we’re doing with our day.

The older I get, the more I hate it.

I hate Mum making content when we’re just supposed to be enjoying a holiday. I hate how I can’t have an argument with her without her talking about it to camera the next day. Nothing is private. People in America and Australia know I still played with Barbies when I was eleven. They know I wet the bed sometimes until I was five. They knew when I started my period. They knew my mum had fallen out with my French teacher before I did. And they comment on it.

Mum will post a video about how I don’t want to go to the panto any more, and hundreds of people will comment about what a brat I am. She’ll say we had an argument, and they’ll tell her how I ought to be punished.

And people get weirdly invested in us. It’s like they think Mum is their friend or something. There are people who comment on every video Mum makes. They message Mum telling her how much they love her.

And there are people who are always saying mean things in the comments. They tell her she’s evil for putting her kids on the internet. (Then why do they watch us?) Or that she buys us too much stuff. (She doesn’t actually – most of the stuff she gives us is freebies.) Or she’ll post about what she’s buying us for Christmas, and they’ll tell her off for buying computer games or spending too much money. It’s so weird. Why would you care what a stranger buys their kids for Christmas? It doesn’t matter how boring the video is, someone always finds something to criticise her about. It’s like if you’re an influencer, you aren’t a real person or something. You’re fair game.

A few years ago, I got my own accounts on all the websites Mum posts on. I wasn’t technically old enough for some of them, but Mum didn’t care. Josie’s had her own accounts for years. She makes

her own videos now. Her channel isn’t as popular as Mum’s, but she’s got a lot of followers.

I didn’t want followers. I just wanted to be able to watch Mum’s content and see what people were saying about us.

The nasty comments about Mum were pretty bad. But the comments about Josie and me were worse. Especially as we got older.

Josie mostly got people talking about how pretty she was. That was nice. I guess. Except lots of the people commenting are men. Grown-up men. Which is ick.

And the comments about me were worse.

“Why do you let Anna have that haircut? She looks like a horse.”

“Has Anna put on weight? She’s looking a bit chubby.”

“Why can’t Anna dress like her sister?”

“It’s awful, isn’t it? Especially when Josie’s so hot.”

Mum always deleted the worst of these comments, but she couldn’t check them all, especially the ones on older posts. There were just too many.

It was horrible. But I didn’t think I could do anything about it.

And then I met Charlie ...

About the author

SALLY NICHOLLS is a highly acclaimed writer for children, best known for her sensitive portrayal of difficult subjects for a younger age group. Her books have been translated into over 20 languages, and her YA novel about the suffrage movement, Things a Bright Girl Can Do, was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal.

Praise for Sally Nicholls

“Each voice is distinct, resonant and authentic ... Uniquely special” GUARDIAN ON THINGS A BRIGHT GIRL CAN DO

“Timely, informative and hugely enjoyable ... the book excels at what fiction is best at: inviting empathy and understanding for others” IRISH TIMES ON THINGS A BRIGHT GIRL CAN DO

“Her characters don’t just leap off the page, they grab you by the collar, demand your sympathy and surprise you at every turn” FRANCES HARDINGE ON THE SILENT STARS GO BY

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First published in 2026 in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Limited, 1 Robroyston Gate, Glasgow, G33 1JN

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©Joe Ratzer

24TH SEPTEMBER 2026

A thought-provoking young-adult drama exploring the dangers of influencer culture and ‘sharenting’ from acclaimed children’s author Sally Nicholls. GET IN TOUCH

Ever since she was little, Anna and her sister Josie have been the main feature of her mum’s vlogs and social media posts, which have documented every moment of their lives, from family dinners to temper tantrums. While Josie seems to enjoy the attention, Anna has always felt uncomfortable with her entire life being laid bare online.

But then it becomes clear that Josie is being stalked by one of her followers, and both girls decide that enough is enough. They refuse to allow their mum to film them any more, but will she finally take them seriously when her entire livelihood depends on Anna and Josie being content for her followers?

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