Young People on Social Media: The Implications of Child Influencers in Vietnam

Abstract

This article examines the implications of Vietnamese child influencers, focusing on how they embody and perform local cultural norms to build and sustain their personas on social media platforms. Vietnamese childhood is shaped by traditional values that embrace academic diligence. Drawing on digital ethnographic methods, I examine two case studies: one of a female child YouTuber, and another of an adult livestreamer who is widely misperceived as a 10-year-old boy. The article suggests that cultural ideals related to filial piety of academic diligence, and enactments of cuteness inform audience expectations of Vietnamese child influencers. Thus, they are expected to be studious or produce content related to study, and to be cute. The article further concluded that, with the monetization opportunities offered by platforms, child influencers may take responsibility to be financial supporters, a duty that only adults are expected to do. In doing so, they extend the practice of filial piety beyond being studious.

Contextualizing Vietnamese child influencers

Vietnamese childhood intersects across Confucianism from early Chinese rule, Western ideas from French and American colonization, and socialist values from the Communist government. Among these, Confucianism remains influential in shaping family values and educational expectations in contemporary Vietnam. To be a “good child,” Vietnamese children should practice filial piety (Burr, 2014, p. 160) by excelling in studying (Tho, 2016). These cultural understandings are also institutionalized.

According to Vietnam’s Law on Children (Thu vien phap luat, 2025a; translation by author), Chapter II, Article 37 on children’s duties toward the family states:

1. Respect, be polite, and be filial to grandparents and parents; love, care, and share feelings and wishes with parents and family members and relatives.

2. Study, practice, maintain family discipline, and help parents and family members with tasks appropriate to the age, gender, and development of the child.

Against this backdrop, Vietnamese child influencers embody traditional childhood expectations of being studious and being responsible to the family. This article draws on digital ethnography (Pink et al., 2016) to observe video posts and comments on Facebook and YouTube from January 2024 to April 2025, to analyze two case studies of Vietnamese influencers. In line with participants’ consent, I anonymized their names and used images blurred with permission.

The first is a 17-year-old female child influencer, who gained fame through television shows, and now has 1.2M YouTube subscribers. Although now a teenager, the audience views her as a child as they have literally watched her grow up in the limelight. Notably, she purchased a house for her mother at 13 years of age, usually a responsibility taken on by adults. Her channel features daily routine like studying and cooking, and also commercial content, constructing her online persona as a talented and academically-accomplished girl. Despite her early success in the mainstream and social media, she appears to prioritize education and maintains a strong academic performance, having secured a full sponsorship in high school, with paid work scheduled only in free time.

The second case involves an adult ex-professional game livestreamer who, due to a rare medical condition of growth hormone deficiency, is misperceived by his viewers as a 10-year-old boy. The disease gives him a childlike appearance: A height of 128 cm, a chubby face, a high-pitched voice, and a slumped physique. His condition makes him prone to rapid weight gain, physical deterioration, and aging. This perceived childlikeness significantly contributes to his popularity as a streamer. With over 92K followers on Facebook, he constructs a cute persona by leveraging his young appearance and sharing positive content. After a medical hiatus in 2023, he resumed online activities in 2024 and returned to livestreaming as a semi-professional livestreamer in 2025. Despite being an adult influencer, his misperceived appearance projects audience expectations about childhood onto him, thereby shaping his content around themes of learning and cuteness.

In both cases, I demonstrate how child influencers reflect Vietnamese social norms on social media platforms. It is within this nexus that I identify two key traits associated with Vietnamese child influencers: academic diligence or producing content related to studying, and cuteness as an affective strategy. These traits are constructed and reinforced through cultural expectations in audiences and become integral to their online personas.

A child influencer on YouTube

A closer look at one of the most-viewed vlogs of the child influencer, featuring her tidying up a messy study corner during midterm preparations, reveals the aesthetic and emotional strategies used to sustain her appeal. The setting includes three large shelves along the wall, musical instruments to the side, and a central study desk surrounded by learning materials—decorative ornaments such as small pink stuffed animals and colorful sticky notes. The focal point of the video is her medals and trophies, prominently displayed on the top shelf. As she slowly rearranges the bookshelf, she randomly picks up books and puts them in order. This type of daily vlog, often filmed in her bedroom while she wears pastel pajamas, grants viewers access to her private space.

The messy desk and casual home wear lend a sense of authenticity, projecting everydayness while reinforcing her persona as a talented and diligent girl, as signaled by the medals and books on the shelves. This aligns with what Abidin (2017) terms “calibrated amateurism,” where influencers strategically produce content to appear amateur and authentic while being carefully staged. The way she showed random book titles covering a wide range of knowledge suggests the spontaneity in the video, yet it also conveys her fondness for studying, a virtue long valued in Vietnamese culture. This video garnered 340K views, the highest among study vlogs, contributing significantly to building her image as a good girl.

In response, viewers frequently leave enthusiastic comments such as “So many medals.” and “You are so good at studying. Please bless (xin vía) me.” The invocation of blessing (xin vía)—a colloquial term for luck—reflects a desire by viewers to draw success and virtue from her, resonating with the notion of moral cultivation through modeling good behavior. Thus, her academic success serves as a source of admiration and positions her as a role model for young viewers.

In addition to praise for her achievements, appearance plays a vital role in her appeal. Her cuteness endures through her behavior. It includes being kittenish to the cameraperson to ask for help to tidy up the desk, or appearing visibly fatigued while cleaning. These expressions evoke childlike charm, inviting viewers to stay on longer to watch the vlog. Audience comments reflect this mix of admiration and affection: “Sister, you are beautiful and cute, and you also work hard on your studies . I love you so much.”

Cuteness, while not a specifically Vietnamese cultural ideal, functions universally as a visual and emotional aesthetic that elicits affective caregiving responses (Dale, 2016). In digital spaces, cuteness is claimed to be a dominant aesthetic of the digital culture (Wittkower, 2012), enabling influencers like this child influencer to mobilize emotional intimacy with viewers. Her pastel pajamas, onscreen pink subtitles, and soft-toned room decorations further amplify this affect. Together, her academic achievement and visual self-presentation converge to strengthen her image as the ideal Vietnamese child—one who is good-looking and studious.

Performing cuteness on livestream

Social expectations around cuteness and academic diligence are so strong that they inform how the adult livestreamer misperceived as a young boy should perform. His streaming room is decorated with toys and stuffed animals. On the stream’s interface, pink and green Smurf emoticons populate the screen as the live chat activity increases, creating a gamified experience that nails viewers deeper into their interactions with him. The full screen overlay is designed with a dark purple night sky and milky stars to elicit a chill mood and dreamy night, as he mostly streams at night (Figure 1). He sometimes ties up his fringe or wears a headband with a toy chicken to enhance the youthful visual effect. This aesthetic constructs a visually childlike ambience, triggering affective responses from viewers and making his perceived cuteness a key feature in his monetization strategy.

Figure 1.

The streamer’s background and overlay setup depict cuteness. Screengrab by author. Used with permission.

Earlier this year, he has been injecting the testosterone hormone following early medical advice to prevent physical deterioration. This procedure has caused his voice to deepen, producing a lower tone reminiscent of a teenage boy undergoing puberty. Viewers swiftly noticed the changes in his voice and expressed nostalgia for his previous higher-pitched voice. The deeper tone, perceived as more adult, seems to disrupt his childlike vocal that has become central to his persona. In another video, others leave comments such as “The fatter the cuter” or “Children are supposed to be short and chubby,” referring to his previous physique. Not only do such comments pose audience expectations on him, but they also reinforce broader cultural assumptions about childhood. In this sense, being chubby is understood as socially accepted, and perhaps desirable, as linked to the cuteness of children.

Similar to the study-related content, the cultural expectation around academic diligence is also imposed. The Decree No. 147/2024/NĐ-CP on internet use (Thu vien phap luat, 2025b) requires that children under the age of 18 are restricted to no more than 60 minutes of gameplay per day for a single game, and 180 minutes across multiple games. Moreover, those under 16 must obtain parental permission through a registered mobile number to access online games. To infrequent viewers, his performance is presumed to fall under this regulation, let alone the fact that he played 16+ rated games. In a video reply (Figure 2) to commentators who had earlier “taunted” him, asking whether he feared being scolded by his parents for playing the game Valorant, he asserts:

Figure 2.

The streamer’s post on Facebook. Screengrab by author. Used with permission.

I’ve finished my homework. Have you? Kids like you who don’t do homework on your own are the ones who get scolded by their parents. But I’ve already done mine, so why worry?

Here, the streamer frames his response around homework, the archetype of the studious child. Although he is an adult, the audience’s perception of him as a child indicates that these norms are implicitly projected onto him. He continues this framing, stating:

No sleep until homework is done. No play until all lessons are learnt. You hear me? That’s how life should be lived if you want to enjoy video games properly. Don’t assume everyone’s like you.

This statement echoes Vietnamese moral values, where academic achievement is considered a personal virtue and a prerequisite for leisure. His audience eventually continues to assess him through the lens of this normative childhood, evidencing the social norms that tie children’s identity to the fondness of studying.

Implications of child influencers in Vietnam

In light of these examples, I suggest two key implications of social norms on Vietnamese child influencers. First, child influencers should be studious and have outstanding academic achievements. Alongside personal virtue, academic excellence is a social imperative. The notion of the “good child” is deeply intertwined with studiousness—a value culturally linked to filial piety as gratitude toward their parents. As such, child influencers frequently incorporate studying as a key component of their online content, whether through vlogs exhibiting their study routines or reactions to audience’s comments.

Second, the audiences expect child influencers to be cute, either through physical appearance or through behavior, despite not being literal children. Cuteness operates as a strategic affective register, functioning as “a pastiche of cute” (Abidin, 2016, p. 15) to attract and maintain viewers’ attention. Extending her analysis of the cute femininity, this strategically performed cuteness, regardless of the influencer’s gender, triggers emotional engagement from audiences through elements such as childlike vocals and nagging requests. Layered with conception of filial piety, this cuteness enriches the influencer’s moral image, making them a “good child” in the audience’s view.

Closing remarks

Vietnamese child influencers are expected to be academically diligent and with affective cuteness—traits that are socially constructed through cultural norms and reinforced by audience expectations. In addition, existing child influencer and online-fame scholarships have highlighted the commodification of cuteness (Abidin, 2023). In Vietnamese contexts, this commodification positions child influencers as early family supporters. While financial support is not traditionally expected of children, social media platforms offer them opportunities to make such contributions possible at a younger age, thereby further enhancing them to practice filial piety. Whether implicitly displayed (such as making income through their self-branded) or explicitly stated (such as purchasing a house for their parents), these acts underscore their role in supporting the family financially. Although thorough discussions about child labor rights are beyond the article’s focus, it is important to recognize how platforms enable children to fulfill their duty prior to adulthood. This proves to be true when most Vietnamese young influencers are widely known to be financially independent or supportive for their family when they are about to turn adulthood.