Toddler goes viral in ‘Wren Eleanor’ TikTok videos. Moms are scared of who’s watching
Wren Eleanor, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed 3-year-old girl, has millions of followers on TikTok. On her page, she does regular toddler things — playing with water balloons, trying new foods and sporting cute outfits.
Then, other moms on TikTok looked a little closer — and said they were horrified.
“I didn’t know who she was so I clicked on the hashtag and (I) felt my heart literally sink to my stomach,” one commenter said about the girl’s videos. “She’s a toddler? This is gut-wrenching.”
As of July 28, the hashtag #wreneleanor has 399.5 million views on TikTok.
While many of Wren Eleanor’s videos appear simple and lighthearted, moms are mostly concerned about who is watching them.
Certain videos, such as Wren eating hot dogs and pickles, pretending to shave pubic areas or playing with tampons, have gotten millions of views and been saved by watchers.
TikTok’s save function lets users come back to videos they like to watch later. When a video of a child sleeping, sucking on lollipops or playing in a bikini has hundreds of thousands of saves, TikTok moms say it’s a red flag.
“I think this is the start of a conversation, a much larger and broader conversation about accounts like this,” Sarah Adams, a mom who uses TikTok, told ABC News. “This is being used as an example for the larger conversation about our children and social media and the exploitation of them.”
Parents are using the videos of Wren and highlighting the number of times the content has been saved as an avenue to raise awareness about child predators online.
Many mothers are encouraging each other to limit the amount of content they post online of their children — or not to share them at all.
“This is why I don’t post my kids anymore,” TikTok mother @hayes_cc wrote on a Wren Eleanor explainer video. “Sure, 98% of viewers are innocent and think it’s cute, but that 2% isn’t worth it.”
The concern from mothers stems from more than just thousands of saves on Wren Eleanor’s videos, too. The viral account has disabled comments for all of Wren’s videos, but some users took screenshots of the more disturbing and predatory comments on Wren Eleanor’s page before they got deleted.
Despite the mass backlash from worried mothers, Wren Eleanor has more than 17 million followers and others still defend the videos as nothing more than innocent and fun glimpses into the toddler’s life.
Regardless, Callahan Walsh, executive director of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, told KTVU that parents and viewers have no control of their children’s videos after they’re posted — no matter how innocent they were meant to be.
“Parents have to understand that when you’re putting this information out to the public, you’re opening up your world to the entire outside world,” Walsh told KTVU. “Anybody in the entire world can view and consume the content that you’re putting out there.”
Common Sense Media, a platform designed to help guide parents through social media safety and security, says that any type of photo of children creates a “digital footprint” that helps establish their identity online.
“Someday your preschoolers will grow up, and they might not want documentation of their diaper days hanging out online for their friends to find,” the site says. “Second, once you post a photo online, you lose control over it. Someone could easily copy the photo, tag it, save it, or otherwise use it — and you might never know.”
There are several steps parents can take to ensure their children will stay safe online if they post pictures, according to Common Sense Media:
- “Use privacy settings.”
- “Limit the audience of a post (only to family, for example).”
- “Create a closed, invite-only group on a social media service such as Facebook.”
- “Turn off your phone’s GPS.”
- “Consider using a nickname for your kids.”
- “Think about using photo-sharing sites such as Google Photos and Flickr that require users to log in to see pictures (unlike on social media, where all your followers can see them).”
- “Don’t include your kid’s friends in photos that you post.”
- “Don’t include any personally identifiable information, such as your home address, signs, your kid’s school.”
- “Be careful if you share custody. It can be emotionally difficult for exes to see photos of their kid when they’re not included.”
- “Be prepared for feedback of all kinds; not everyone will share the same view of the photo and online comments can lead to misunderstandings.”
“Think twice. Trust your gut. Understand there’s bad people out there. Try to keep your kids safe,” Walsh told KTVU.
For more information on social media and safety, visit Common Sense Media’s resource page.
This story was originally published July 28, 2022 at 3:09 PM with the headline "Toddler goes viral in ‘Wren Eleanor’ TikTok videos. Moms are scared of who’s watching."
