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Meet the Instamom, a Stage Mother for Social Media

Princeton Cannon-Roberts, 5, being photographed by his mother, Keira Cannon, left, and a professional photographer, Daisy Beatty, for his Instagram account, Prince and the Baker. He has more than 5,600 followers.Credit...Hilary Swift for The New York Times

It was a gorgeous fall day in Dumbo, Brooklyn, and Keira Cannon was holding one of the weekend photo shoots she does with her favorite subject: her son, Princeton.

Princeton wore leather pants, black-and-white checked sneakers and a black sweatshirt with an open-mouthed vampire graphic. But that wasn’t quite enough flair for his mother. So Ms. Cannon whipped out a purple faux-fur jacket — except that Princeton was, in teenager-speak, “done.”

But Princeton is not a teenager. He is 5 years old. A happy-seeming little boy, he played with his scooter, balanced on the curb, twirled in endless circles but only had so much tolerance for the professional photographer whom Ms. Cannon, 38 and a pastry chef, had hired to populate his Instagram feed, Prince and the Baker, which has more than 5,600 followers.

When the photographer attempted to coax him to pose for one more shot with the Brooklyn Bridge behind him, he gave her a polite, “No thanks.” It didn’t help that children were riding past him on scooters of their own, or bicycles.

Once the half-hour shoot was over, Ms. Cannon posted multiple photos of Princeton in the outfit on the Instagram feed, tagging the Canadian online shop, the Mini Life, that had provided it, and the brands included. In return, she would get a shopping discount and keep the clothing, worth about $350.

During busy seasons, she receives such packages weekly. Depending on the brand, Ms. Cannon will sometimes earn a payment of $50 to $100 per post, she said, adding that L’Officiel Enfant, a showroom in Midtown, once paid her $250 for a look-book shoot.

Typically, Princeton is happy to be in the spotlight. “He kind of loves it,” Ms. Cannon said. “A lot of followers will actually recognize him in the street. And he’ll say, ‘How do people know me?’ or ‘People think that I’m adorable?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, you’re totally adorable.’ He’s a sweet little guy, and it opens him up in ways because people want to talk to him about what he’s wearing and how he’s doing.”

The entertainment industry has long been populated with (some may say built by) stage mothers like Rose Hovick, Jaid Barrymore, Teri Shields, Dina Lohan, and reigning “momager” Kris Jenner. But Instagram, which Pew Research says is the fastest growing major social network among adults in the United States, has become an express track for parents interested in sharing and sometimes capitalizing on the visual story line of their children’s lives.

Other than a few recommendations about proper tagging, endorsement deals resulting from such activity largely lie outside the protective scope of the Federal Trade Commission, said Susan Scafidi, the academic director of the Fashion Law Institute at Fordham University.

“While the modeling industry isn’t perfect by any means, it is at least, at the level of children, regulated to some extent,” she said, referring to limitations on work hours and the creation of a trust fund for wages.

Regardless of how their time and money is being handled, the amateur child models of Instagram are already more famous on the Internet than most of your co-workers. There’s 4-year-old London Scout, with 105,000 followers; 2-year-old Millie-Belle Diamond, with 143,000; 4-year-old Michelle (154,000); Gavin (200,000); and the Mini Style Hacker (260,000). Then there’s the prince of Instagram: Alonso Mateo, with more than 600,000 followers. He recently attended the Dior show at Paris Fashion Week.

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London Scout poses for her mother, Sai De Silva, in Dumbo for her Instagram account. The 4-year-old has more than 100,000 followers.Credit...Hilary Swift for The New York Times

Princeton’s dad, Sai Roberts, 40, a graphic designer, has more modest aspirations. “His mom and I have reviewed some of the other Instagram kids who have a lot of followers, and so there are some concerns in the sense that if it was to get out of hand, but so far it’s really been a positive experience,” he said. “I’m very proud that he’s getting exposure, and I hope he’s able to use that for his own creative flair and voice as he grows older.”

Sometimes adults are drawn to the feed: people who post comments on their own Instagram pages like “Can I be her?” or “She’s become my style inspo” or “I love the hair!!!!”

And marketers are also taking an interest. Athena Rotolo, who owns the Mini Life website, said she was pleased with the transactions she has struck with Ms. Cannon. “She requests certain items that fit in for the style of the shoot and then I send them off to her,” Ms. Rotolo said. “So instead of me having to hire someone and pay all those fees, it’s a mutual relationship.”

Parents have also negotiated deals with Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop and other higher-profile companies.

On the higher end, there’s London Scout (her first and middle names) walking down a street in a couture party dress for the Instagram account Scout Fashion. Or London Scout at New York Fashion Week in a pink and navy faux fur coat, waving to a crowd of photographers.

“It was like she had her own little paparazzi,” said her mother, Sai De Silva, who runs the feed. London Scout is living #scoutstyle and schooling followers on how to #gettheLondonlook. And because London’s mother, 34 and a self-described social-media strategist, is as photogenic as her daughter, there are also the hashtags #mommydaughtermoments and #ScoutMomstyle.

Ms. De Silva, who lives in New York, has created a weekly calendar to manage the account. “It’s the same thing you would do with a magazine,” she said. One day she takes the photos of London, and on another she hires a professional photographer. Two to three wardrobe changes are scheduled for each outing: London going to the park or the supermarket, dressed to the nines.

“That way, I have content for the week,” Ms. De Silva said. “Or if she’s in the mood to shoot a photo on my iPhone, then I’ll take a capture. But we don’t make it an issue where it’s 24-7 because it would be obnoxious and ridiculous for a 4-year-old. If my daughter isn’t happy, then there are no photos.”

Taylen, age 2, has some 112,000 followers. “Taylen has become a brand,” said her mother, Angelica Calad, 33 and the owner and designer of POMP Kids, an online clothing business in Davie, Fla. Ms. Calad’s Instagram feed, Taylen’s Mom, is a devoted chronicle of Taylen and Aleia, Ms. Calad’s infant daughter, in high-fashion outfits. In one photo, Taylen wears a retro Esther Williams-inspired dusty rose bodysuit with ribbon shoulder straps, glitter-adorned bottoms and a bow tie. In another, Aleia wears peach merino overalls and a white-feathered chieftain headdress.

In the course of one weekend, Ms. Calad booked back-to-back shoots for Taylen and Aleia. She said she is also in talks to develop a network television show for Taylen and is branching out into home décor. But the real get is that Taylen is headlining the holiday campaign for Kardashian Kids Kollection, a relationship that began, Ms. Calad said, when she was approached by a publicist for the Kardashian line through Instagram.

Ms. Calad works with at least 100 brands and said she sometimes receives money, but sometimes not. “This is not an advertising site,” she said. “That’s the difference between my Instagram and a lot of other moms’ Instagram accounts, which is that they’ll take whatever gets sent to them. I don’t. I have a particular style for my girls. It has to be handmade or eco-friendly, with simple fabric. Anything organic.”

This is a favorite word of Ms. Calad’s. The clothing her children wear is organic. The photo shoots are organic. The way her Instagram feed began is organic. But there’s no spilled ice cream and there are never ever any tears in the pictures.

Still, Ms. Calad insists nothing is forced. “At 2 years old, you would think the tantrums would start with photo shoots and things like that, but Taylen truly enjoys it,” she said. “A lot of the brands we work with, they see it right away: her charisma and her love for the camera.”

Ginger Clark, a psychologist and professor of clinical education at the University of Southern California, compared parent-run Instagram feeds to the pageant world.

“Not every kid is going to have this experience, but it runs the risk of giving the child the sense that they are a commodity in your eyes,” she said. “You have to be extra careful to make sure the messages you’re giving your child are ‘This is for fun, this is dress-up.’ But when you’re hiring your own photographer, then it becomes more commercialized.”

Patricia Greenfield is a psychology professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, director of the campus’s Children’s Digital Media Center and a co-author of an oft-cited study that found that fame was the No. 1 goal for children ages 10 to 12. “It really boils down to someone’s values and whether or not you want your child to grow up thinking of himself or herself in terms of how famous he or she is, versus having more pro-social values,” Dr. Greenfield said of cultivating Instagram stars.

Her co-author on the study, Yalda T. Uhls, a child psychologist, said children whose parents seek fame for them may grow up to be introverts or have higher-than-usual social anxiety. “The other extreme is, your child will get so used to this attention that they’ll start to crave it and they may crave it in unhealthy ways,” Dr. Uhls said.

Regardless of the potential psychological effects, the mothers interviewed for this article said they feared online predators. “You never know who’s behind a profile,” said Mia St. Clair, 29, a professional photographer in Spokane, Wash. Her son Grey, 3, is at the epicenter of Grey’s Little Closet. They have over 28,000 followers.

“Now that it’s so large and it’s growing, we just felt like we should just kind of shift it and not be so focused on Grey,” Ms. St. Clair said. “We don’t love the idea of him growing up and one day feeling like he has this huge following or fan base.”

Her husband, James St. Clair, 33, a director of media and communications at Calvary Spokane, a church, also voiced caution. “I never thought it would be this big,” he said. “I had hesitation at first, mostly because I just didn’t understand it. As I’ve learned more and seen the effects, both positive and not-so-positive, I now have the mind-set that we need to be responsible with the platform that we have.”

Ms. Cannon, the pastry chef from Brooklyn, recently dealt with an incident in which a Facebook user posted photos of Princeton and other children without permission. A group of mothers, including Ms. Cannon, demanded that they be taken down.

But such fears have not stopped her from proceeding full steam ahead with Prince and the Baker.

“I’m not trying to thrust him in it right away, and I’m going at his pace,” Ms. Cannon said. “But, yes, ultimately, we’re on that track of maybe television work or commercials. I think Princeton and I are on the cusp of blowing up.”

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A version of this article appears in print on  , Section ST, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Growing Up Instagrammed. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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