For someone who made £50,000 by posting videos of her children on YouTube, Belen Fernandez holds surprising views on parental ‘oversharing’ online.
Though she amassed a staggering 400,000 subscribers and 65 million views over the course of three years, she frowns in judgment whenever an influencer posts content featuring their children.
Because, she declares, whatever these parents may tell the world – and themselves – about their intentions, the real motivation behind filming your family is always money.
‘I see influencers who have children with special needs saying, “I’m doing this to raise awareness”. Or mothers filming tiny children, saying, “I’m only doing it to make special memories as a family”,’ says Belen. ‘It’s all just the lies they tell themselves so they can carry on making money.’
And she should know; she now admits she capitalised on her own children, Julia and Diego, in the same way. When Belen first started posting videos of her children, she soon realised the clips in which 14-year-old Diego, who has Down’s syndrome, was seen having meltdowns attracted the most views.
Her response? She started filming him at his most distressed.
‘I was so deep into what I was doing that I was blind to the price the children were paying,’ she admits now.
Even when her teenage daughter attracted the unwelcome attentions of a male stalker, whose sinister threats forced the family to move house, Belen continued posting. ‘I was definitely scared for Julia,’ says Belen. ‘I worried whenever Julia was out alone. But even that didn’t make me consider shutting down the channel. By then it had become the main focus of my life.
Belen Fernandez, who made £50,000 by posting videos of her children on YouTube, says that she capitalised on them for content – and today’s ‘mum-fluencers’ are doing the same
Even when her daughter Julia (pictured in an old family vlog) faced threats from a male stalker, single mum Belen never considered shutting down her YouTube channel
‘Looking back, I was addicted to sharing our life. The positive feedback I got from followers – and the money I was making – blinded me to the impact on Diego and Julia.’
Today, she realises the financial rewards came at the cost of her children’s happiness – as well as her integrity as a mother. ‘I have huge regrets,’ says Belen. ‘I think it’s something I will always feel guilty about. No amount of money is worth negatively affecting your children for.’
Now, Belen says it ‘drives me crazy’ to see other mothers making the same mistakes. ‘Would you go out on to the street and tell lots of random people everything about your child? Of course not. So why would you post intimate details of what they’re doing to thousands of strangers?’ she tells me.
‘Doing this made me a lot of money and became a huge part of my identity. But I realised it was wrong and I want other people to see that, too.’
It was 2016 when Belen entered the world of family ‘vlogging’, where parents share video blogs documenting their children’s lives.
Then 52, at the time Belen was a single mother struggling to raise Julia, then 15, and Diego, 14, alone.
‘Working as an English teacher and a nanny became increasingly difficult because of Diego’s Down’s syndrome. He had the intellectual age of a four-year-old and I needed to be flexible to care for him,’ she explains. ‘Life felt very uncertain.’
Yet one evening, a seeming solution to the difficulties of working away from home presented itself when Belen noticed Julia watching a YouTube channel featuring an everyday family in London. ‘Their videos were light and fun, showing them shopping in supermarkets and going out for dinner,’ Belen explains. ‘I asked Julia, “Are these people making money from this?” and she laughingly replied, “Yes, of course, Mum. Look how many subscribers they have”.
‘For three days my mind was whirring. I realised I had something that would make us stand out from other YouTube families. I had Diego. He was such a wonderful boy who was funny and full of energy. I knew he’d make people smile.’
The next morning, Belen went into the bathroom, held her phone up to the mirror and began recording. ‘I filmed myself getting ready, Diego waking up and taking his medicine, Julia having breakfast before school.
Julia, now 25, says: ‘At first I thought Mum was crazy. She knew nothing about YouTube. But I could see how excited she was and I agreed to edit the footage’
In June 2017, a video of a surprise party for her son’s 15th birthday went viral, boosting Belen’s follower count to 50,000. By September that year, the figure shot up to 100,000
Their public recognition had reached such a scale that Julia (pictured in an old vlog) recalls strangers kept ringing the doorbell of their villa on holiday, as they wanted to meet the family
‘I had no idea what I was doing, so I just copied what I’d seen other people on YouTube do.’
Julia, now 25, recalls: ‘At first I thought Mum was crazy. She knew nothing about YouTube. But I could see how excited she was and I agreed to edit the footage.’ They called their channel Familia Balenchana, with Belen filming everything from making omelettes to dentist trips.
She soon reached 2,000 followers – a respectable number but hardly influencer-worthy. Then, in June 2017, a video of Diego’s 15th birthday went viral. ‘We threw Diego a surprise party and he began behaving badly, asking us to leave him alone,’ explains Belen. ‘I just carried on filming. I was surprised and thrilled when that video went viral and within a month our follower numbers shot up to 50,000.’
Realising that the more dramatic the video the more views, Belen started focusing on her children’s most difficult moments. ‘If we went to the supermarket and Diego began acting up, there would be a big spike in views.
‘When he was unwell, which wasn’t actually very often, I’d really focus on it. I’d say, “Diego has a temperature and a terrible cold, I’m so worried”. I honestly didn’t realise this was bad for my children. I was blind to the truth.’
Ten months after creating the channel, her videos were generating enough views to earn advertising revenue from YouTube. ‘It was so exciting to get that first £450 from YouTube,’ she says.
Having given up work to care for Diego, vlogging had become Belen’s sole income. However, the amount she could earn was tied to how many views she had; the more eyes on her content, the more advertisers would pay. Belen had to come up with ever more inventive ideas for content – regardless of the intrusion into her children’s lives.
‘After follower numbers hit 100,000 in September 2017, Diego came home one day crying. An aggressive cat had tried to scratch him on the face. I had two immediate reactions: the first was relief that he hadn’t been hurt. The second was that this would make a great video. I grabbed my phone and started filming, while he was still sobbing.’
Belen captioned a still image of his distress to accompany the link to the video: ‘A cat almost attacked Diego!’ ‘I wanted to make it as dramatic and intriguing as possible, knowing it would make people click through. It didn’t worry me at all that I was sharing a video of my child in distress. I get so upset when I think about it now. It is absolutely horrible to share your child crying.’
With follower numbers skyrocketing to 200,000, in January 2018 Belen was contacted by an agency offering brand deals. She jumped at the chance to collaborate with paint companies, recycling services and non-profit organisations. ‘It was so exciting when a car brand gave us an electric vehicle for three days and paid us for the videos we made. Then an anti-virus software company paid us £5,200 to work on just a couple of videos – and all the while I was getting regular payments from YouTube.’
The thousands Belen made went to pay off the mortgage on her flat in Madrid. She reasoned she was securing her children’s financial future. And yet, her children were suffering. Julia recalls: ‘All Mum and I ever seemed to talk about was YouTube. And it became normal to have Mum filming me in my pyjamas eating breakfast, at the supermarket or swimming pool, or even having braces put on my teeth.’
And there were consequences. Julia explains that the hours spent editing her mother’s videos impacted on her school work, and – while Belen doesn’t agree –Julia believes this was part of the reason she was asked, aged 16, to repeat the school year.
The impact from Julia’s stalker lingers to this day. ‘My children had become an unhealthy obsession for some,’ says Belen, realising now that her critics were right after all
Then there was the unwelcome public recognition. Julia says: ‘Once we were on holiday in a villa and strangers kept ringing the doorbell because they wanted to meet us. That definitely felt uncomfortable.’
That discomfort turned to fear when a follower started stalking Julia after her 18th birthday. ‘He sent so many messages and however many times we blocked him, he’d return,’ Julia recalls. ‘He used awful language. At the same time, he said that he loved me.
‘During a live video I did with Mum, someone posted our full address in the comments and he then sent a message saying he knew where I lived.’
Panicked, the family moved to a new home in Madrid. Yet Julia adds: ‘Even moving house didn’t stop him, because he somehow found out our new address. It was really frightening.’
The impact lingers to this day. As Belen says now: ‘No one should have to be scared of what some stranger might do.’
While they reported the stalker to the police, nothing was done. Meanwhile, critical comments began appearing below Belen’s videos, calling her a bad mother for exploiting her children.
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Initially she dismissed this as negativity from ‘haters’, as none of her friends had raised concerns – though she acknowledges now they may have just felt uncomfortable to do so. Then in 2019, three years after she’d starting posting and having made more than £50,000, Belen realised the critics were right.
She recalls: ‘Diego, then almost 17, began having health struggles that I didn’t want anyone outside of the family to know about. If I did show Diego on camera, it would be obvious he was struggling and if I kept him off camera, then followers would think I was hiding something. They’d be angry and upset that I was denying them access to the person they thought they loved.’
It suddenly seemed crazy that she was even considering what strangers wanted when it came to her children’s wellbeing. ‘For the first time I watched videos criticising me and actually listened. In horror, I realised they were right.’
Finally, she decided enough was enough. Julia, then 18, recalls feeling ‘happiness and relief’ when her mother broke the news it was all over. ‘I was so tired of editing. I never blamed Mum for the awful situation with the stalker but I’d also had growing concerns about Diego’s life being online in this way. A family vlog turns your entire life into content and while you’re free to do that for yourself, you shouldn’t choose that for your children.’
When the three of them made a video in June 2019, announcing to their 400,000 followers that the channel was over, the fans’ hysterical response confirmed they’d made the right decision. ‘My children had become an unhealthy obsession for some,’ says Belen.
In September 2019, she deleted all her YouTube content. Six years on, and back working as a nanny, Belen is adamant that no parent should share content about their children online.
‘Children have their own rights, including the right to privacy. I don’t regret shutting down the family YouTube. I only wish I’d never started it.’
