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With over 350,000,000 YouTube subscribers, 10-year-old Anastasia Sergeyevna Radzinskaya, known online as Like Nastya, is one of the biggest child social media stars in the world.

The parents of the Russian-born social media star launched her channels in 2016, and by 2019, thanks to a rapidly growing channel that creates videos in seven different languages, she became one of the highest-paid YouTubers in the world.

Her videos, all kid-friendly, consist of playtime scenarios, educational content, and toy unboxings. They are the kind of things parents can sit their child in front of and keep them engaged for hours. Available for free online, Like Nastya has been used to keep kids entertained in car journeys, restaurants, and waiting rooms around the world.

In 2022, after the family relocated to Florida, Forbes estimated Like Nastya’s annual earnings to be $28 million. 2025 reports estimate Nastya’s net worth to be around $100 million.

So, how did all of this come to be? A docuseries airing on Hulu and Freeform, Born to be Viral: The Real Lives of Kidfluencers, attempts to answer that question and more.

The six-part series explores the lives of Nastya as well as popular American family vloggers the FishFam and the McClure Twins, plus aspiring child influencer Evan Rodriguez, whose mom is struggling to get views and subscribers to her son’s channel.

Director Ines Novačić documents the kids’ lives across five years, showing the emotional lows and financial highs of a childhood in front of the camera. The parents tirelessly choreograph moments with their kids to share with their followers, they film multi-million dollar brand deals, and reap the benefits. “There are some days where we could pay for an entire college career in one day,” Kyler Steven Fisher of the FishFam reveals in the doc.

Of course, the doc also touches on some of the ethical concerns surrounding child influencers, delving into issues of consent and child safety online. The McClures, for one, share terrifying comments they’ve received about their now-12-year-old daughters, who have been starring in viral videos since they were three years old, including one from a man asking them to keep his “future wife” safe.

The parents of the children involved push back against accusations that they’re exploiting their kids, arguing that their lucrative videos allow them to spend more time with their kids. And there’s no denying that, camera or no camera, these parents love their children. But these sweeter moments are surrounded by scenes that show children at work to create engaging content they don’t fully understand in order to make money that they currently have no control over. It’s hard not to have at least some skepticism, but viewers are ultimately left to judge for themselves.

The series is not quite as dark as similar counterparts like Bad Influence: The Dark Side Of Kidfluencing, An Update On Our Family, and Devil In The Family: The Fall Of Ruby Franke, but all have one similar conclusion: children often come out on the emotional short end of kidfluencing.

Click here for the best family-friendly documentaries to watch with your kids.