Inside Salish and Jordan Matter’s Growing Father-Daughter Empire

Since the dawn of social media, kidfluencer families like the Matters have shared—and monetized—their children’s lives. Several high-profile cases of alleged exploitation have raised questions about kid creators’ working conditions, access to revenue, and exposure. One prominent recent case involves creator Piper Rockelle, her mother and manager Tiffany Smith, and members of their Los Angeles content collective, known as “the Squad.” In 2022, 11 participants in the collective, all of whom were under 18 at the time, brought a lawsuit against Smith, claiming that she abused them verbally, emotionally, physically, and sexually. (The lawsuit was settled for $1.85 million in 2024; as part of the settlement terms, Smith denied any wrongdoing.) Last year, the case became the subject of the Netflix documentary Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing.

Jordan filmed multiple videos with Rockelle in 2020 and 2021, when she was between 12 and 14, and says he found the documentary shocking. “My experience of it was, it was a relatively healthy environment,” he says. Still, some online commenters have compared the families. Jordan says that he understands the impulse to make a connection, but that those judgments are uninformed. “Almost every opinion comes from people who have never met us,” he says. Lauren adds, “We all realize that people are really imaginative, and a lot of times the comments don’t really have a basis in reality.”