Why the Bhad Babie Only Fans Era Keeps This Twin Dad Awake

The bluish glow of my phone was beautifully illuminating a fresh, crusty patch of spit-up on my left shoulder at 3:14 AM when the algorithm decided I desperately needed to know about a teenager's multi-million dollar adult content empire. One twin, Elsie, was aggressively gumming my collarbone. The other, Florence, was executing a series of rhythmic, piercing squawks from her cot that suggested she was either dying of thirst or just deeply unhappy with the wallpaper. And there I sat, a 30-something former journalist in a drafty London flat, absolutely spiralling over a headline about a child meme star turning eighteen.

If you're wondering how you get from wiping meconium off a changing mat to having an existential crisis about digital sex work, let me welcome you to modern parenthood. It's a psychological haunted house, and the ghosts all have Wi-Fi.

I remember the original "Cash me outside" meme from back in 2016. I was wonderfully, blissfully childless back then, probably drinking an overpriced pint in Soho, entirely unaware that I'd one day be responsible for keeping two female humans alive and relatively sane in a world that actively monetises their destruction. Now, looking at my two-year-old daughters, I find myself involuntarily doing the terrifying mental maths of how many years I've left until they've smartphones, broadband access, and a misplaced desire for internet validation.

The pipeline from viral childhood fame to explicit content isn't just an abstract cultural phenomenon; it's a glaring, neon warning sign for anyone raising kids right now. Whether the kids at school are searching for bhad babie, misspelling it as babi, or trying to find some random babie meme, the search engine doesn't care about their innocence. One poorly monitored Google search, and they're suddenly knee-deep in adult forums because the internet has completely obliterated the boundary between "funny kid on the telly" and adult entertainment.

Whatever the hell a prefrontal cortex actually does

When we took the girls for their last set of jabs (a delightful afternoon featuring two screaming toddlers and a waiting room that smelled strongly of damp biscuits), our GP casually mentioned something about impulse control and brain development. I'm no neuroscientist, and my understanding of the human brain is largely limited to whatever snippets I absorb from podcasts while trying to assemble flat-pack furniture, but the gist was terrifying.

Apparently, the part of the brain that taps you on the shoulder and says, "Hey mate, maybe don't post a permanent, irrevocable record of your naked body on the internet for creepy men to buy," doesn't actually finish forming until you're about 25. It's called the prefrontal cortex, which sounds like a part of a mid-range saloon car but is actually the only thing standing between your child and a lifetime of digital regret.

So, when I read about an 18-year-old making millions on her birthday, I don't see a girlboss empowerment narrative. I see a child with an undercooked frontal lobe being exploited by an ecosystem of adult men who quite literally sat around watching a countdown clock until she reached the legal age of consent. It's enough to make you want to throw your router into the Thames and move the entire family to a yurt in the Outer Hebrides. You read one article about a bhad babie only fan making millions in six hours, and suddenly you're eyeing your innocent toddler's tablet with absolute, unadulterated venom.

Shipping them off to the woods is apparently a terrible idea

Here's the bit that really boils my blood, though. When parents completely lose control of their teenagers (which, given my current struggles to negotiate with a two-year-old over a soggy piece of toast, feels entirely inevitable), society suggests we just ship them off to wilderness camps. The "troubled teen" industry is essentially a collection of aggressive outdoor prisons where you pay thousands of pounds to have strangers scream at your traumatised child in the woods.

The creator at the centre of all this recently came out and said her time at one of these camps left her with severe psychological damage. And honestly, it makes perfect sense. You take a child whose brain has been warped by algorithmic fame, strip away their dignity, force them to sleep in the dirt while being verbally abused, and then act shocked when they emerge with even deeper behavioural issues and a massive chip on their shoulder. It's absolute madness.

These camps prey on terrified parents who just want a quick fix for the fact that they're losing their children to the internet, peddling this fantasy that fresh air and emotional abuse will somehow overwrite years of screen addiction and trauma. It doesn't work, the kids come out worse, and the whole system just funnels them further into destructive adult behaviours because they've learned they can't trust the people supposed to protect them.

Anyway, just buy a decent router with a firewall, block all the adult aggregator domains, and physically confiscate their devices at 8 PM; it saves you about thirty grand in wilderness therapy fees.

Our desperate retreat to wooden things

This brings me to my current parenting strategy, which I like to call "Aggressive Analog Denial." If it has a screen, a battery, or the ability to connect to Bluetooth, I want it out of my house (a massive hypocrisy given I practically live on my iPhone, but page 47 of the parenting books suggests we shouldn't worry about our own glaring double standards, which I found deeply unhelpful but very convenient).

My absolute lifeline right now is the Fishs Wooden Baby Gym. I can't express enough how much I love this inanimate object. It's just wood. Smooth, beautifully sanded, gloriously offline wood. When the existential dread of raising girls in the digital age gets too loud, I lay Elsie down underneath it.

She just lies there, completely captivated by these wooden rings, reaching out with her little chubby hands, practising her grasping skills without a single flashing light or synthetic beep assaulting her nervous system. It's a Montessori-inspired piece of kit, which is a fancy way of saying it respects a baby's actual developmental pace rather than trying to turn them into a hyperactive iPad zombie. It's sturdy enough that she hasn't managed to pull it over (despite some truly aggressive yanking), and the natural aesthetic means our living room doesn't look like an exploding plastic toy factory. It's a tiny, screen-free sanctuary in my flat.

Then there are the Pacifier Clips. I'll be honest, I've mixed feelings here. On paper, they're brilliant—made of food-grade silicone and beechwood, no BPA, totally safe. They genuinely stop the dummies from ending up covered in dog hair on the kitchen floor. But Florence, who has the temperament of a tiny, drunken viking, has realised that if she unclips it from her jumper, she has effectively armed herself with a small medieval flail. She swings it around her head by the dummy end and uses the wooden beads to threaten the cat. They do the job, they're perfectly safe to chew on, but be warned: you're technically handing your child a very pretty, silicone-beaded weapon.

If you're also feeling the urge to throw your phone in the sea and surround your child with things that don't plug into a wall, have a look at Kianao's collection of screen-free wooden gear. It won't fix the internet, but it might buy you a few years of peace.

Wrapping them up to hide from the algorithms

When the 3 AM doom-scrolling gets really bad, my coping mechanism is to just physically cocoon my children. There's something deeply grounding about tucking a baby into a blanket; it's a tactile reminder that right now, in this moment, they're safe, they're small, and the worst thing they can do is soil themselves.

We use the Bamboo Baby Blanket in the Universe Pattern, mostly because I find the irony comforting. The blanket has all these little planets on it, and it feels appropriate because trying to keep your kids safe from the internet honestly feels like navigating deep space without a map. It's ridiculously soft—a blend of organic bamboo and cotton—and it genuinely stops Florence from waking up in a pool of her own sweat, which she used to do constantly when we used those cheap polyester things.

Bamboo is apparently brilliant at regulating temperature, which is great because I spend most of the night jumping up to check if they're too hot or too cold (the NHS health visitor told me to just "feel their chest," which is solid advice right up until you accidentally wake them up doing it and ruin your entire night). I just wrap them in this ridiculously soft galaxy and pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist for a few more hours.

The ticking clock of the digital footprint

The really insidious part of all this isn't just the adult platforms themselves; it's the cultural normalisation of it all. We've somehow built an internet where it's entirely accepted for millions of adults to form parasocial relationships with children, track their exact age, and wait for the legal green light to consume them differently. It makes my skin crawl.

I look at my girls trying to share a single piece of soggy penne pasta, and I know that keeping them safe isn't going to be as simple as putting a password on the family iPad. It's going to require constant, exhausting, deeply uncomfortable conversations about why certain influencers are suddenly off-limits, why the promise of easy internet money is a poisonous illusion, and why their bodies aren't public commodities just because an algorithm tells them they could be.

You try to do everything right. You buy the organic cotton, you puree the organic carrots, you sing the bloody nursery rhymes until your throat is raw, and you hope it's enough to build a foundation so strong that when the internet eventually comes for them, they've the self-worth to tell it to jog on.

For now, I'm just going to focus on getting through the terrible twos. If you want to join me in my aggressive analog denial, check out Kianao's shop for things that won't ruin your child's prefrontal cortex.

Questions I'm too tired to answer properly (but will try anyway)

How do I explain digital footprints to a kid who still eats crayons?
You don't. At this age, you just aggressively manage their privacy for them. I don't post their faces publicly, and I definitely don't try to make them go viral. When they're older, I'm going to explain that the internet is written in permanent ink, not pencil. For now, I'm just trying to stop them from eating the dog's food.

Are all screens bad for toddlers?
Look, the paediatrician said zero screens before age two, which is a lovely fantasy for someone who doesn't have twins screaming in stereo at 5 PM. We try our best. We stick to slow-paced, boring educational stuff when we absolutely need ten minutes to cook dinner without someone setting the kitchen on fire. But generally, the more offline physical play they get, the less unhinged they act before bedtime.

What's really wrong with kids wanting to be influencers?
Aside from the crushing algorithmic anxiety and the terrifying reality of strangers feeling entitled to your child's life? Nothing, I suppose. The problem is that the jump from "friendly toy reviewer" to "exploited teen" is remarkably short. The platform owns you, not the other way around. I'd rather my kids aspire to be accountants. Accountants sleep at night.

How early should I put parental controls on our devices?
Yesterday. Seriously, the moment a device connects to your Wi-Fi, lock it down. Kids are basically tiny, sticky hackers who will accidentally stumble into the worst corners of the web while trying to find a cartoon dog. Set the boundaries now before they know how to bypass them, because trying to take privileges away later is like trying to un-toast bread.