Private Law Theory

INTRODUCTION
In today’s digital sphere, playdates turn into product placements. A nine-year-old influencer earns more in sponsorships than their parents, yet under contract law, they cannot legally sign their own name. In the modern internet landscape, tension emerges between individuals’ long-established rights in their personas and the contractual realities governing online platforms. Social media networks operate as expansive commercial enterprises embedded with intrusive information including names, likeness and images rising to the level of a commodified infrastructure. The contemporary scope of privacy law adapted to proffer protections for social media in criminal and political contexts. However, as social media as a commodity expands, a chasm between privacy law and commerce law tends to leave individual users unprotected. Further, the only concrete protection for social media users exists in the standard ‘terms-and-conditions contract’, contract social media enterprises allow minors to sign …

Mackenzie Custer, Click to Agree: Reassessing Minors’ Persona Rights in the Age of Monetized Social Media, 11 University of Cincinnati Intellectual Property and Computer Law Journal (2026).