Jen Thomas
Have you heard of the Wren Eleanor movement? Until now TikTok has been the home of funny trends and videos, with everything from the latest dance sensation to adorable rescue puppies and kittens needing a home.
However, there’s also a whole side of the app dedicated to precocious kids speaking fluently before their first birthday, and toddlers with a better wardrobe than you could ever hope for. One of those child influencers is Wren Eleanor, a little girl who has 17.3 million followers and found fame before her first birthday. It all seems ridiculously wholesome, with Wren’s mum Jacquelyn sharing videos of the three-year-old.
Unfortunately, many TikTok users started to notice something strange was going on with how people were interacting with the Nebraska toddler’s videos. TikTok allows you to ‘save’ videos, and also autofills the search bar with popular suggestions.
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Users noticed that one of the videos of little Wren in an orange crop top has been saved over 45,000 times, and a video of her eating a hot dog has been saved 375,000 times. Parents on the app spoke of their concern that "Wren Eleanor hot dog," or "Wren Eleanor pickle” came up as the top suggested search results for the young girl.
Many parents have now decided to delete all videos and pictures of their children from the app and from Instagram, fearing child predators could be viewing the innocent content in a disturbing way.
Makayla Musick told one American news outlet that she has been frightened by the response to Wren’s videos and has deleted all content of her daughter. “
"I just saw the posts on Tiktok and was absolutely appalled by the story and had decided that I needed to protect my daughter," she said. "Wren's story brought a lot of light to all the sick people in the world."
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"So, I decided to remove my own daughter's photos from anyone who is not close family/close friends. My duty as her mother is to protect her from things like this," she added.
"I took the initiative to remove her photos before anything like Wren's situation could happen to my own daughter."
On one video flagging concern, parents left worried comments.
“"Thank you for posting. This is why I don’t post my kids anymore. Sure 98% of viewers are Innocent and think it’s cute. But that 2% isn’t worth it."
"300k saves is definitely not for the right reason," wrote another.
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A second hashtag posted #savewren has gone viral, with people raising their concerns.
“These people need to be banned from the internet” fumed another.