It’s already 10:27 p.m. on a Saturday night in October when Salish Matter asks gently, “Are we going to start filming soon?”

The 16-year-old stands in the aisle of her local Target in Manhattan Beach, Calif., beside her father Jordan Matter. They are dressed almost identically, in jeans and black shirts. 

The duo is minutes away from filming a video for Jordan’s YouTube channel, which launched in earnest in 2017 and today has more than 38 million subscribers. Over the past several years, Salish has become its star—a role that has helped position her as a pre-eminent teen content creator. With more than 18 million followers across her own TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube accounts, she attracts an audience of teens and tweens who see her as both relatable and aspirational. With Jordan, she is also one half of an increasingly powerful family brand that includes Sincerely Yours, a teen-focused skin-care line that launched last year, and a multiyear talent deal with Netflix, announced in February. The family’s first original series on the streamer, Salish’s 12 Games of Christmas, will premiere Nov. 28, one day before she turns 17.

Tonight’s shoot marks the Matters’ first official collaboration with Target, but the video sits firmly in the family’s milieu: a competition with a frenetic, handheld filming style and bombastic volume. Salish will face off against her father to see who can construct the best sleepover setup using products they find in the store, a riff on Supermarket Sweep. Joining Salish’s team is 34-year-old comedy creator Haley Kalil, a.k.a. Haley Baylee; fellow creators Brooke Monk and Devon Rodriguez will have cameos.

In the aisle, Salish prepares to deliver a line that will kick off nearly five hours of filming, with the creators darting between the shelves as cameras trail them. Jordan encourages his daughter: “Let’s see what you got, Say.” He scans the semicircle of onlookers, largely the family’s team and Kalil’s. The majority are men holding cameras or smartphones. “Everybody, watch how good she is.”

Salish shrugs her shoulders up toward her ears. “No pressure,” Jordan adds.

The morning of the Target shoot, Salish perches on a white bedspread at home. The space around her is sparsely furnished and perfectly neat. There is a white vanity with a mirror, in front of which Salish occasionally films TikToks. On the walls are two posters for the artist SZA, and above the headboard hangs a butter yellow sign with the letters “SY,” a nod to Sincerely Yours. In September 2025, roughly 87,000 people attended its pop-up launch event at the American Dream Mall in New Jersey. Within an hour, the brand sold out at the mall’s Sephora location. Jordan says the crowds were so intense they had to lock the store.

That level of frenzy for a teen content creator—a frenzy that, in past decades, was reserved for pop stars and Hollywood A-listers—is far from out of the ordinary these days. Even a decade ago, young people said they related to content creators more than traditional celebrities-—and many see influencing as the ideal job. A recent study from Edison Research found that 30% of Americans ages 13 to 24 already call themselves digital-content creators.

Though her competition is fiercer than ever, Salish’s rise above the algorithmic fray has a lot to do with her longevity. Despite being only 16, she’s been on kids’ screens for years: “The fact that she’s been doing it consistently, for so long, has allowed these kids to kind of grow up with her,” Jordan says. “Now she’s imprinted in their emotions, as part of their childhood.”

Salish began appearing on her father’s channel in April 2018, at 8 years old. Back then, the channel focused on Jordan’s dance photography—he had already published multiple books—as well as photo challenges with young subjects, including cast members of the reality series Dance Moms and a 14-year-old Tate McRae.

As a kid, Salish loved watching her dad’s videos. When he asked her to join one, she said yes immediately. “I was very shy growing up, and I still am. But I think I came out of my shell a lot,” she says. She speaks melodically and with a slight lisp, grinning. “It was very nerve-racking for me at first to talk in front of a camera, but I got used to it,” she adds. “And now I’m so happy I did it.”

Salish’s appearances on the channel became more frequent during the pandemic, after the family relocated from Nyack, N.Y., to Los Angeles. The family includes her mother Lauren, a trained veterinarian, and her older brother Hudson. Lauren mostly stays off camera. Hudson, now 20, also began appearing on Jordan’s YouTube channel as a child, then pivoted to grow his own.

In 2022, Jordan’s channel hit 10 million subscribers. Two years later, in April 2024, it hit 20 million, and then 30 million in May 2025. So far this year, the channel has garnered more than 3.1 billion views. “It was very obvious that both the audience and I enjoyed the videos where [Salish] was in more,” Jordan says, sitting in the foyer of his home. He is a youthful 60, with an athletic build and strawberry blond hair that stands upright as if he’d touched a live wire. 

As his channel has grown with Salish at its center, Jordan has stepped firmly into the role of strategist. Starting roughly four years ago, he limited their output to once-weekly YouTube videos, eschewing brand deals and product launches until Sincerely Yours. “We wanted to take time to build that emotional connection [with our audience],” Jordan says.

Now, the family’s three-year deal with Netflix is poised to catapult them into a new echelon of recognition. After it was announced, Netflix began hosting select videos from Jordan’s YouTube library. According to the streamer, those videos have spent 14 weeks on the global top 10 chart and entered the top 10 in 75 countries. The new original show, a holiday-themed competition hosted by Jordan, features Salish alongside seven other creators. Together, the group will participate in 12 challenges to win a pile of presents, but there’s a catch: someone among them is an impostor who will try to sabotage the games without the group’s noticing. 

Netflix characterizes the Matters’ deal as unique, even among its recent push to court other content creators and podcasters, including Ms. Rachel and Mark Rober: it includes multiple original titles, rather than one, plus the option to explore additional business deals or partnerships guided exclusively by the streaming giant. “There is no one quite like Salish,” says Heather Tilert, vice president of kids and family series at Netflix. “Her audience’s love for her is undeniable. They connect with her because she’s real and relatable while also being incredibly aspirational and humble.”

Though aspects of Salish’s routine mirror a regular teenager’s—she describes attending a local private high school, doing her homework, and spending time with her friends—she knows there is nothing normal about internet fame. “Since starting content, I’ve just wanted to be normal and have a normal life outside of content,” she says.

Jordan limits filming to Sundays, so Salish can focus on other things the rest of the week. He says he and Lauren are constantly checking in on their daughter’s mental health. “My wife and I talk about it all the time with her,” Jordan says. “Any parent that says, ‘Oh, it’s all good, it’s great—they’re happy.’ Well, maybe they’re happy, but that doesn’t mean it’s all good. There’s still a young person developing into an adult, and now the world is watching them develop.”

Lauren describes her daughter as very private, despite it all: “She is a person with very good boundaries.” Salish doesn’t post about what’s happening in her life behind the scenes—and Lauren says Salish refuses to tell her teachers when she has obligations after hours that might interfere with her performance at school, preferring to keep the two worlds separate. Salish also keeps a low profile with her classmates: “I don’t want to make it my entire personality.”

Jordan says the family is aware of security considerations that arise when sharing children’s lives online, and he points to a note for Salish on the kitchen counter, which was delivered in person and signed by 10 young fans who discovered where they live. To Jordan, the bigger concern is the emotional weight of internet fame: “Seeing where [Salish is] emotionally and how she’s handled it—I don’t see what we could have done better, but that doesn’t mean that everybody should do it,” he says. “We happen to have a kid who seems to be genetically predisposed to be able to handle this kind of life.”

This perspective has not stopped viewers and experts alike from voicing concerns, both about kidfluencing generally and the Matters’ content specifically. In a recent study, professors of entrepreneurship Alisa Jno-Charles of Babson College and Daniel Clark of Western University’s Ivey Business School examine the complexities of kidfluencing as a new form of child labor via an in-depth analysis of four popular family channels. It does not include the Matters, though both Jno-Charles and Clark say their own children watch Salish and Jordan.

“When you are working with your parents, your consent—your understanding of consent—is very different than working with strangers,” says Jno-Charles. “So you theoretically may be asked, ‘Are you OK with this?’ But how comfortable do you feel saying no to your father, whose idea this is?” The stakes can feel particularly high when it comes to a family business: “Continuing this enterprise directly affects his understanding of his career, your family’s net worth, your family’s future. I personally don’t feel like a child is fully capable of removing consent, especially a minor child, in a situation where they’re working with their parent.”

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.”

The vast majority of videos on Jordan’s channel feature concepts that are unequivocally child-friendly, like Salish building a secret mall in her home or hiring a fake twin to prank her dad. However, over the years, there have been some that involve crushes or “dates” between Salish and other minors. (Hudson participated in similar videos too.) Salish’s primary “ship”—the pairing her audience is most bought into, which has inspired dozens of fan accounts—is with her best friend, fellow creator Nidal Wonder, 15. In one video, 13-year-old Salish goes on an “emotional first date” with Wonder, 12. In it, Wonder places both hands on Salish’s face, pulling her in as if to kiss her. As their faces inch closer, the camera cuts away. Jordan says Salish and Wonder thought it was funny that people gossiped about whether they were dating back then, and they liked to prank him, pretending to kiss to draw a reaction from him.

Jordan does not see his videos as playing into the idea of a romantic relationship between the pair. “What I’ve always seen with the Nidal thing is I think it’s an incredible opportunity to showcase a very close connection between a boy and a girl that’s not intimate in a romantic way,” Jordan says. 

For her part, Salish says she expects speculation about her personal life but doesn’t let it affect her: “I know that none of the guys I film with, I’m dating, and we’re all just really best friends.”

Jordan says that in his channel’s early years, he relied on his collaborators to tell him what they were comfortable with—and that those suggestions included concepts that might now give him pause. For one shoot, Piper Rockelle, then 13, and another teen re-created well-known romantic celebrity photographs, including a bridal image. “In retrospect, yeah, probably not the best image, especially the wedding-dress part,” he says. 

Like anyone who chooses to showcase their children online, the Matters must contend with the public’s perception of the messages they send. Jordan says he has to think through whether a moment that feels completely normal to him within the context of their private family life could be misconstrued by viewers: “It gets a little frustrating, because there’s so many ways in which people can interpret everything you do.”

The level of scrutiny has become even more intense as the Matters’ profile has risen this year. Recently, for example, some online commentators questioned the propriety of a thumbnail image from Jordan’s YouTube channel that then appeared on Netflix of Salish looking up at the camera with her mouth open. “The fact that we’re getting called out for sexualizing her—it’s completely out of left field because the context of the thumbnail is in no way sexual,” he says. Typically, the family also captures smiling and grimacing versions of thumbnails, but when they A/B test them on the platform, the “shocked” one usually wins out. But Jordan says they’re backing away from using images with the expression to protect Salish nonetheless: “I don’t want Salish to be feeling uncomfortable.” 

At Target, the group finishes shooting around 3 a.m. Salish emerges through the doors of the store into quiet darkness. In the parking lot, members of her crew pack their cars. She takes off toward them in her checkered pajama pants from the shoot. On her feet are gray socks, no shoes. She hugs each person, thanking them. Next week, they’ll move forward, doing it all again.

What does moving forward mean for Salish, in the broader sense? She doesn’t know what her life will look like in five years. She says she knows she wants to continue creating content, and her biggest ambition is to have fun. She’s not sure if she sees herself attending college. Jordan wants his daughter to be able to choose her own adventure. “As she gets older, she has these different buckets that she’s already dipped her toes into, and then she can just pursue them,” he says. “The world is her oyster, honestly.”

Financially, Salish’s future is laid out for her as she ages: according to Jordan, Salish’s share of the family’s gross earnings, which he says is the majority of the profits, is funneled into two trust accounts. Fifteen percent is in a Coogan Blocked Trust Account, which she’ll gain access to when she turns 18. The remaining 85% is in another account, available to her when she’s 25. 

Today, Salish feels fortunate to be in her position, and echoes Jordan’s sentiment about the future: “I feel like I’ve gotten so many amazing opportunities,” she says. “I’ve gotten to see what building a brand is like and what being on a Netflix show is like, and there’s just so many options.” She also lent her voice to the third Angry Birds movie, coming out in December. Recently, while filming TikToks for the movie, Salish was introduced to Kim Kardashian and her son Psalm, who also has a role—the mogul had said they wanted to meet her.

Asked about the hardest part of her job, Salish says there is none: “I’m so lucky that I get to do it. I mean, I don’t even consider it a job.”