Salish Matter was just 10 when she first appeared on her father Jordan’s burgeoning YouTube channel. At the time, 5 million subscribers were tuning in to watch the photographer-turned-content-creator set himself various oddball challenges.
But it was when he decided to involve his daughter in a fitness challenge video — where Salish faced off against a Muscle Beach bodybuilder — that things really took off.
“That’s where I really was, like, ‘Oh, wow, she’s good at this,’” the 59-year-old father of two told The Post. “We started seeing more engagement from the audience. Now I was a father [to the viewers], and there was a relationship that people could relate to. There was this niche that we didn’t even consider.”
The video, filmed six years ago, has over 30 million views to date. And it was from there that their father-daughter partnership was born, where each week wildly popular YouTube videos show Salish participating in even more wacky challenges and games, which easily rack up anywhere from 30 million to 50 million views not long after posting.
Together, they now have a combined 46 million followers across YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.
But their success raises searching questions about how children should be allowed to be online. Many of today’s parents worry about rationing their kids’ screen time and monitoring their online activity — and would be horrified at the thought of that many strangers watching a teen girl’s online antics.
Echoing similar concerns, this week Australia’s social media ban for under-16s finally came into effect, shutting down more than 1 million social media accounts created by users under 16 across the country starting Wednesday.
However, Jordan insists that what he and Salish have created is nothing of concern since he’s careful about the content they produce, trying not to reveal too much about his teen daughter’s personal life.
“We’re not a vlog-style channel where vloggers really do open up their lives. If we go on vacation, neither of us wants to film that. It’s more like we are choosing what aspects of ourselves to share with the audience,” the 59-year-old explained.
Nevertheless, Salish has become one of the most recognizable faces for today’s tween generation, and their long-suffering parents. Over the last five or so years, Salish has risen to a level of fame only today’s chronically online generation could understand.
She’s won two Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards and has acquired A-list celebrity fans like Khloé Kardashian, Shakira and Dr. Dre.
And alongside her gargantuan following, she is also the co-founder of a skincare line geared towards customers her age, “Sincerely Yours,” which sold out in Sephora soon after launching in September.
A recent pop-up event celebrating the launch at the American Dream Mall in New Jersey attracted a crowd of more than 80,000 fans — which was eventually shut down due to safety concerns.
But, for her part, the now 16-year-old insists she doesn’t think much of it.
“I don’t think of myself as famous; I don’t like that word. I feel like I am just a normal teenager, but then sometimes people do come up to me, and that kind of reminds me of everything,” Salish told The Post.
Jordan himself says that he never set out to involve his daughter, but that it’s actually allowed the family to spend more time together.
The 59-year-old father of two, who now devotes his professional attention to Salish and her YouTube career, started as a headshot-turned-dance photographer.
In 2017, Jordan created a YouTube video series called the “10-minute photo challenge,” which involved taking as many high-quality photos as possible of dancers holding different poses in the allotted time.
The hit series not only helped Jordan grow his page to 5 million subscribers over the course of three years, but it also introduced him to an enviable younger generation of creators.
“I started doing stuff with [TikTokers] Charli D’Amelio, Addison Rae, more well-known influencers. That’s kind of where we were until Salish joined the channel five years ago,” he explained.
After involving Salish in the bodybuilding challenge video and seeing the wildly increased engagement and views, it appeared to be a no-brainer business decision to start a “family” business.
“I just wanted to work with her, and she was good on camera. It was fun. And so then the big question was, does she want to do this? That’s not an easy question for a 10-year-old to answer, but five years later, every week we’re still filming videos,” Jordan explained to The Post.
Over the last half-decade, the duo has racked up hundreds of millions of views of their videos that include “My Daughter Survives 100 HOURS ALONE” and “Sneaking Into YouTube Millionaires’ Houses.”
“Last year, our channel was top-10 Nielsen-rated with all streaming platforms,” Jordan told The Post. “We had more views than almost any show.”
Salish isn’t Jordan’s only protégé.
His 19-year-old son and Salish’s older brother, Hudson, who sometimes appears in each other’s videos, is also now an online star in his own right, entertaining his over 2 million followers, with YouTube videos of him staying overnight in the world’s most haunted school or vandalizing his sister’s bedroom and building her a new one.
The only member of the Matter family who is rarely seen online is Lauren, Salish and Hudson’s mom, and Jordan’s wife.
One would assume that a teenage daughter and father working together would put a strain on their relationship. But that’s apparently not the case for these two.
Salish told The Post that she and her father would often butt heads when she was younger, but “not as much anymore because we’re very close.”
Jordan also explains that he has a tight-knit team working behind the scenes, making it easier for Jordan and Salish to separate their personal and working relationships.
“Rowan, who’s the creative director, has known her since she was born and is a family friend. He takes over the directing responsibilities for her so that I’m not stepping in, so I can just be on camera with her and we can have our relationship and be authentic,” Jordan told The Post.
When asked about her day-to-day, Salish’s response is surprising for a teen who keeps millions entertained online. She told The Post that, like any teen her age, she goes to school, plays sports and hangs out with her friends.
That is, when she’s not filming or hanging out in Shakira’s suite at a movie premiere.
Jordan revealed that all their YouTube filming, which is done on an iPhone, takes place only on Sundays, “so she can have a normal life the other six days.”
As normal as it can be for someone who gets mobbed by fans when she goes out, even though Salish insists her classmates and close friends barely bat an eyelash at her fame and wealth.
“I spend time with our team Monday through Saturday, prepping the video for Sunday so that she doesn’t have to do much more than arrive and have fun. She has a lot of input when she wants to, but I just don’t want to burden her with too much,” her father said.
Salish seems to be running her own social media, but there are a few obvious restrictions on her accounts. For instance, on Instagram, she limits who can tag her in their stories, and her TikTok videos cannot be embedded, so she can maintain control over her content.
Having a parent closely monitor their kids’ fame can be a slippery slope — one that Jordan is very aware of and something the world has witnessed the negative effects of with former child stars like Britney Spears, who was under a conservatorship for 13 years of her career, and Jennette McCurdy, whose mother allegedly made her the family’s main financial provider.
But Jordan insists that in their instance, that’s certainly not the case.
“People who don’t watch our content assume I’m exploiting her. That’s usually people who don’t ever see the videos or see our relationship, and they know nothing about us. They just assume, well, father-daughter, he must be taking all the money and using his daughter. It’s so not the case,” he said.
When it comes to what she wants for her future, Salish shrugs and tells The Post she doesn’t think it’s fair for that kind of pressure to be put on a 16-year-old.
“So many people ask me this. I feel like there’s an expectation that in junior year [of high school], you’re supposed to know what you want to do and have it all figured out and be applying for college applications,” she said.
“I have no idea what I want to do. I think the college experience would be amazing, but it’s so much money that I don’t know if I want to waste it just for an experience.”
While most parents would hesitate to allow their teenage daughter to be so prominent online, Jordan doesn’t have any qualms because he said they purposely don’t reveal their personal lives in their videos.
“It’s not really like we’re opening up our private lives. It’s more like we are choosing what aspects of ourselves to share with the audience. But I think what we share is very authentic and real. Ironically, sometimes people who open up their lives more are actually not showing their lives. They’re just making it seem like it’s real.”
If anything, Jordan believes that more parents should embrace their technology-obsessed kids and see what doors it could open for them.
“I don’t think that my generation of parents of this age has caught up yet. They don’t realize that this is an incredible opportunity, not just in front of the camera, but the creator economy is one of the few growing economies that has limitless employment potential,” he told The Post.
“But people are still going after white collar jobs; all that most likely will be gone in five years from AI or at least severely limited compared to this, which is thriving.”
Regardless of where Salish wants to take her thriving online career, like what any parent wants for their kid, Jordan’s goal is for his daughter to be happy.
“For me, it’s all about her happiness. If she’s happy, this is great. If she’s not, then we shouldn’t be doing it,” he said.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: nypost.com
