This CBS Show Was Worse Than ‘The Hunger Games’

Fans of The Hunger Games know that there is an inherent cruelty built into the world of the series. A world in which populations are controlled and with that control being maintained by the sacrifice of children. Children and teenagers are forced to fight to the death until there is only one left standing. The reason that the book and film series became popular is partially due to the knowledge that this is entirely fictional. The idea of children being put into situations where they have to make grown-up decisions is one that has existed as society progressed over time. American society has grown much since child labor laws were enacted and enforced in 1938, and children are allowed to be children. However, with the onset of these new laws, the idea of children being left to their own devices was still very much an inspiration for storytelling. There is no better example of this than the book Lord of the Flies, which follows what happens when a group of British prep-school boys are marooned on a deserted island. Forced to survive, they come up with their own society, and soon the young boys go from civil to savage.

The one common theme in both of these books is the idea that children should not have to suffer in such ways and that leaving them unattended and unguarded can lead to disastrous results. Unfortunately, this lesson missed the people behind the 2007 reality seriesKid Nation. The series premise was, “40 children, 40 days, no adults. Can they build a better world than grown-ups?” The idea was a cute one, but the way the show was structured ultimately led to dark results.

The ‘Kid Nation’ Cast Went Through Horrifying Ordeals While On the Show

To give CBS some credit, the series had a lot of entertainment factor. Watching the children, who ranged from ages 8 to 15, interact in their attempts to work as a government was pretty fun to watch. But the issues behind the scenes that went beyond the cute physical challenges were the real problem. When the children were having meetings and completing challenges, they were forced to do hard labor because the adults were legitimately not allowed to help them in any way. Additionally, cleaning products being mishandled and incorrectly stored led to a few kids accidentally drinking bleach.

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The children also had no access to electricity or indoor bathrooms, making survival even harder for them. Sure, daily chores are normal, but doing them for more than 12 hours a day is certainly not normal for an 8-year-old child. They had to cook and clean for themselves, as well as find their own food, even down to the slaughter portion. During an episode, the children had to kill a chicken with a hatchet. Plenty of children grow up hunting or on farms, but these were not the kids who were cast on the show, making the butchering of a chicken traumatic for a good portion of them. Things were so difficult for the children that many of them later shared via a Reddit AMA that some producers snuck them food, which was very much against the rules.

Parents Had to Sign Predatory Contracts To Get Their Kids on the Show

Between drinking bleach, long days of hard labor, and chicken butchering, it’s hard to imagine why any parent would let their child participate in such a brutal experiment, but many did. The children who got gold stars in each episode also gained $20,000 along with it. While this seems fairly lucrative, it’s important to remember that there were participants who never earned a gold star. So while there was an enticing monetary aspect to it, the contracts they were required to sign were not worth the risks they wound up taking.

Reality TV shows are becoming increasingly well-known for the predatory nature of their contracts, and the Kid Nation contract is certainly no exception. The contract is lengthy and full of intentionally difficult-to-understand legal language that most normal Americans are barely able to decipher. According to the contract, the parents waived their children’s right to privacy, with the exception of going to the bathroom. They also waived their personal rights to take legal action against the production, meaning they couldn’t sue if their child got hurt, and even gave up the right to fight the contract in court.

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These parents signed documents that said if their child died during filming, they would not have the right to sue the production or the network, essentially signing their child’s life away. The contract even states that if their child were to cause a problem that hindered episode production, the parents were financially responsible for the damages. After the show ended, there were still parents to tried to take legal action, as there was a child who burned her face on a hot stove while cooking, in addition to other unknown lawsuits that were handled in private arbitration, per their contract.

‘Kid Nation’ Found a Way to Skirt Child Labor Laws

If there is one thing people in positions of power love, it’s a legal loophole. Kid Nation found its own way to ignore child labor laws and was able to fly under the radar until the state of New Mexico, where the series was filmed, took notice of the series. The federal child labor provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 state that children under the age of 14 are not allowed to work unless they are delivering newspapers or acting. The children participating were not considered performers, so how was CBS able to get away with having the kids work 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 40 days straight?

This issue isn’t just a federal one; there are also state laws that have to be taken into consideration as well. The state of New Mexico’s Workforce Solutions Department received a tip prior to the beginning of Kid Nation’s filming that child labor laws would be broken and recommended that they send an inspector to the set. Unfortunately, they never managed to send an inspector to the set, and filming proceeded as planned. According to a New York Times article, “State law required that the show be reviewed and licensed but that CBS never contacted those departments before filming.”

They were also able to subvert the law by referring to the set as a “camp” rather than a production set; meaning that any activities performed by the children could easily be considered as camp activities. The methods used by the network were beyond unethical, but they did get the series on the air. Unfortunately for producers, once the state of New Mexico began an investigation into the legality of the production, and combined with the arbitration with parents, the series never made it to a second season.

Injuries and lawsuits aside, the kids are all grown up and doing alright. Some are processing the experience through podcasts, some are lawyers and scientists, and one is even a recurring character on Chicago Fire. While Kid Nation was a well-received and immediately popular series, the workings behind the scenes were nefarious, and it needed to be canceled.

Kid Nation can be streamed on Prime Video.

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