What would you do if your teenager became an overnight Instagram sensation?

After photographs go viral, your child becomes a social-media influencer and a celebrity on Instagram. Should you step in? Parents reveal the contrasting conflicts of instant fame

When Charlotte D'Alessio was 16 she accidentally became a social media influencer. The Canadian-born teen had recently moved from Toronto to Los Angeles with her family when, in the spring of her first year in LA, she attended the music festival Coachella with a few of her new mates.

While at Coachella, Charlotte and her friend Josie changed outfits several times, taking a few pictures of themselves in bodysuits, bikini tops and jean shorts (the typical Coachella nouveau-boho uniform) and posted them on social media. So far so normal. But when the successful LA photographer Bryant Eslava took some photos of the girls and tagged them on his account, their images began to go viral. Soon the girls were seeing themselves everywhere, featured in roundups of the festival and in the "popular" galleries of Tumblr and Instagram. They were gaining hundreds and thousands of followers by the minute and being followed by strangers who'd comment "I found them!" and then tag their image to their followers in turn.