Piper Rockelle Became an Influencer at the Age of 8 — Things Weren't Great Behind the Scenes

As of March 2025, YouTube sensation Piper Rockelle hasn't uploaded a video to her channel in three months. Back in December 2024 she shared a Christmas wishlist video to her more 12 million subscribers, which has garnered a little over 330,000 views. That's not a lot of engagement considering how many people have subscribed to Rockelle's channel.

Rockelle got her start at 8 years old and has been in the online game for nearly nine years. She rose to stardom via her YouTube channel but has branched out to social media, thus solidifying her status as a successful kidfluencer. Unfortunately, things have taken quite a turn for Piper, whose mother has faced severe legal issues. What happened to Piper Rockelle? Here's what we know.

Piper released her first video in November 2016, which was shot in her kitchen at her house in Georgia. The little girl filmed a how-to video for making slime. It's very adorable and also features her adoptive father Hunter Hill. Tiffany Smith, Piper's mother, also has a cameo but clearly wasn't as involved in her daughter's content as she would later become.

When Piper's videos started to gain traction, Tiffany took over as her manager and eventually invited other kid stars to join in. They would later be known as The Squad. While that cast of characters has changed, over the years members have included Sophie Fergi, Gavin Magnus, Sawyer Sharbino, Hayden Haas, Corinne Joy, Emily Dobson, Jentzen Ramirez, Claire Rocksmith, and Symonne Harrison, to name a few. In order to film more, a few members moved in with Piper and her family.

According to the Daily Mail, that is when the alleged abuse started. In a January 2022 lawsuit, the child actors claimed they were subjected to an emotionally, physically, and sometimes sexually abusive environment by Piper's mother. Claire Rocksmith, one of the members of The Squad, claimed Smith made comments about her breasts while attempting to touch them, and slid her hand up the young girls thigh toward her vagina.

In a separate lawsuit, Claire said she accompanied Smith to the post office in order to mail Piper's soiled underwear to an "unknown individual." Smith reportedly told the little girl that "old men like to sniff this stuff." The group who filed the lawsuit said Smith would assume an alter-ego in order to yell inappropriate things at them, such as, "I'm going to touch you in your sleep."

In October 2024, the lawsuit was settled for $1.85 million, reported the Los Angeles Times. Apart from the sexual abuse allegations made against Smith, the lawsuit also alleged the child actors were taken advantage of financially. They claimed they were not compensated for the times they appeared in Piper's videos, which in turn helped her grow her brand.

Prior to this lawsuit, Piper was making somewhere between $4.2 million and $7.5 million per year. When the allegations surfaced, YouTube demonetized her channel, which reportedly caused Piper to lose $300,000 to $500,000 per month. Smith has said that the lawsuit was rooted in jealousy due to the amount of money her daughter was making. A mother for one of the plaintiffs said that was not the case. "It was about exposing an industry that is unregulated and the people taking advantage of it."