Alyson Stoner on escaping the 'toddler to train wreck' pipeline and building plans to dismantle the child star industrial complex

Alyson Stoner’s life radically and irreversibly changed in the aisle of a grocery store in 2002. A week after the MTV premiere of Missy Elliott’s “Work It” music video, which featured a 9-year-old Stoner dancing for a few brief seconds in pigtails and a pink tracksuit, a stranger approached the child with a request.

“Are you the little white girl in the Missy video?” the man asked, before adding, “Can you do the dance?” The young dancer obliged, soon surrounded by customers watching the spectacle. This was the beginning of what Stoner, who uses they/them pronouns, calls “permanent performance mode.”

Stoner’s career as a child star took off from there, and they became a mainstay on the Disney Channel for many years, appearing in Camp Rock and Mike’s Super Short Show but never fully breaking out with their own series or movie like fellow Mouse House stars Miley Cyrus or Demi Lovato. It’s an unusual trajectory, and Stoner’s new book, Semi-Well-Adjusted Despite Literally Everything, is not the typical kid performer memoir. It’s OK if you think so at first, though. It’s all part of the plan.

‘Copy-and-paste downward spirals’

Stoner says they noticed a series of recent memoirs and documentaries highlighting a “repeated pattern of former child performers … experiencing copy-and-paste downward spirals,” but no one had yet unpacked the ecosystem that creates that kind of pattern, nor tried to intervene and prevent it from continuing to harm children.

“I thought, ‘I want to not only share my lived experiences — yes, all of the juicy details from the sets growing up — but also connect new dots for people across media, culture, child development and the industry,” Stoner, now 32, tells Yahoo over Zoom. “Folks might show up to read about the childhood chaos of it all, but I hope they stay for the cultural critique.”

Stoner is still an entertainer, and they recognize that their work onscreen is probably what you know them from. But they’re also a mental health practitioner. For every reveal of childhood trauma or candid tale about a familiar name in their book, there’s a revelation about something broken in the entertainment industry and a proposal to fix it.

Knowing that fame and trauma would be the draw for a lot of readers, Stoner worked with a writing supervisor to strategize about what exactly to include. It’s written chronologically and guided by Stoner’s inner monologue over time, pulling directly from journal entries.

With that in mind, the vulnerability on display is impressive. Stoner details heart-wrenching stories from their life: public and private scrutiny that contributed to an eating disorder that they sought treatment for in rehab, a tumultuous home life with an abusive stepfather and alcoholic mother, run-ins with stalkers and extortionists, rape and suicidal ideation. There are even stories about the inner workings of Hollywood and its stars that became tabloid fodder the same day the book was released.

But that’s just Stoner’s real life. They’re working with what they’ve got.

“There are ways you can speak about your direct, personal experience and still honor the humanity of everyone involved while calling for some accountability, while accepting that there are consequences beyond my control, no matter what I do or don’t say,” Stoner says. “So I wanted to make sure that even though the truth is not always polite, I could still deliver it with integrity … if I’m going to write a memoir, now is the time to get it [all] off my chest.”

‘We’re speaking about children as commodified products’

Though the Disney Channel stars of today have a new playbook, Stoner says their learnings from childhood fame are more relevant than ever.

“Anyone with a Wi-Fi connection and social media profile can deal with challenges related to privacy, to safety, to parasocial relationships, mental health challenges due to our tech use,” they say.

In June, I saw Stoner speak on a panel at VidCon, an annual convention for content creators and their fans. Their bravery stuck with me. Stoner interjected as experts were discussing how the kid influencer industry could protect the young and famous, speaking clinically and professionally about the laws and regulations in place to protect them.

“I do want to ground the conversation in the reality that we’re speaking about children as commodified products at the moment. I was one of them,” they said onstage. “There are well-meaning people in all areas of the [entertainment] industry, [but] the entire system of it is warped here … we’re talking about a child who cannot legally consent, who doesn’t have legal rights to control what their parent shares of them.”

Stoner brought humanity to a hot-button issue often discussed by the people revolving around and profiting from famous children. They had made their point — kids aren’t products, nor do they know what might impact them later on in life.

I asked them about it a month later on our call.

“I think any string of experiences that is too overwhelming for any young person will take its toll in one shape or form. You may not always be able to recognize it right away, because young people oftentimes want to please the adults around them.” Stoner explains. “They also don’t have any alternative map of reality to compare their experience against. So whatever we normalize for them is what becomes the patterns that dictate their trajectory.”

I thought of the early chapters of Stoner’s book, in which they describe the constant pain and rejection of the audition process as a child actor. On a plane to Hollywood for a series of TV pilot auditions at 7 years old, Stoner recalls thinking, “I just want to show them all I’m special … I better make it count.” In order to feel good, they had to successfully book projects over and over again.

While meeting with their agent, they were encouraged to alter their appearance and learn more special skills to become more marketable.

“It didn’t register that I was being groomed to be sold. I was no longer a child; I was a commodity … physical beauty — coupled with high versatility— increased my price tag,” Stoner writes in their memoir.

In 2025, kids don’t need an agent or auditions to experience this. Anyone who’s posting online can. Drawing on her mental health expertise, Stoner tells Yahoo that young people are losing the opportunity to have a “play-based childhood,” where they’re allowed to fail and experiment in private, giving them time and space to process what they’re going through and better “find equilibrium after intense experiences.”

“It’s when it becomes a chronic and incessant experience with no respite that we start to see young people developing their own coping strategies,” Stoner says. That can lead to eating disorders and harmful obsessions. For child social media stars, it might even be worse.

“They’re not portraying a character … this is actually the literal commodification of their humanity. And that’s worth spending some time reflecting on,” they say.

The plan to stop the spiral

The more I talked to Stoner and read about their traumatic experiences as a child star, the more I was surprised that they were still in show business. I would have run for the hills to never think about this again. I was a big fan of Stoner when we were both kids, and I never considered why their disappearance from Disney might have been strategic until they went viral in a 2021 YouTube post about the “toddler to train wreck industrial complex” that they “narrowly survived.”

The reason Stoner isn’t running away from the entertainment industry entirely is fairly simple, but perplexing — and it speaks volumes about their strength. Their “unique and unexpected upbringing” gave them an understanding of both children and Hollywood, they tell me.

“I’m hoping that I can hold the middle in a way that allows people on all sides to be able to hear each other … so we can think about these things holistically and always … center the fact that children are not just mini adults,” Stoner says. “Their brains and bodies are at literal different developmental stages and phases.”

The child star industrial complex desperately needs to be rebooted. Discussion and legislation help, but Stoner has a practical and actionable plan. They created the Artist Wellbeing Essentials, a toolkit for performers and parents to learn about the pitfalls and potential risks. It’s made up of over 50 videos about specific experiences that performers go through, from learning to get into and out of character to managing audition rejection, and how they impact other areas of their lives, like finances and education.

“I’m hoping [that material] is something that becomes standardized as a preventative resource, just like anyone would get if they’re onboarding to a new job,” they say.

Maybe Stoner’s desire to stay in and overhaul an industry they “narrowly survived” is less of an act of defiance than a genuine calling. Destiny is rarely this apparent outside of the Disney movies Stoner once acted in, but their real-life story is far more compelling.