When a child's life becomes the family business

Evan Lee was in elementary school when he became the linchpin of his family's business. With his neatly combed hair and dimpled smile, he was a charm bomb, conveying on camera both the cheerful sincerity of a boy scout and the precocious charisma of a whizz-kid.

- Lisa Miller

NEW YORK — Evan Lee was in elementary school when he became the linchpin of his family's business. With his neatly combed hair and dimpled smile, he was a charm bomb, conveying on camera both the cheerful sincerity of a boy scout and the precocious charisma of a whizz-kid.

Evan, eventually known to seven million YouTube subscribers as EvanTube, was one of the earliest kid influencers, internet famous for playing with toys.

EvanTube blew up by accident in October 2011, when freelance videographer Jared Lee sculpted the entire cast of the Angry Birds video game out of modeling clay for his five-year-old son.

Evan and Jared decided to make a home video, like a show and tell. Situated at the family's dining table, Evan earnestly explained each character's special powers.

"Yellow Bird goes super fast," he said, glancing occasionally towards his father, who was filming. He picked up a lumpy pale bird. "This is White Bird. It flies and drops white bombs and looks like a lemon when he dies." A tiny smile revealed baby teeth.

Evan is 19 now and looking back at his life. "My brain was still developing when I was that young," so he does not remember every detail of how it all happened, he told me when I visited him at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, where he is finishing his first year.

He cannot recall why he wanted his own YouTube channel, only that he and his father sat at the computer and chose the name EvanTube. They uploaded their video and, within several months, it had 70,000 views. Ultimately, it reached 11 million.

By the time he was 10, EvanTube had enabled the Lees to establish a family trust, savings and college funds. The family also bought a US$3 million six-bedroom, seven-bathroom modern villa inside a gated community.