Related Posts
Why sharenting is more serious than most parents realise, and why an emoji over a child’s face is not the answer
By Lisa Ventura MBE FCIIS, Founder, Cyber Security Unity
This article is for parents. Before I get into it, I want to be clear: I do NOT intend to frighten anyone with what I’m about to say. I am here to share something important, because I think it matters, and because I think you deserve to make genuinely informed choices about what you post and share about your children online.
I was recently a guest on the podcast “Why Aren’t We Talking About This?”, where I talked about exactly this topic. What actually happens to children’s images once they’re online. What ‘safe’ really means in a system none of us fully controls. It is not an easy listen. It will probably make you feel uncomfortable if you have ever shared a photo of a child freely online. But I think it is a genuinely important listen, and I’d encourage any parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle or carer to give it their time.
You can find the episode here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify
A Collection of Memories, or Something More?
Photos from birthdays. From school plays. From holidays. From completely ordinary days that felt worth capturing at the time. These are moments that probably feel small and harmless to you. A quick post, a story, something sent out into the world with nothing much behind it beyond ‘this is so lovely’, or ‘they look so cute’, or ‘I’m so happy and I want to remember this’.
What appears on the surface to be a collection of memories is actually a record. A version of your children that exists outside of them. Built slowly and over time. Before they can choose what is shared about them. Before they can shape how they are seen. Before they can say no to any of it.
We call it ‘sharenting’ now. It has a name because it is common enough to need one. Research suggests most children in the UK have a significant digital footprint before they reach their fifth birthday, built almost entirely by the adults who love them most. My good friend Suz Winspear summed it up in this analogy perfectly:
“If you felt uncomfortable about your parents showing your baby and childhood photos to prospective boy or girlfriends in the pre-internet days – imagine the family photo album that will never be put back in the sideboard drawer – and everybody out there will see it and can do with it what they will!” — Suz Winspear
The Illusion of a Private Account
We tell ourselves it is contained. Private accounts, two-factor authentication, familiar faces in the followers list, a sense that we know where things are going and who is seeing them.
But the reality is, we do not. Not really.
Once something is posted, it leaves us. It can be copied, saved, reshared and resurfaced. It can sit quietly for years and then appear somewhere we never expected. It can be used in ways we would never consent to, on behalf of someone who never had the chance to consent in the first place.
A private account is only as private as the judgement of every single person who follows you, right now and in the future. Settings change. Platforms change. People screenshot. Relationships change. Someone who was a trusted friend when you gave them access may not always be.
We know all of this. We have read enough. We have seen enough headlines. And still, we carry on doing it. I honestly do not think that is because we do not care. I think it is because it feels normal. Everyone else is doing it, so surely it cannot be that serious.
It is. And I think it is one of those things we will look back on and feel deeply uncomfortable about. The way we built digital versions of our children without ever really thinking about what that might mean for them later.
My Own Experience
I want to share something personal here, because I think it illustrates how close to home this is for me. My own parents would often share photos of me as a child on their Facebook pages without a care in the world. They started using Facebook around 2013, and I only became aware of exactly what they were sharing of me a couple of years later. Horror of horrors, one of the photos they shared was of me as a young child in the bath.
When I challenged them about it and asked them to stop, I was met with a response I suspect many people reading this will recognise which came from my dad: ‘It’s MY Facebook page. I can share what I want.’
They had no concept of the security implications of sharing those photos of me as a child. Nor did they accept my concerns when I raised them. In their view, those images were theirs to share as they saw fit.
Now in all honesty, I don’t blame them for that. It is a generational thing in part. But that belief, that the person sharing the photo has ownership over what happens to it, is the single most dangerous assumption in this whole conversation.
Why Emojis over a Child’s Face are Not The Answer
You may have seen the photographs from the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s Disneyland trip, shared on Meghan’s Instagram to celebrate Princess Lilibet’s fourth birthday. In those images, heart emojis were placed over the children’s faces. Here is an example:
It was widely covered in the press, and I was quoted in The Independent on exactly this point. I said it there and I will say it again here: putting an emoji over a child’s face provides virtually no real privacy protection. Sharing multiple images over time, combined with all the surrounding data from those posts, creates a much bigger privacy concern than any single image.
When high-profile individuals use this approach, it becomes a de facto signal to millions of people that it is a safe and sensible practice. It is not, and here are the reasons why.
Why an Emoji is not Protection
- Background context identifies children without requiring their face. A recognisable school uniform, a bedroom, a garden with a distinctive feature, a vehicle on the driveway, a named location tag in the caption: any one of these can be enough to identify not just a child but where they live, go to school, and spend their time.
- Bodies are identifiable even when faces are not. Hair colour, body shape, gait, distinctive clothing, birthmarks: children can be identified by people who know them, or by someone determined to piece together a pattern, without ever seeing their face.
- Image metadata can contain GPS coordinates. Even with an emoji overlay, the underlying image file may contain EXIF data, including the precise location where the photograph was taken. This is a real risk, and most parents are completely unaware of it.
- Cumulative data is the real danger. A single photo with an emoji over a face tells a limited story. But ten photos, posted across eighteen months, with captions, location tags, visible backgrounds and named friends, creates a detailed and searchable record of a child’s life. No single privacy measure applied to individual images addresses this.
- Other people in the image remain fully visible. If a child’s face is covered but a sibling, parent or friend appears clearly in the same photograph, that image can still be used to build connections between individuals and locations.
- The post itself remains shareable. Other followers can screenshot, save, or share the image further. The platform itself may use the image for its own purposes, depending on the terms and conditions at the time of posting.
- AI tools are increasingly capable of inferring identity from context. Even when faces are not visible, patterns of clothing, physical characteristics and environmental details across multiple posts can be used to build a profile of an individual. We are not in the future yet, but we are heading there faster than most people realise.
- It normalises continued sharing. Perhaps most importantly, the emoji approach gives parents a sense of having done the responsible thing, which means they keep sharing. The number of images in circulation continues to grow. The cumulative record continues to build. The child’s digital identity continues to be constructed without their knowledge or consent.
I am NOT Here to Tell you to Never to Photograph Your Children
I want to be clear about this. I am not arguing that parents should never take photographs, or that memories should not be shared with family and friends. That is not a realistic or helpful position.
What I am asking you to do however is pause before you post and think about the following.
- Does this image contain identifying information beyond my child’s face? Location, uniform, vehicle, house? Could someone who does not know me use this to find out where my child lives or goes to school?
- What does my audience actually look like today, and what might it look like in five years? Are there people with access to my account who I would not invite into my home?
- How many images of my child exist online already? What does the cumulative picture look like, and is that something my child would be comfortable with when they are old enough to understand it?
- Have I ever asked my child how they feel about being photographed and posted? For older children, have I given them genuine choice over whether they appear in my content?
- Would I be comfortable if someone else shared this image without my knowledge? If not, it might be worth reconsidering whether to post it at all.
What ‘Safe’ Actually Means Online
One of the things I explored in the podcast is what the word ‘safe’ actually means in a digital context. We use it loosely. We say our account is private, so the photos are safe. We say we only share with people we trust, so the children are safe.
But safe from what, exactly? Safe from a stranger viewing a single image right now? Possibly. Safe from that image being used in ways you did not anticipate, years from now? That is a much harder promise to make.
Digital content does not degrade. It does not fade or get lost in a drawer. It persists, and it can be found, copied, and resurfaced in contexts that bear no resemblance to the family moment you were trying to capture when you took the photo.
Our children deserve to grow up and make their own choices about their digital presence. Right now, many of them cannot. They are too young. They have no idea what their parents have already put into the world on their behalf. They certainly cannot consent to it.
The least we can do is make sure that what we share is thoughtful, proportionate, and considers their interests as much as our own desire to share a lovely moment.
Listen to the Podcast
If any of this resonates, I would strongly encourage you to listen to my episode of “Why Aren’t We Talking About This?”, which covers this topic in more depth and may well make you think differently about your own sharing habits.
It is not a comfortable listen.
It is not designed to be.
But it is an important one.