When I fell pregnant with Leo, I felt a bit conflicted about how much I should share of him online. Being pregnant is all-consuming. It takes over every aspect of your life, and once your child is born, that intensifies.
It’s hard not to get lost in motherhood. It absolutely changes you and everything you do; it changes how you think, and your interests shift. I suddenly became interested in breastfeeding issues, how to wean a baby, safe co-sleeping, how babies develop and how to nurture my own son to give him the best start to life. My content started to shift towards these topics.
It’s only natural, and I’ve seen other women go through the same. It comes from a place of love for our child. As a blogger, I wanted to share all these things and experiences with others. I was always careful not to become too much of a ‘mum blogger’ by still writing about other subjects. But I felt passionate about some aspects of parenting that I just had to talk about.
I had in my head that I’d share a few photos of Leo when he was a baby and share fewer as he was older.
As I am not a famous blogger and not likely to get stopped in the street and recognised, I felt pretty safe.
This has changed recently. It no longer feels safe, for reasons I’ll talk about below. The more I educate myself on the exploitation of children online and how children are used for content without consent, the more horrified I become.
First, let’s look at some of these terms and some of the reasons I’ve decided to share less of my child online.
The exploitation of children online
This is when children are used for content as a way to earn money for their parents. You see it a lot on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. Family vloggers on YouTube are the biggest problem here.
They share their child’s life online for views, sponsorships and money. The videos with the biggest views are always the most personal – birth vlogs, children taking baths, first period, and children’s health issues, including disabilities. Or in the case of the Saconne-Jolys, their transgender child coming out and transitioning.
Many parents claim to be spreading awareness of a problem many parents have. I remember one TikTok video of an autistic child having a meltdown. This child was screaming, crying and thrashing around for about 5 minutes while the mother followed them around with a camera to ‘raise awareness of what this is like’. But why do we need to be aware of this? What does it solve? Why does your child need to be an example of this? Why can’t you put down the camera and attempt to comfort your child, even verbally, if they do not want to be touched?
Rather than leaving these tasks of awareness up to the various charities, doctors and the government, we have the urge to take things into our own hands to ‘share with the world what this is like’. But what does it really achieve?
Your child’s most vulnerable moments are online for everyone to see. A child should not be responsible for raising awareness.
Many children have their lives, illnesses and disabilities documented online without their consent so the parents can get views, popularity and financial gain.
One argument to this may be ‘I asked my child if I can post this picture, and they said yes’. This is a flawed argument, as children cannot give informed consent.
Informed consent
Children cannot give informed consent until they are 16. This is because they do not fully understand the implications of being online until they are older.
A child may say yes to having a video taken of them and posted online, but that doesn’t mean they understand that this video:
- has the potential to go viral
- be used as a meme for many years
- be downloaded thousands of times
- never can be erased from the internet
- used against them in the future
A 2024 peer-reviewed study published in the Italian Journal of Paediatrics found that 68% of parents regularly share photos of their children on social media, with most reporting they do not fully consider the potential risks before posting. The research noted that parents’ immediate risk perception is generally low — which is exactly the problem. What feels harmless in the moment can have consequences that play out years later. (Source: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
It takes away a child’s privacy, and if they have some kind of trauma or medical issue, it takes their right away to be able to tell their own story when they are ready, or keep it private. It takes their dignity away, and probably their trust in an adult who should be protecting them.
What I am comfortable with
Firstly, it’s okay to change your mind. I have posted things about my child which I am no longer happy with. Know better, do better.
Last year, I went through my Instagram and deleted a lot of photos and videos of Leo. Mostly ones where he is on his own, or really close up. There are some videos/images where you can see the back of his face. I generally do not post anyone other than myself. This is my current Instagram feed:
I have deleted most photos and videos of his face from social media. I’ve also deleted anything that could indicate his date of birth, birth weight, birthday things or personal details. There are still some photos of him as a baby on this blog. I tend to delete them and replace them with other pictures as I update them.
I rarely post anything about him in my stories; I just don’t want his information out there. I love him so much, I think he is the cutest kid, he’s so smart and funny, and I’d love to share little videos of him doing silly things, but I keep them for my friends and family.
I can change my mind if I want to. I may decide in the future that I’m comfortable sharing a bit more, or I may decide to go completely the other way and delete everything (it’s leaning more towards this, to be honest).
It’s my job as a parent to decide the risks and do the right thing for my child and family. And I’m going to say something really unlike me here: If you know the risks of sharing your child online and continue to do so, I do not think that is good parenting.
Yes, it is your right to do as you please, but it is my right to judge you for that. And I will.
Can your platform exist without your child?
To me, this is the biggest question to ask yourself if you are wondering if you are exploiting your child.
If you stopped posting your child online, would you still get views, engagement and a paycheque?
If not, then I believe that account is one that exploits children.
If your platform and brand can live on without your child, then that is great. A few parenting sponsorships aren’t bad if they are not the only thing on your platform, and they can be done without telling personal details of your child or even their face. For example, in this one, I showed Leo playing with the toys without showing full photos of his face, just side and above. Though I would probably show even less of that going forward. Know better, do better. This YotoBox one doesn’t show him at all, and it actually drove lots of traffic to me.
I rarely get parenting-related collaborations, and you absolutely can do them without sharing personal details and photos of your child.
Online predators
Another thing I’d like to talk about is online predators. Josh from The Dad Challenge Podcast has done some deep dives into some family vloggers’ analytics, which shows that as daughters of family vloggers turn into teenagers, more males start watching the videos. Also, the top content is always personal things such as bathtime, in swimsuits and so forth.
There are websites that link to and share videos that contain children in swimwear or a few clothes. The scale of this problem is documented in hard data. According to a 2024 report from the UN, 80% of children in 25 countries report feeling in danger of sexual abuse or exploitation online. (Source: un.org) Research from the University of Edinburgh found that more than 300 million children globally are victims of online sexual exploitation and abuse every year — roughly 1 in 8 children worldwide. (Source: ed.ac.uk) These are not edge case statistics. They represent the world children are actually growing up in.
Watch a few seconds of this video where Jonathan Joly is questioned by Stacey Dooley about how he would feel if it became apparent that an online predator was masturbating over his children and he responds ‘is it a terrible thing?’ That should piss you off.
In fact, that whole video is great at highlighting how children are exploited online. It also shows a clip of their older child saying she doesn’t like being filmed. Yet, it’s now 2026, and they are still being filmed and earning income for their parents.
I could go on and on about this subject. This is just the tip of the iceberg. The other day, I saw an Instagram Reel of a 13-year-old girl taking an outdoor shower in a bikini that was filmed in slow motion in a provocative way.
Some family vloggers do use their children intentionally in this way to get views. Others just don’t take the necessary steps to protect them. Either they don’t realise, or they don’t care.
Parasocial relationships
Parasocial relationships are one-sided relationships, where one person extends emotional energy, interest and time, and the other person, this person, is completely unaware of the other’s existence.
People form parasocial relationships with children online. They feel invested in their lives and feel like they have the right to know information. These children have no idea all these people are so invested in them, and some people can get obsessive. This is where it gets a bit creepy, and the obsession can turn into stalking.
Parasocial relationships are dangerous because a person who has formed one, can start to feel bitter and angry if they try to reach out and do not get a response, or get a negative response.
I have seen videos of fans meeting the children of family vloggers, and they go right up to these children and hug them. These children have no idea what is going on and look bewildered and overwhelmed.
The AI Deepfake Threat: A New Reason to Share Less
Since I wrote this post in 2023, something has changed, making me feel even more strongly about sharing less. And that’s AI deepfakes.
When I first wrote about online predators, the risk was largely that people would screenshot and save images of children from public accounts. That’s still true. But now there’s an additional layer that is genuinely alarming: publicly available photos of children can be used by anyone with an internet connection to generate realistic fake sexual images — deepfakes — of those children within minutes, using freely available tools.
This is not a theoretical risk. It is happening at scale right now. The National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children reported 4,700 AI-generated child sexual abuse material cases to its CyberTipline in 2023.
By the first half of 2025 alone, that number had risen to 440,000 — an increase of over 6,000% in under two years. (Source: missingkids.org)
Research from the child safety organisation, Thorn, found that 1 in 17 young people have personally been targeted by deepfake nude abuse. One in eight knew someone who had been targeted. (Source: thorn.org)
The images being used to generate this material are not just from teenagers’ own accounts. Law enforcement has found that perpetrators use photos taken from parents’ public social media posts — family holidays, birthday parties, school events — and run them through AI tools to create abuse material.
A parent posts an innocent photo of their child on the beach. They have no idea it has been downloaded, processed, and used this way. A 14-year-old girl in Texas woke up to find AI-generated nude images of her — created from photos taken from her family’s Instagram account — had been circulated to her classmates on Snapchat. (Source: AFP/Just Security)
In a Louisiana middle school in 2025, two boys were charged after AI-generated nude images of female classmates swept through the school. The source images came from social media. (Source: US News) I
n May 2025, the US government passed the TAKE IT DOWN Act, making it a federal crime to create non-consensual deepfake imagery and requiring platforms to remove it within 48 hours.
The UK’s Online Safety Act also includes provisions covering AI-generated abuse material. But legislation runs behind technology — and in the meantime, the safest thing any parent can do is reduce the publicly available images of their child. This is why I now share barely any photos of Leo.
Not because I think every person viewing my Instagram is a threat. But because once a photo is public, I have zero control over what happens to it. And the tools to misuse it have never been more accessible.
If you share photos of your children publicly — even to a few hundred followers — please consider this: you don’t know who screenshots or downloads your posts, even on a private account. You don’t know what tools they have access to. And you can’t undo it once it’s out there.
Useful resources and further reading:
- Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) report on AI-generated child sexual abuse material: iwf.org.uk
- NSPCC guidance on sharenting and keeping children safe online: nspcc.org.uk
- Thorn’s 2024 Youth Perspectives Report on deepfake abuse: thorn.org
- Internet Matters: Children’s Wellbeing in a Digital World 2024: internetmatters.org
Bullying and online hate
We all know what a troll is. The bigger a platform gets, the more trolls it attracts. There are thousands of Facebook groups, forums and Reddit threads that are dedicated to scrutinising and criticising every aspect of influencers’ lives. This means that a child in the spotlight could Google themselves when they are older and come across these threads.
We also have comments directly on the posts that are hateful and hurtful to children.
The bullying can spread into their real life. Multiple children of family vloggers and influencers have come forward anonymously on Reddit to tell their stories of how they hate being online, how they have been bullied at school, how they have no privacy and how it has damaged their relationship with their parents.
They are told that they have to be on camera so they can have ‘nice things’, every trip and celebration was always for content with the parents often acting differently when not behind a camera. These children live their life in fear of being filmed and cannot be honest with their parents about any problems they have, in case it ends up online.
Read this Reddit post:
I was brought up by family vloggers and it ruined my life
Linking back to parasocial relationships and online predators, how scary is that last bullet point?
someone attempted to kidnap my sister and found it easy because they knew her full name, address, school and details about her. My sister didn’t know he was a stranger because he knew so much about her.
Or this one:
Now read this one of a middle-schooler is asking for advice on how to stop their mum from posting their life online. It sounds like this is not even an influencer, but just a normal Facebook account. This is the type of post that makes me want to post less of my child online, as many of us share this type of content about our children on our regular social media accounts.
Just the other day, I saw someone I know post a photo of her teenager who was sitting on the sofa, unaware the photo had been taken and it said ‘it’s her birthday day, she won’t let me take a photo of her so I just snapped this one’. So why are you taking her photo and putting it online?
The Death of Princess Dickenson
The most recent and most heartbreaking example of this is Princess Dickson. Princess was 16 years old. Her mother, Sophie-May Dickson, appeared in the Channel 5 programme Blinging Up Baby in 2014 and had a modest social media following of around 8,000 people.
That was enough to attract a thread on Tattle Life — an anonymous UK forum that describes itself as a commentary site for people who “monetise their personal life.” The thread grew to over 10,000 posts.
When Sophie-May deactivated her accounts, the users redirected their attention to Princess. From the age of 14, Princess was subjected to relentless abuse on the site. Comments about her body, her appearance, her mental health, her family. Posts were addressed directly to her — users knew she was reading. They carried on anyway. The site’s owner temporarily closed the thread in May 2025 after acknowledging a “child was being targeted” — then allowed a new thread to be set up targeting her almost immediately.
In early February 2026, Princess took her own life. She was 16 years old. Sophie-May told the Daily Mail: “My beautiful daughter, who loved dancing and gymnastics, is no longer here because of the actions of horrific bullies, and the website that enabled and encouraged them. They enjoyed the abuse that killed my daughter — it was entertainment for them.”
She had raised concerns with Essex Police about the impact the abuse was having on Princess’s mental health in September 2024. She was told it was a civil matter. Following Princess’s death, 20 Labour MPs wrote to Ofcom demanding “immediate and decisive” action to shut the site. At the time of writing this update in March 2026, Tattle Life is still online and active. The thread about Princess continued to attract posts after her death, with some users blaming her mother and making jokes about the funeral.
Princess was not a child put online by her own choice. She became a target because of her mother’s minor public profile. The lesson here is not just about family vloggers with millions of followers. It is about any parent with any kind of public presence. Your child does not choose this. They do not consent to it. And once the target has been placed on them, you cannot take it back.
All of these things led me to share less of Leo online. And since writing this post in 2023, the AI deepfake situation has only made me feel more certain about that decision. Even if you’re not a large platform, even if you only have a few hundred followers — public photos of your child are accessible to anyone. And the tools to misuse them are now free, fast, and widely available. I’m not saying never post your child. I still share the occasional photo of the back of his head, or a shot where his face isn’t clear. What I won’t do is maintain a public archive of identifiable photos of him for anyone to download at any time. That feels like too much of a risk, for too little reward. Any parenting content going forward is about my experience as a parent — not his experience as a child. That distinction matters to me.
Where do you stand with sharing children online?
Further reading: baby role-play and digital kidnapping on social media — and the new AI deepfake threat to children’s photos online.
Related posts:
I am 100% with you on this. If we were going to share anything of Bobby’s face or more details I would want to make my profiles private and remove heaps of followers/friends, but even then I think I’d rather give him his privacy until he’s old enough to make up his own mind about it all
Amy x
So true… sharing too much facts about your children online is not a good thing. It’s our duty to protect our children.
I agree with you, the bigger the platform, the more troll there will be. This was an interesting read to know about the reasons. Thank you for sharing!
Sensible observations on a real problem. The dangers are very real yet, it would appear, some people put clicks and money above the safety and long-term welfare of their children. Good read with relevant points.
I honestly don’t blame you for not sharing too much about your child online. Like you said, there’s a huge risk of child exploitation online. I know a lot of parents who don’t share so much about their children and I have a lot of respect for them x
Lucy | http://www.lucymary.co.uk
I couldn’t agree more! Like you say at the beginning, I got caught up in being exciting about being a mum, especially as I had a hard journey to get there so I felt it was natural to also share my son when he was born, However also like you I’ve come to realise that he has in no way consented to this and it is against my values as a parent to not respect his wishes. Thanks for posting about this 🙂 x
It’s such a difficult one isn’t it! I definitely feel the pressure the older the kids get… I had a moment a few years ago where I thought I’d saw someone else’s kid (someone I follow on Instagram) in where I used to work & it really shook me up, because it wasn’t, but I thought I’d recognised this kid. Like why should I recognise a random persons child. It’s weird. And that’s when I stopped sharing Amelia as much. I think you can still be a parenting blogger / show parenting on Instagram without showing too much of your child. You just need to be clever about it.
The only thing that riles me on social media is when people share their children in their school uniform or in swimwear/half naked or even naked! I think are you actually for real?!?!
I think each to their own on every day photos of their children. x
I have also changed my mindset a lot on this recently, there’s such fine lines between what is and isn’t okay when it comes to sharing children lives online. I’m ok with sharing my children now and again but I have found myself posting them less and less, even Luca who’s still a baby isn’t on my grid that much anymore and especially Ru who is much older now! It’s hard when you want to share your life but are wary of how vulnerable your kids are.
Very informative and a helpful read.. I didn’t share much of my pregnancy but I do share a lot of my motherhood journey .. Maybe I need to reconsider this!
Rosie
There’s definitely a fine line with sharing your child online. Personal preference and pros and cons to both sides! x