Sharenting: a parent's guide to baby photos and privacy

Sharenting is what happens when parents share photos, videos and stories of their children online — usually out of love, often publicly, almost always permanently. The catch: your child can't weigh in today, but will live with the consequences for decades. This guide explains the legal idea in plain language, names the risks that are actually real, and gives you seven rules you can start using tonight — plus ways to share that don't involve a public feed at all.

What sharenting actually is

The word blends sharing and parenting. It doesn't mean texting a photo to grandma — it means regularly posting a child's images and stories somewhere a larger or unknown audience can see them: social networks, public profiles, parenting blogs. Research across several countries keeps finding the same pattern: by the time many children turn five, hundreds of images of them already exist online, uploaded by the people who love them most.

Nobody does this maliciously. The first laugh, the first wobbly steps — of course you want to show someone. The real questions are not whether you share, but where, with whom, and how permanently.

The legal idea, in plain words

The core principle is similar across many legal systems: children have personality rights of their own, including a right to their own image. Parents decide on their child's behalf — but they decide for the child, not over the child's head. A photo that is adorable today becomes part of the digital identity of a person who was never asked. Courts and data-protection authorities in several countries have already dealt with cases where grown children demanded that their childhood photos be taken down.

One important note: this article explains the general idea only and is not legal advice. If you have a concrete legal question — say, after a separation, or about photos posted by someone else — talk to a lawyer in your jurisdiction.

The risks that are real

• Face recognition: Modern systems can recognise and link the same face across years. A public baby photo can become part of a biometric profile long before your child opens their first account.
• Data brokers and AI training: Publicly accessible images get scraped, analysed and reused — for advertising profiles or for training AI models. Once a photo has touched an open network, pulling it back is practically impossible.
• No recall: Screenshots, downloads, re-uploads. The moment an image reaches an open platform, you have effectively handed over control — even if you delete the original post later.
• Tomorrow's consent: The bathtub photo, the supermarket meltdown, the hospital visit: one day your child will have an opinion about what the world gets to know about their early years. You can't know that opinion today — but you can leave room for it.
• Lost context: Images travel. A harmless photo can resurface in contexts you never imagined and would never have chosen.

7 rules you can apply today

1. Ask: would I post this of myself? If a picture would embarrass you as an adult, it doesn't belong online as a child. Nudity, tears, illness and potty training are off limits for anything you don't fully control.
2. Private over public, always: Share baby photos only in channels where you can name every single recipient — never on open profiles or in public groups.
3. Tell the story, protect the face: For anything semi-public, shoot from behind, photograph the tiny hands, the first shoes. The memory survives; the face stays in the family.
4. Don't give away metadata: No full name, no birth date, no daycare, no address — and no recognisable places combined with routines (“swimming every Tuesday at…”).
5. Agree rules with the family: Grandparents, aunts and friends are often the most enthusiastic posters. Agree on one shared rule early, kindly but clearly: nobody posts our child publicly.
6. Ask your child as they grow: As soon as they can understand, ask before you share. A “no” counts. Along the way, they learn that their image belongs to them.
7. Do an annual clean-up: Once a year, go through old posts, delete what no longer feels right, and review the privacy settings of every app that holds photos of your child.

Safe alternatives: sharing without a feed

The wish behind sharenting is a good one — the people who love your child should get to be part of this. You just don't need a public network for it.

• Closed channels: A family group chat or a shared album with hand-picked members is orders of magnitude more private than any feed. Check for end-to-end encryption, and check who is actually in the group.
• Invited-family apps: Dedicated family and diary apps flip the default: instead of “public unless restricted”, the rule becomes “private unless invited”. Invited relatives see only what the parents deliberately release. For a closer look at how this works in practice, see how to share baby photos without social media.
• A diary instead of an audience: Much of what we post, we really just wanted to keep. A private baby diary serves exactly that wish — no audience, no algorithm, and the option to share single moments with family on purpose. More on what “private” should actually mean: what makes a baby diary app truly private?

The takeaway for exhausted parents

You don't have to get everything right, and you don't have to disappear from the internet. Three habits cover most of the ground: share children's photos only in closed circles, keep faces and full names out of anything semi-public, and have one honest conversation with your family about shared rules. The rest is practice. Your child won't thank you one day because their first steps got 200 likes — but they might thank you because their story still belongs to them, ready for the day they're old enough to tell it themselves.