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The Dangers of Posting Kids' Photos Online (Sharenting), Without the Panic

By The Nadeemi team · Checked on

Part of: Family privacy online: photos, children and quieter networks

Checked against the original surveys, the French law text summaries and dated reporting.

The first photo usually goes up within hours. A tiny fist, a hospital blanket, a caption full of exclamation marks. Nobody who posts it is doing anything wrong; they are doing what every generation of parents has done, which is to show the people they love the person they love most. The difference is the album. It used to sit on a shelf. Now it sits on servers, in search indexes and, increasingly, in the training material of the world's image machines.

"Sharenting" (parents sharing about their children online) is not a moral panic and it is not harmless. It is a set of specific, manageable risks. This guide lays them out with dates and sources, and ends with a checklist you can use tonight.

Short answer: the main risks are identity fraud later in life (names, birthdays and schools are the raw material), location exposure (photos and captions reveal homes and routines), misuse of images, including by AI tools, and a permanent public record children never agreed to. You can cut most of the risk by sharing privately, stripping location, leaving out names, dates and uniforms, and asking children once they are old enough to answer.

How many photos do parents post of their children?

A lot, and the number grows. A Nominet survey of 2,000 UK parents, carried out by The Parent Zone in August 2016, found parents posted nearly 1,500 photos of their child by the fifth birthday, up 54% on the previous year's study, which had found 973. Only 16% of parents said they always asked permission before sharing someone's image online (Nominet, 2016).

Those figures are nearly a decade old and come from before short video and family "content" took off. If anything, today's toddlers are better documented than any children in history.

What are the dangers of posting kids' photos online?

Four, roughly in order of likelihood: building an identity-fraud kit (full name, date of birth, school, pet's name); revealing where a child lives, plays or studies; having images copied, altered or reshared out of context, now including by AI tools; and creating a permanent record the child may later resent. Most harm comes from public posts and oversharing captions.

1. Identity fraud, years later

A child's identity is valuable precisely because nobody checks it for years. Barclays research reported in 2018 estimated that "sharenting" would account for two-thirds of identity fraud facing young people by 2030, because parents' posts so often reveal names, birthdays, home towns and schools, the same details used for security questions (4NI, 2018). It is a forecast, not a measurement, but the mechanism is simple and real.

2. Location and routine

The first-day-of-school photo at the gate, the uniform crest, the swimming club every Tuesday: together they tell a stranger where a child will be and when. Many phone cameras also store GPS coordinates inside the photo file. Some platforms strip them on upload; files sent as documents or shared through cloud links may keep them.

3. Images copied, altered or misused

Anything public can be saved, and today anything saved can be altered. The Internet Watch Foundation, which tracks child sexual abuse material online, reported that AI-generated abuse imagery surged in the first half of 2025, finding it on 210 webpages compared with 42 in the same period of 2024 (Bloomberg, 10 July 2025). No parent can control what criminals do; every parent can control which photos are public.

4. A record they didn't choose

Children grow into teenagers who search their own names. The bath photo, the tantrum video and the toilet-training milestone may be adorable to a grandmother and mortifying to a fourteen-year-old. Their digital footprint started before they could talk, and they had no vote.

Is it illegal to post photos of your own children?

In most places, no, but the law is moving. France passed Law No. 2024-120 of 19 February 2024 on children's image rights, which writes a child's privacy into the definition of parental authority, requires parents to protect their child's image jointly and to involve the child according to age and maturity, and lets a family judge stop one parent from posting when the parents disagree (Bird & Bird, 2024).

Rules differ by country, and we don't give legal advice. The direction of travel is clear, though: lawmakers increasingly see a child's image as the child's, not the parent's.

Do platforms use my children's photos?

Ad-funded platforms analyse what you upload to run their services, rank content and, under their terms, often to improve products. In June 2025 Facebook began asking some users to let Meta AI process photos from their camera roll that they had not yet shared (TechCrunch, 27 June 2025). Read prompts like that carefully, and say no when you are unsure.

Is it safe to share kids' photos in private groups?

Much safer than public posts, with two caveats. First, everyone in the group can save and forward what you share, so keep the group to people you would hand a printed photo to. Second, "private" is not the same as "encrypted": on some apps the company can still access group content. End-to-end encrypted groups keep it between members' devices.

A calm checklist for parents

DoInstead of
Share in a small private group or CirclePosting on a public profile
Turn off location for the camera, or strip it before sharingSending original files with GPS inside
Say "our eldest" or use a nicknameFull name and date of birth in the caption
Crop out school crests, house numbers and car platesPhotos at the school gate in uniform
Ask children from about school age: "Can I share this?"Deciding for them until they're teenagers
Skip bath, toilet and tantrum photos entirely"It's only for family" on a public post
Review old posts once a year and archive the public onesLeaving a decade of photos public by default

FAQ

What is sharenting? Parents sharing photos, videos and details about their children online. The word blends "sharing" and "parenting".

Is sharenting dangerous? It carries real but manageable risks: identity fraud later in life, location exposure, image misuse and a permanent record. Most risk comes from public posts and detailed captions.

How many photos do parents post before a child turns five? A 2016 Nominet survey of 2,000 UK parents found nearly 1,500 on average, up from 973 in the previous year's study.

Is it illegal to post pictures of my child? Usually not, but some countries now restrict it. France's law of 19 February 2024 requires parents to protect their child's image jointly and to involve the child.

What is the safest way to share kids' photos with family? A small private group whose content is encrypted on members' devices, with location stripped and no names or dates in captions.

Does Nadeemi use my photos for ads or AI? No. Nadeemi has no ads and no AI features. Circles are private groups encrypted on your devices with MLS, labelled "end-to-end encryption coming" until an independent audit is published.

Sources (checked 5 November 2026)

Names of other apps are trademarks of their owners, used only for comparison. Nadeemi is not affiliated with any of them.

Drafted with AI help and checked by a person on the date above.

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