If you share photos or videos of your children online, take two minutes to watch this video:
Video: A Message from Ella | Without Consent by Deutsche Telekom
A child dancing, telling a funny story, asking a silly question: it’s heartwarming. It’s completely natural to want to capture the joy of childhood. We post out of love, pride, and a wish to stay close to family.
The trouble starts when those videos are public. People with bad intentions can collect that content and run it through AI tools that are easy to find and use. Technology isn’t the villain here. The people misusing it are. Here’s what that can look like:
Voice cloning: That funny clip of your child talking? Scammers can use it to copy their voice and call parents or grandparents with a fake emergency asking for money.
Identity theft: That adorable clip of them dancing? Clear images of a child’s face can potentially be misused to build fake profiles or support identity fraud that only surfaces years later.
Deepfake bullying: That innocent moment with friends at the park? Images can be taken out of context to make deepfakes or humiliating memes, which can leave a child open to serious harassment.
As we covered in our earlier deep-dive on sharenting, the real problem is that the risk is delayed:
Invisible collection: A photo posted today triggers no alert or warning.
Hard to undo: Once content has been scraped, deleting the original post doesn’t guarantee it’s gone.
Delayed consequences: The child in today’s photo is the young adult who may face identity fraud or voice scams a decade from now.
Because the risk sits in the future, it feels abstract. When nothing bad happens after you post a holiday photo, privacy warnings can sound like paranoia.
So what can we do? Small habits go a long way, and prevention is the best defense.
Four habits that actually help
Keep sensitive details private. Leave full names, birth dates, school names, and recognizable street locations out of captions and backgrounds.
Ask for consent. Ask your kids early on, “Is it okay if I share this with Grandma?” It builds healthy digital awareness.
Use direct channels. Share family photos in private group chats like Signal or WhatsApp rather than open feeds. It’s not risk-free, since anyone in the chat can forward what you send, but it’s far more controlled.
Respect other families. Videos from playdates, birthday parties, and playgrounds expose other people’s kids to the same scraping.
Already posted a lot? You’re not too late
If you’re feeling a bit guilty right now, don’t. Most of us started sharing before we knew any of this. You can still:
Go through your old public posts and remove the ones that show faces clearly, or that include names, locations, or school details.
Switch your accounts to private, or limit who can see past posts.
Ask friends and family to check their own posts that include your kids.
You don’t need to wait for something to go wrong before acting. A few small changes now can spare your child a lot of trouble later.
Further reading
If you want to dig deeper, these are good places to start:
The Ella campaign: Cannes Lions case study. It explains how the team built the deepfake from a single photo.
Voice cloning scams: FTC consumer alert: Scammers use AI to enhance their family emergency schemes.
Child identity theft: FTC guidance for parents: How To Protect Your Child From Identity Theft.
Children’s photos in AI training data: Scripps News on the Human Rights Watch findings
Deepfake abuse of children: Decrypt on the UNICEF, Interpol and ECPAT study