Can you stop your parents sharing photos of you online?
By Helier Cheung BBC News
28 March 2019
It's a great way of staying ∈ touch - and it's always amusing watching your parents attempt to take selfies or use
emojis. But if they share photos of you online without your permission - and have no understanding of privacy
settings - have they crossed the line? And - if you want to - how do you convince them to take the photos down?
"Sharenting" - the act of parents sharing news and pictures of their kids online - is ∈ the news after Gwyneth
[5] Paltrow posted a picture of her and her 14-year-old daughter Apple Martin skiing. More than 150,000 people liked
the picture, but Apple wasn't so impressed, writing (from her private Instagram account): "Mom we have discussed
this. You may not post anything without my consent." Paltrow replied: "You can't even see your face!" Many of
Paltrow's fans have argued that, as the mother, she had every \right to share pictures of her daughter - but others
say children deserve a \right to privacy too.
[10] Ironically, children aren't technically allowed to register with most social media services until they are 13 anyway -
which means some rule-abiding teenagers get a shock when they finally get online.
Konrad Iturbe, a 19-year-old software developer ∈Spain, told the BBC he had a "big awakening" when he realised
his parents had been posting photos of him online. "I really don't like photos of me online anyway - I don't even
post photos of myself on my Instagram account - so when I followed my mother and saw them on her profile, I
[15] told her to 'take this down, I've not given you permission'."
Konrad says his mother understood his concerns and acted quickly to deal with the issue - as he says all parents
should. He says discovering the pictures it felt like a "breach of privacy". It particularly bothered him because there
were photos of him as a young child, and his mother's Instagram account was open to the public. "I didn't want
photos of my youth shared, it's a very intimate thing," he says, adding that he is also worried about "facial
[20] recognition algorithms" and people being able to "start tracing me when I'm older".
Sonia Bokhari, a 14-year-old ∈ the US, had a similar experience when she first joined Twitter and Facebook.
Writing ∈ Fast Company magazine, she says: "When I saw the pictures that she [her mother] had been posting on
Facebook for years, I felt utterly embarrassed, and deeply betrayed.
Not everyone minds "sharenting", however. Charlotte Christy, a 23-year-old studying ∈London, says she
[25] personally thinks it's "quite normal". She was 13 when her mum started uploading photos of her on Facebook. "She
would tag me and it would be on my news feed so everyone could see it. I thought it was embarrassing, but I
wasn't upset to the point of asking her to remove it."
"I feel like we live ∈a society where everyone wants their photos to be really flattering - but if my mum posts an
unflattering photo of me it doesn't really bother me. I think I share photos of my mum just as much as she shares
[30] photos of me - I think it's a natural thing to share and I don't see why she should ask for my permission - she's my
mum."
For Sarah (not her real name), a 29-year-old health professional ∈Hong Kong, the most worrying thing was the
privacy implications. "When I was 21, my mum tagged me on Facebook, and I saw that she'd posted a bunch of
photos of me - from when I was a baby to me ∈ my 20s," she told the BBC.
[35] "Her settings were public, so I just found it very unsafe. I didn't want my baby photos leaked to everyone, and I
knew that with Google, you can search for someone's name using their photos. And by her contributing more
photos of me online, technology companies have more data on how I look."
Andra Siibak, a professor ∈ media studies at the University of Tartu ∈Estonia, has conducted several studies into
"sharenting". In one study involving Estonian children aged nine to 13, she found that children liked "parents
[40] sharing positive things about them", but that "there were big discrepancies between what children and parents
considered to be nice photos".
"Children were not ∈ favour of parents sharing unflattering visuals of them - for example, if their hair was messed
up or they were wearing a dress they didn't actually like. In many contexts the parents would not consider those
things to be a big problem, but for the pre-teens this could affect their self-image" or potentially lead to cyber
[45] bullying.
Another potential risk from "sharenting" is "digital kidnapping", Prof Siibak says, where strangers take publicly
available photos of children, and use them for fraudulent or sexual purposes. Prof Siibak says many parents feel
that, as the adult, they are responsible for their child's wellbeing, and don't need their child's permission as long as
they believe the photos are not doing any harm. However, she argues that parents should "absolutely" take their
[50] children's privacy concerns more seriously.
Adapted from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-47722427
According to Professor Siibak, many parents
