This article felt particularly timely given France’s new ‘Sharenting Law’. Aimed to curb parents excessively sharing the lives of their children online, France’s law recognises that parents have a legal duty to protect their children’s privacy. In extreme cases, French courts are empowered to stop one or both parents sharing images of their children online.
At its core, this law recognises that having your lives shared online can have consequences and that children are often not given a choice, or where they are, are not able to fully understand and consent to this. This article from Teen Vogue takes a look at some of the children born to the first generation of ‘Influencer Parents’ and how their lives have been affected.
In the United States, the focus is less on stopping the practice altogether and more focused on ensuring child influencers are not exploited by the parents. In 1939, California passed the Coogan Law to ensure that child actors had 15% of their earnings set aside in a trust that couldn’t be accessed by their parents. Nothing like that currently exists for child influencers, although the state of Washington is currently considering a bill.
The first social media platforms launched in the late 1990’s. It really hit the mainstream with Facebook’s launch in 2004. The first generation of children that had their young lives shared online are just starting to reach adulthood. And as these young people are able to leave the spotlight of their parent’s social media accounts, we should expect to read a lot more stories like this.
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