Does covering your child's face on social media actually protect them? (2024)

As great as the internet is, it can also be a wild and sometimes scary place.

It's why increasingly parents are getting creative with how they share their images of their children online. Such as using emojis to cover their face in an attempt to protect their privacy.

"There is this tension parents are trying to navigate around wanting to tell their story to their peer network, of their kids and what they are up to … but wanting to protect their child's visibility," says Nicholas Carah, the director of the Centre for Digital Cultures and Societies at the University of Queensland.

But does covering or blurring our children's faces in images posted to social media achieve what we think it does?

A growing awareness

Joanne Orlando is a digital wellbeing researcher at Western Sydney University and has been studying the trend of 'sharenting' for many years.

"I've seen very much a growing awareness that we need to keep the details of our children safe online, and we really need to start protecting children," Dr Orlando says.

"There is an awareness, but the practice is a little different."

She says that can be for several reasons, such as parents being cautious of what they share, but Grandma posting photos without permission.

Or parents covering their child's face, but inadvertently revealing other private information, like what school they attend.

"There can be lots of other clues," Dr Orlando says.

Dr Carah says many parents with young children today have grown up with social media, and understand what it's like to have their life posted online.

"They understand very well these photos can travel anywhere."

What hiding a child's face can achieve

Dr Orlando says covering a child's face with an emoji, blurring it, or tactfully posting photos where the child is turned away from the camera, can help with certain aspects of privacy — for example, web crawling.

A web crawler is a program or bot that searches websites and categorises the content on them.

Earlier this year it was reported that the privacy of Australian children was being violated on a large scale by the artificial intelligence (AI) industry, with personal images, names, locations and ages being used to train some of the world's leading AI models.

"What that means for parents is the face, or parts of their child's face, will come up in people's creations of an image," Dr Orlando says for example.

"In the worst instance, it will be your child's face and someone's naked body."

Dr Carah says faces are what "identify us as us".

"There is some legitimacy in covering the face … when you think about the much more harmful uses of images of children, it stops the face getting into circulation in ways that are just horrifying."

He says it can also help reduce platforms learning to recognise your child, such as when Facebook suggests tagging a certain friend when you upload a photo that includes them.

What hiding their face doesn't help with

Dr Orlando warns while our children's faces may be concealed, information we post can still risk their safety — and it's not always obvious things like the school they go to, local park they frequent, or a home address.

"You might share medical conditions, like, 'Oh they wet the bed again, what can I do? Someone give me some advice?'

"That can be used. Someone might contact your child and say, 'Mum told me to speak to you, it's about you wetting the bed.'

"It's those little intimate details that no-one knows about, except mum, that can make a child think that person knows them."

Sharing that information could also be considered as a breach of our child's right to privacy, explains Dr Orlando.

"We often think children don't have a right to be private, but they 100 per cent have the right to their own privacy.

"Things that go online stay there … whether it's bedwetting, or having a meltdown."

Things to think about when posting your children online

As proud parents we want to share our children with loved ones, but in terms of safety and privacy online, Dr Orlando says minimisation is key.

"If you're using an emoji, that's not a bad thing, but think about it differently."

She says if we really want to protect children, it's about "quantity and the kinds of comments" we make about our children.

"Think about how many photos, what am I saying about my child, and why am I putting up these photos of my child?"

We can also choose to share in different ways, like in family group chats as opposed to Instagram.

"Sure, put the occasional photo up [and] be very safe around that," Dr Orlando says.

"But the rest of our child's life? Does it need to go on social media? It just doesn't."

Dr Carah says our children will one day have questions about the content we have shared.

"By the time they're in school, or even kindy, children will have a sense that these images are going on some sort of app where Grandma and friends can see them.

"You have to listen to what your kids are saying about that, and how they feel about that."

For more advice about sharenting, the Commissioner for Children and Young people has information about how children feel about their images appearing online, and the balance between a right to share information and a young person's right to privacy.