Sharenting. What happens to those photos.

This one is about us, not them. The average child has a substantial online presence before they're old enough to consent to any of it — and most of it was posted by people who love them.

The risks, honestly ranked

Realistic and common

• Your child's future embarrassment. The most likely negative outcome by a wide margin. Potty training photos, meltdown videos, and medical details posted for sympathy are read very differently by a 15-year-old than by their parent.
• Loss of control over their own narrative. A child who arrives at adolescence with a documented history they never agreed to has had a decision made for them.
• Location and routine disclosure. School uniforms, regular locations, the same park every Saturday, the house number visible in a birthday photo. Individually trivial, cumulatively a pattern.

Real but less common

• Image reuse. Photos of children get scraped and reused — in advertising, on fake profiles, and on sites collecting images of children. Public photos are scrapeable by definition.
• Identity building. Full name, date of birth, mother's maiden name, first pet, school — the standard security question set is frequently assembled entirely from family posts.
• Training data. Public images have been used to train facial recognition and generative systems, generally without consent.

Worth stating carefully

Ordinary photos being taken and misused by predators does happen and is far rarer than viral warnings suggest. We'd rather say that plainly than inflate it — the everyday risks above are more likely and get less attention precisely because they're less dramatic.

Practical changes

Before posting

• Would they be OK with this at 15? The single most useful filter available.
• Is anyone identifiable by location? School logo, uniform, house number, street sign, car registration, the view from the window.
• Does it show them at their most vulnerable? Crying, unwell, undressed, being disciplined. These are the ones that hurt later.
• Are you posting a medical detail? Their health information belongs to them.
• Would you tell this story to a room of 400 strangers? Because that's usually the audience.

Settings worth changing

1. Accounts private. The single biggest reduction in exposure.
2. Turn off location tagging in the camera app and on posts.
3. Prune the follower list. Most people have followers they no longer know. Photos of your children are visible to all of them.
4. Use a close-friends list for family content rather than the main feed.
5. Turn off facial recognition tagging where the platform offers it.

Better alternatives for family

• A shared album — Apple, Google Photos — invited by link, not public.
• A private family group chat.
• A printed photo book. Genuinely: grandparents prefer them, and they don't get scraped.

Asking your child

From around age four or five, children can be asked. It costs nothing and it teaches something:

"Is it OK if I put this picture where Grandma and Auntie can see it?"

Two things happen. They learn their consent over their own image matters — which is directly relevant to what they'll face as a teenager with a phone. And you'll be surprised how often they say no, and about which photos.

For older children, honour a request to take something down without negotiating. That's the whole point of asking.

What about photos already posted

Retroactive deletion has limited effect — what's been scraped is scraped. It's still worth doing:

• Make old accounts private.
• Delete posts your child would object to now, and any showing school, address, or full date of birth.
• Ask relatives to do the same. This is awkward and it's the conversation with the most impact, because grandparents' accounts are frequently the most public.

Don't spiral about it. Nearly every parent posting in the last fifteen years did the same thing without much thought. Changing the practice going forward is the part that matters.