Children, Content and Consent
I’ve been meaning to write this for a while. It’s something I care about deeply, and something I keep seeing pop up again and again as I scroll through pages that do similar work to mine.
Pages like mine are usually filled with mud-covered boots, curious little hands, big play energy and small, beautiful moments. These are the things that draw people in.
And I get it, kids are the magic. They’re at the centre of everything we do.
But somewhere along the way, it started to feel like they also became the content.
And that doesn’t sit right with me.
I never share full faces of children from my sessions.
Not mine, not yours, not any child who comes through this space. And while I understand why others do, I want to explain why I’ve made a different choice.
We’re raising a generation of kids growing up with a digital footprint that starts before they can even talk. According to some studies, over 80% of kids under two already have images of them online, often shared by someone else. Most children will have over 1,000 photos of themselves online before they turn thirteen. That’s a whole childhood shared across public spaces before they’ve had a real say.
Add to that the fact that AI companies have been caught scraping photos of children, yes, even from personal and business pages, to train facial recognition tools without consent. The technology is moving fast, and our awareness isn’t always keeping up. These tools can scan, store, and track faces across platforms.
A harmless-looking post can become part of a much bigger system in ways many of us haven’t fully wrapped our heads around yet.
Even outside of AI, there are real risks.
Someone commented recently after reading one of my posts. She said she had been at a local park and recognised a child she didn’t know personally. She knew their name, their age, and even that they’d just had a birthday. All from following a page.
When we share online, especially on public accounts, we often don’t stop to think about who’s watching. Or how far a post might travel.
Or what that post could mean to the child in it, ten or twenty years from now.
Why I don’t share kids’ faces online:
(and why I think twice even before snapping a photo)
They don’t have informed consent.
Most kids don’t really understand what “online” means. They don’t know where their image might end up or who might see it.
It interrupts their play.
Stopping to pose or look at the camera shifts them out of the moment. It takes them out of their own world and into ours.
They’re not content.
Children aren’t here to fill a social media feed. They’re here to be kids. To play, connect, and learn without a lens in their face.
AI can now scrape and reuse faces.
Even with good intentions, once an image is online, it can be copied, used, altered, or fed into AI datasets without permission.
It’s a public page.
Anyone can screenshot, save, share, or repost what gets shared here. That includes strangers, bots, and businesses I don’t know.
They don’t get a say.
Even if they smile for the photo, they usually haven’t been told where it’s going or how many people might see it.
We’re modelling boundaries.
When we treat their privacy with respect, we show them that consent matters—and that they’re allowed to say no to being watched, filmed, or put online.
Their stories are theirs.
One day they might be scrolling and come across a baby photo of themselves they never even knew existed. Maybe they’ll love it. Maybe they won’t. Either way, they didn’t get to decide.
Children deserve more than that. They deserve privacy. They deserve respect. They deserve the space to grow up without being observed by thousands of silent followers.
In the work I do, I want to model boundaries. I want to create spaces where consent and awareness matter, even when the person in question is too young to fully understand what that means yet.
And for families in unique situations, this stuff goes even deeper. Families navigating domestic violence. Families where there’s limited contact with a co-parent. Families who are simply doing their best to protect their kids and keep their lives offline.
We don’t always know the full story behind who’s attending our sessions. That’s why we hold the boundary for everyone.
Now I want to be clear… this isn’t about judgement. It’s not about pointing fingers. There’s already enough shame in parenting and in running small businesses. My goal here isn’t to add to that.
My hope is that by sharing my reasoning, it might get others thinking too. Especially those of us running pages with public reach. We have a responsibility to the families who trust us and to the children we’re shaping.
And the good news?
There are so many ways to share the magic of working with kids without showing faces.
Take photos from behind
Get overhead shots while they play
Focus on their hands or feet
Use wide-brim hats or hoods to naturally hide faces
Capture the environment more than the person
Show materials, artwork, moments—without the identifying parts
Share silhouettes, shadows, or blurred edges
Or if the moment is perfect and just needs a little tweak, gently blur the face or add a nature sticker overlay
Every one of these options still tells the story. The joy, the curiosity, the connection, it’s all still there.
We don’t need to compromise their safety to share the beauty of what we do.
So that’s where I stand.
It’s a choice I make every time I pick up my phone or open my camera. It’s not always the easiest option, especially when the light is perfect and the moment is magic. But it feels right.
And for me, that’s worth everything.
