UAE Specialists Warn That Constantly Sharing Children’s Experiences Online Could Have Emotional Consequences
UAE Experts Raise Concerns Over Parents Turning Children’s Lives Into Social Media Content.
Childhood photos and videos shared online may reappear years later, potentially exposing young people to ridicule, embarrassment or emotional harm. Experts also caution that parents may have little control over content once it enters the public domain.
When childhood memories become a source of distress
A video that once seemed like an innocent family memory eventually became a painful experience for a young boy after classmates came across it years after it had been recorded.
The footage had originally been shared online by the boy’s parents when he was still very young. At the time, the family likely viewed the recording as an ordinary snapshot of childhood — something that captured his personality and behaviour during his early years.
But as the boy grew older, the same video took on a completely different meaning.
After his classmates found the footage, they began making fun of him for the way he spoke, laughed and behaved in the recording. What had once been considered a harmless childhood moment became a source of embarrassment and ridicule.
The experience had a significant emotional impact on the child.
According to wellbeing coach Dr Hanadi Al Jaber, the boy became so upset by the attention that he eventually did not want to attend school. His family was then forced to seek legal assistance in an attempt to have the videos taken down.
The incident illustrates a wider concern being raised by psychologists and child wellbeing specialists about the information parents place online.
For adults, a photograph or video showing a child at a particular age may simply represent a treasured family memory. Parents may share such moments with relatives, friends or followers without imagining that the material could have consequences many years later.
Children, however, eventually grow into adults who may have very different feelings about what was posted about them during their childhood.
A child who appears funny, energetic or carefree in a video at the age of five may not want classmates, friends, colleagues or strangers watching that same footage when they are teenagers or adults.
The problem becomes even more complicated once the material has been distributed online.
Parents may initially believe they can delete a photograph or remove a video whenever they choose. In reality, digital content can be copied, downloaded, shared, reposted or stored by other people.
Even when the original post disappears, copies may continue to exist elsewhere.
That means parents can lose control over material once it becomes part of the online world.
The experience of the boy highlights why this issue is attracting increasing attention from psychologists and other specialists who work with children and families.
They argue that parents need to think beyond the immediate reaction to a photograph or video and consider how their children might feel about the material in the future.
A young child may not have the ability to understand what it means to have personal images permanently available online.
They may also be unable to give meaningful consent to the publication of material because they are too young to understand who might eventually see it or how widely it could spread.
As children grow older, their views about privacy can change significantly.
Something that seemed amusing to a parent during early childhood could become deeply embarrassing to the child during adolescence.
The consequences can become particularly serious if old material is discovered by classmates.
School environments can be highly sensitive spaces for young people, and anything that makes a child appear different or vulnerable can potentially become a target for teasing or bullying.
In the case described by Dr Al Jaber, the old video became precisely that kind of target.
The classmates did not simply discover an old recording. They used details from the boy’s childhood behaviour to mock him.
The incident demonstrates how content created without harmful intentions can later be used in ways the original publisher never anticipated.
Parents may upload material because they are proud of their children, want to celebrate a milestone or simply enjoy sharing family experiences.
However, once the material is available online, the original intention behind the post may no longer matter.
The audience can interpret it differently, and people who were not part of the original family circle may eventually gain access to it.
That is why specialists are increasingly encouraging parents to think carefully before making children’s lives part of their digital presence.
The concern extends beyond videos.
Photographs, personal stories, school information, embarrassing moments, family disputes and other details about a child can all contribute to a digital record that the child did not create for themselves.
Over time, these individual posts can become a detailed online history of a person’s childhood.
The child may have little opportunity to decide which parts of that history should remain private.
The issue has also moved beyond psychological and social concerns and into the legal arena.
A recent ruling by an Abu Dhabi court highlighted the importance of protecting children’s privacy in situations involving parental social media activity.
The case involved divorced parents and the publication of photographs, videos and personal information relating to their daughters.
The court ordered the parents to stop making such material available online and directed that existing content capable of affecting the children’s best interests be removed.
The decision illustrates that disputes involving children’s images on social media are not necessarily viewed simply as disagreements between adults.
At the centre of the issue is the welfare and privacy of the children themselves.
The court also imposed restrictions on the parent who had initiated the case, demonstrating that the question was not simply which parent had the right to publish photographs of the children.
Instead, the broader issue concerned whether publishing the material served the children’s interests and respected their right to privacy and protection.
That distinction is significant.
Parents generally make decisions on behalf of their children, but specialists and courts can consider whether those decisions could have harmful consequences for the child.
Social media has changed the way families document childhood.
Previous generations might have kept photographs in albums or videos in private collections. Today, a single image can be shared instantly with hundreds or thousands of people.
A family moment that would once have remained within the home can now become publicly accessible.
The speed and scale of digital sharing also make it difficult to predict where the material might eventually travel.
A photograph posted for friends and relatives could later be downloaded and circulated beyond the original audience.
A video shared on one platform could appear on another.
An old post could also resurface years later when a child has entered a completely different stage of life.
This permanence is one of the central concerns raised by experts.
Children deserve the opportunity to develop their own identities as they grow. They may want to decide how they present themselves to classmates, friends, universities, employers and wider society.
When large amounts of childhood content have already been published by parents, that control can become more difficult.
The issue is not necessarily that parents should never share anything about their children.
Rather, specialists are encouraging families to consider what is being shared, who can see it and how the child might feel about it in the future.
Parents may also want to consider whether a particular photograph or video contains information that could embarrass the child later.
A moment that seems amusing to an adult may not appear funny to the child several years later.
Similarly, personal details that seem insignificant when a child is young could become sensitive as they grow older.
The case described by Dr Al Jaber provides a clear example of why these questions matter.
The video was not necessarily created with any intention of harming the boy. Yet years later, its existence contributed to an experience that caused him significant distress.
His reaction also demonstrates that the consequences of online exposure can extend beyond temporary embarrassment.
When a child becomes anxious about attending school because classmates are mocking material from their past, the effect can interfere with education, friendships and emotional wellbeing.
For families, removing such content may then become difficult and complicated.
The situation can involve platform policies, copies of the material and, in some circumstances, legal intervention.
By that stage, the original decision to upload a seemingly harmless video may have created a problem that is far more difficult to resolve.
The Abu Dhabi court case reinforces the broader principle that children’s interests should remain central when decisions are made about their online exposure.
The issue is therefore not simply about whether parents are allowed to post photographs.
It is about recognising that children have their own privacy interests and that those interests can become increasingly important as they grow.
Digital technology has made it easier than ever for parents to record childhood.
But the same technology has also made those memories far more permanent and accessible.
A parent may remember a particular video as a funny moment from their child’s early years. The child may remember it very differently if the footage later becomes the reason classmates ridicule them.
That difference in perspective is at the heart of the concerns being raised by child specialists.
Parents see the child they love and the memory they want to preserve.
The child may eventually see a version of themselves that they no longer recognise — or one they would rather not have strangers and classmates see.
The growing discussion around children’s digital footprints is therefore encouraging parents to pause before posting.
Before uploading a photograph or video, families can consider whether the content is genuinely necessary to share, whether the child would be comfortable with it later and whether the material could potentially cause embarrassment or harm.
Once something is online, removing it completely may not always be possible.
The lesson from the boy’s experience is that a digital footprint can follow a child long after the original moment has passed.
What begins as an ordinary childhood memory can eventually become part of a young person’s public identity.
For that reason, experts are urging parents to treat children’s online privacy as seriously as they would their privacy in the physical world.
The Abu Dhabi court ruling adds another important dimension to the conversation by recognising that protecting children online can involve more than resolving disagreements between parents.
At its core, the issue is about the child’s welfare, dignity and right to protection.
As social media becomes increasingly integrated into family life, parents face a new responsibility: deciding not only what memories they want to preserve, but also which memories their children should have the freedom to keep private.
The goal is not to prevent parents from celebrating their children online.
It is to encourage greater awareness of what happens after the “post” button is pressed.
A child’s childhood belongs to them too, and the choices adults make about sharing those early years can potentially affect them long after the camera has stopped recording.
Psychologists speaking to INSIDER 18 said the incident serves as a reminder that parents need to consider the long-term consequences of sharing images or videos of their children online. A child may happily pose for a photograph or participate in a video when they are young, without understanding where that material could eventually appear or who might see it.
Experts said parents should therefore look beyond a child’s immediate reaction and think about how the same content might be perceived years later. As children grow into teenagers and adults, their attitudes toward privacy, personal identity and public exposure can change considerably. Something that seems amusing, innocent or perfectly acceptable during early childhood could later become embarrassing or uncomfortable.
Before posting, parents are encouraged to ask themselves whether their child would still be comfortable with the material being publicly available years from now. They should also consider whether the content could potentially affect the child’s friendships, education, career or emotional wellbeing in the future.
The broader message from psychologists is that sharing a child’s life online should involve careful thought about the child’s future wishes, not just their feelings at the moment the photograph or video is taken.
When childhood content follows a child into adolescence
For wellbeing coach Dr Hanadi Al Jaber, one case stands out as a powerful example of why parents need to think carefully before sharing their children’s lives online.
She recalled the story of a boy whose parents had regularly created videos featuring him when he was young and uploaded the material to YouTube. At that age, the child was too young to understand what being filmed and published online meant, let alone the possible consequences that could emerge years later.
He was simply growing up in front of a camera.
The videos captured ordinary aspects of his childhood, including the way he spoke, laughed and behaved. For his parents, the recordings may have seemed like harmless memories or family content. The boy himself, however, was not in a position to make an informed decision about whether those moments should become part of a permanent online record.
He could not fully understand who might eventually watch the videos, how the footage might be interpreted or whether he would still be comfortable with it as a teenager.
At the time, Al Jaber said, the child did not have the maturity to give meaningful consent.
As he grew older, however, his understanding of privacy changed.
The videos that had once appeared insignificant became a source of serious distress after his schoolmates discovered them.
The teenagers began using material from the old recordings to tease him. They focused on personal and embarrassing details from his childhood, turning moments that had been recorded years earlier into material for ridicule.
According to Al Jaber, the students even created digital stickers using images taken from the boy’s photographs and videos.
They copied aspects of his childhood behaviour, including the way he talked, laughed and even snored, and turned them into material that could be shared and used to mock him.
For the teenager, the problem was no longer simply that an old video existed online.
The material had entered his school environment and was being used directly against him.
What had been presented online as childhood entertainment had become a source of humiliation in his teenage years.
The impact on him was severe.
Al Jaber said the bullying became so difficult for the teenager that he eventually did not want to attend school.
His family then tried to find a way to remove the videos that had become the focus of the harassment.
But deleting the original material was not as simple as removing a post from a social media account.
By that point, the content had already been published online, meaning copies and redistributed versions could potentially exist beyond the family’s direct control.
The family ultimately had to consider legal measures to help remove the material, according to Al Jaber.
The teenager’s psychological condition also deteriorated significantly.
Al Jaber said the experience caused severe emotional distress and that the boy eventually experienced suicidal thoughts.
Treating the psychological effects was not a quick process.
“It took us a long time to treat him,” she said.
For Al Jaber, the case demonstrates one of the most important problems surrounding children’s online exposure: young children cannot always understand the long-term consequences of decisions made about their digital presence.
A child may smile when a parent points a camera at them.
They may enjoy making a funny video.
They may happily participate in a family recording.
But that moment of cooperation should not automatically be treated as informed consent to publish the material publicly.
Children develop rapidly.
Their personalities change, their social environments expand and their understanding of privacy becomes more sophisticated.
A video that feels completely harmless at the age of six may feel deeply uncomfortable at the age of sixteen.
The child who once enjoyed performing for a camera may later become much more private.
The child who once laughed at a funny recording may eventually wish that nobody else could see it.
This is why Al Jaber believes parents should consider not only what their children think about online sharing today, but also what those children might want several years from now.
In the case she described, the boy’s feelings changed as he matured.
When he was young, he did not understand the implications of the videos.
When he became a teenager, he began to understand privacy differently and wanted the recordings removed.
The change was not necessarily a contradiction.
It was a normal part of growing up.
Children develop their own identities over time, and the boundaries they establish around their personal lives can change considerably.
The difficulty is that digital content can remain behind even after the child has changed.
A child’s digital identity can outlive childhood
Dr Amir Javaid, Director of Paediatric Psychiatry Services and Intellectual Disorders and Consultant Psychiatrist at Burjeel Medical City, said children should gradually gain greater control over how they are presented to the outside world as they mature.
That becomes particularly important when parents have already documented large portions of their childhood online.
A child may eventually feel that important parts of their identity were created or displayed publicly before they were capable of deciding how they wanted to be represented.
According to Javaid, extensive online documentation during childhood can contribute to feelings of embarrassment, damaged trust or a sense that personal boundaries were ignored.
The concern is not limited to embarrassing photographs.
It can include personal stories, videos, comments, family experiences and other details that parents may consider harmless but that children may later regard as private.
The internet can effectively create a permanent record of childhood.
Once material is available online, it can potentially remain accessible long after the original circumstances have disappeared.
This can become particularly complicated during adolescence, a period when young people are developing a stronger sense of identity and becoming increasingly aware of how they are perceived by others.
Javaid said that in his clinical work, he has encountered adolescents who were uncomfortable after discovering that personal information or photographs had been shared without their permission.
The common thread, he explained, was a desire to have greater control over their own digital identity.
That desire for ownership can become increasingly important as children mature.
Teenagers begin making their own choices about clothing, friendships, interests, social media activity and how they present themselves to others.
They may want to decide which photographs represent them and which moments should remain private.
When parents have already published a large amount of material, the teenager may have less control over that narrative.
An old photograph can suddenly reappear.
A childhood video can be discovered by classmates.
A funny family story can be shared with people who were never part of the original audience.
The child may then have to deal with a public version of themselves that they did not choose.
Javaid suggested that parents consider a simple test before publishing content involving their children: would they personally be comfortable having the same information shared publicly about them?
That question can help parents look at the situation from the child’s perspective.
A photograph that appears adorable to a parent when their child is five could look completely different to that same person ten years later.
At five, the child may not care about having a funny photograph online.
At fifteen, they may be concerned about classmates seeing it.
At twenty-five, they may have completely different expectations about privacy and professional reputation.
The child remains the same individual, but their understanding of themselves changes.
That is why experts believe parents should consider the future person as well as the child standing in front of the camera.
The problem goes beyond school bullying
Al Jaber also warned that the potential dangers of children’s online exposure are not restricted to teasing among classmates.
Publicly available photographs and videos can reach people outside a child’s immediate community.
Once an image or video is posted publicly, strangers may be able to view it, save it, copy it or redistribute it.
That creates risks that parents may not have considered when they originally uploaded the material.
Al Jaber warned that some individuals may misuse videos and photographs involving children.
A stranger could encounter a child’s content through social media and potentially attempt to establish contact.
That is one reason she urged parents to be cautious about turning private family experiences into public online material.
The distinction between private and public sharing is important.
A parent who sends a photograph to a small group of trusted relatives is making a very different decision from someone who uploads the same photograph to a public account.
In the first situation, the audience is limited and relatively familiar.
In the second, the content can potentially reach people the family has never met.
Even when parents believe they know who can access their content, digital platforms can make information easier to copy and redistribute.
A photograph can be downloaded.
A video can be recorded from a screen.
A screenshot can be shared.
A post can be forwarded to another person.
Content can also appear on different platforms without the original family’s knowledge.
This means parents may gradually lose control over material once it enters the online environment.
The difference between a family memory and public content
The debate does not mean that parents should never take photographs or record videos of their children.
Family memories can be valuable.
Photographs and recordings allow parents to preserve important moments and share them with relatives.
The concern arises when those private memories are transformed into publicly accessible content without considering the child’s future wishes.
There is a significant difference between keeping a childhood video in a private family archive and publishing it on an open social media account.
The first is primarily a family memory.
The second becomes part of a wider digital environment.
That distinction becomes particularly important when the material shows a child in a vulnerable, embarrassing or highly personal situation.
Parents may find such moments funny because they know the child intimately.
But strangers, classmates or future acquaintances may interpret the same material differently.
What seems affectionate inside the family may become humiliating outside it.
The boy described by Al Jaber experienced precisely this shift.
His childhood recordings may have seemed ordinary when they were made.
Years later, however, they were viewed through the eyes of teenagers looking for material with which to tease him.
The meaning of the content changed because the context changed.
That is one of the fundamental difficulties of digital sharing.
The person posting the material controls the original context, but once others obtain it, they can give it a completely different meaning.
Growing up with an online history
Children today can begin developing a digital footprint before they are old enough to understand what the term means.
Their first photographs may be uploaded by parents.
Their birthdays may be documented online.
Family holidays may become social media posts.
School achievements, funny conversations and everyday experiences may be recorded and shared.
Over many years, these individual posts can create an extensive record of a person’s childhood.
The child may eventually look back and realise that much of their early life was documented publicly without them making those decisions themselves.
This can raise questions about identity and autonomy.
Young people naturally want to develop a sense of independence as they mature.
They may want to leave behind certain aspects of childhood.
But the internet does not always allow people to move forward as easily as real life does.
An embarrassing moment at school may eventually be forgotten.
An embarrassing video online can potentially remain accessible for years.
That difference makes digital privacy especially important.
Why consent matters
At the centre of the experts’ concerns is the question of consent.
Young children are generally unable to understand the full implications of publishing personal material online.
They may agree to a photograph because they like the attention at that moment, but they may not understand that the image could be seen by strangers years later.
Meaningful consent requires an understanding of consequences.
As children mature, their ability to make decisions about their own privacy increases.
Parents can therefore gradually involve children in decisions about what should and should not be shared.
As children become older, their opinions about photographs, videos and personal stories should carry increasing weight.
The goal is not simply to ask whether the child is smiling when the camera is switched on.
Parents need to consider whether the child understands where the content will go and whether they might object to its availability in the future.
Thinking about the future child
One of the simplest questions parents can ask is: “Would my child want this online ten years from now?”
There is no way to predict exactly how a child will feel in the future.
However, parents can consider whether the content is likely to embarrass them, expose private information or make them vulnerable to unwanted attention.
The more personal the material, the more carefully it should be considered.
Parents may also want to think about who can access the content.
Private accounts, restricted audiences and family-only sharing may reduce exposure, although no online platform can completely eliminate the possibility of copying or redistribution.
The safest approach for highly personal material may therefore be to keep it offline altogether.
A lesson from one teenager’s experience
The case recalled by Al Jaber shows how quickly a harmless childhood recording can become something much more serious.
The boy did not create the online videos with the intention of becoming a public figure.
He was simply a child whose parents recorded parts of his life.
Years later, those recordings became available to schoolmates who used them to make jokes and digital stickers.
The consequences were not limited to embarrassment.
The teenager stopped wanting to attend school and experienced serious psychological distress. His family then faced the additional challenge of trying to remove material that had already been distributed online.
The situation demonstrates why prevention can be easier than trying to undo online exposure later.
Once content has spread, deleting the original upload may not solve the entire problem.
Copies may exist.
Screenshots may have been taken.
Other users may have saved the material.
The content may have been transferred to another platform.
That makes complete removal difficult.
Protecting children in a changing digital world
The experts’ concerns come at a time when social media is increasingly embedded in family life.
Parents document milestones, share achievements and communicate with relatives through digital platforms.
For many families, posting photographs is now a normal part of everyday communication.
But the convenience of sharing can sometimes make it easy to overlook the long-term consequences.
The advice from Al Jaber and Javaid is therefore not simply to stop documenting childhood.
It is to be more deliberate about what becomes public.
Parents can preserve family memories without necessarily publishing every moment.
They can keep private albums, use limited sharing settings or simply store photographs and videos for the family rather than making them available to a broad online audience.
The key question is not whether a post receives likes or positive comments today.
It is whether the child might regret its existence later.
A child’s right to shape their own story
As children mature, they should increasingly have the opportunity to decide how they are represented.
Their digital identity should not be entirely determined by content that adults created before they could understand its significance.
Parents naturally play an important role in protecting young children, but that responsibility also includes thinking about the child’s future autonomy.
A child eventually becomes a teenager.
A teenager eventually becomes an adult.
The person they become may have different expectations about privacy from the person they were at five or six years old.
The online world, however, can preserve both versions of that person at the same time.
That is why experts are encouraging parents to exercise greater caution.
The childhood moments that seem funny today may not always remain funny.
A recording that feels innocent to a parent can potentially become embarrassing in a school environment.
A photograph shared with relatives can potentially travel beyond its intended audience.
And a video posted publicly may be copied and redistributed in ways the family cannot control.
For Al Jaber, the central lesson is that children deserve consideration not only as they are today, but also as the people they will become.
Parents can still celebrate childhood, preserve memories and share meaningful family moments.
But before pressing “publish”, they should consider whether the child would want that memory to remain available years later.
In the digital age, protecting a child’s privacy means thinking beyond the present moment.
It means recognising that childhood passes, but online content can remain.
And once a private family memory becomes public, taking it back may be far more difficult than putting it online in the first place.
‘Delete it’: Clear warning sign
Listen when children ask for privacy
Experts say one of the most important indicators that a child is uncomfortable with online exposure may be the child’s own reaction.
Dr Hanadi Al Jaber urged parents not to dismiss children’s concerns when they begin questioning photographs or videos that were shared during their younger years. A child who asks for an old image to be replaced or removed may be expressing an emerging sense of privacy and personal identity.
She said parents should pay attention when children begin making comments such as wanting a different photograph because they dislike the way they look in the original.
For adults, such a request may appear minor. But for a child, it can represent the beginning of a stronger awareness of how they are presented to other people.
The same applies when children come across older videos and become uncomfortable with what they see.
A child may question why they spoke, laughed or behaved in a particular way in an old recording. They may simply decide that they no longer want the material available and ask their parents to delete it.
Experts say such requests should be taken seriously rather than treated as an overreaction.
As children grow, their understanding of privacy develops. They begin to form their own opinions about appearance, reputation and how much of their personal lives they want others to see.
Parents may have originally shared a photograph because they found it funny or memorable. Years later, however, the child may have a completely different view.
The difficulty becomes greater when online content has started attracting significant attention.
A photograph or video that receives large numbers of views, followers, comments or even generates money can become more valuable to the parent than it was when it was first posted.
That can create a conflict between the parent’s interest in maintaining successful content and the child’s growing desire for privacy.
Al Jaber warned that once a child’s personal moments become part of a content strategy, the original purpose of preserving a family memory can be lost.
When family memories become online business
The distinction between sharing family memories and creating commercial content involving children is an important part of the wider debate.
Not every parent who posts a photograph of their child is attempting to build an online business. Families commonly share birthdays, holidays, achievements and everyday moments with relatives and friends.
Psychologist Hiba Badawi said this type of documentation can have a positive purpose when it remains primarily about preserving memories.
The situation can become more complicated when regular posts turn into a deliberate content operation designed to attract an audience or generate income.
In such circumstances, the child may no longer simply appear in an occasional family photograph.
Instead, their appearance, personality, activities or experiences can become part of the material being produced for an audience.
Badawi described this shift as particularly concerning because it can change the way parents view their children’s participation.
A parent may begin thinking about which photograph will receive more attention, which video will generate more engagement or which moment could attract additional followers.
The child’s presence can consequently become linked to the success of the account.
That creates a potential conflict if the child later decides they no longer want to participate.
A young child may happily cooperate with a parent because they enjoy attention or do not understand the implications of being filmed.
As they become older, however, they may become more conscious of their appearance and more protective of their personal lives.
They may want to stop appearing online altogether.
If the family’s income or online popularity has become dependent on that content, saying no may become more difficult.
This is where experts believe parents need to establish clear boundaries.
A child’s discomfort should not be ignored simply because a photograph or video performs well online.
Nor should financial success from family content be treated as a reason to override a child’s wishes.
The importance of giving children a voice
Children gradually develop the ability to make decisions about their personal identity.
Parents may make choices for very young children, but those decisions should evolve as the child becomes more mature.
Listening to a child’s objections can help families avoid turning online sharing into a source of conflict.
If a child asks for a photograph to be removed, parents can use that moment to discuss why they feel uncomfortable and decide together what should happen.
The important point is to recognise that the child’s feelings have changed.
The fact that a child once agreed to appear in a video does not necessarily mean they will always be comfortable with it.
A six-year-old and a sixteen-year-old can have completely different views about the same recording.
As children develop their own identities, they should have increasing influence over how they are represented online.
Experts therefore encourage parents to treat requests for deletion as meaningful rather than dismissing them as temporary embarrassment.
When likes and income change the equation
Social media can create powerful incentives for parents to continue publishing content.
A popular video can attract thousands of views.
A growing account can generate advertising opportunities.
A large following can potentially become a source of income.
These benefits may make it tempting to continue featuring a child even when the child becomes less comfortable.
But experts warn that the financial or social value of a post should not take priority over the child’s wellbeing.
The more successful an account becomes, the more difficult it may be for a parent to separate the child from the business side of the platform.
A child who was initially included occasionally could gradually become one of the central reasons audiences continue following the account.
At that point, removing the child from future content may feel like a significant business decision.
That is precisely why experts believe boundaries should be established before online sharing becomes commercialised.
Parents should consider whether they would still respect a child’s request to stop appearing online if doing so meant losing followers or income.
If the answer is uncertain, the family may already have allowed commercial interests to become too closely connected to the child’s private life.
Keeping the child’s interests at the centre
The wider message from psychologists is that parents should remember who ultimately has to live with the digital footprint created during childhood.
Parents may enjoy looking back at old photographs and videos.
Followers may enjoy watching family content.
An online platform may reward the material with views and engagement.
But the child featured in those posts may eventually have to deal with the consequences.
That could include embarrassment at school, unwanted attention, questions from friends or discomfort about strangers knowing personal details.
The child’s future feelings should therefore be considered alongside the parent’s current intentions.
Parents can still preserve memories without making every moment public.
They can keep private photographs and videos, share selected material with trusted relatives or involve older children in decisions about what can be posted.
Most importantly, when a child says they no longer want something online, experts say parents should stop and listen.
A request for privacy may be more than a passing complaint. It can be an important expression of growing independence.
Family memories should remain memories — not become obligations that children are expected to perform for an audience.
And when online content begins generating money, attention or influence, parents need to be even more careful to ensure that commercial interests do not outweigh a child’s right to feel safe, respected and in control of their own identity.
Javaid encouraged parents to pause before publishing anything that features their children and consider the possible impact on the child’s privacy, dignity and sense of self. A useful way to make that decision, he said, is for parents to imagine being in the child’s position. If the same photograph, video, personal story or private detail were about them, would they feel comfortable having it publicly accessible?
Parents may not always intend to cause embarrassment or discomfort when they share childhood moments online. In many cases, the motivation is simply to preserve a memory, celebrate a milestone or allow relatives and friends to see a special moment. However, the meaning of that material can change as the child grows older.
Something that appears harmless during early childhood may feel intrusive or embarrassing during adolescence. A child may also become increasingly concerned about who can view their photographs, where the material could be shared and how long it might remain available.
For that reason, Javaid suggested that families do not need to stop documenting childhood altogether. Instead, parents can separate private memories from material intended for public consumption. Family photographs and videos can still be collected in private albums, stored securely or shared with a limited group of trusted relatives and friends.
The key consideration is deciding whether every moment genuinely needs to become public content.
Parents can also involve older children in those decisions as their understanding of privacy develops. Giving them an opportunity to express whether they are comfortable with a particular image or video can help them develop a stronger sense of ownership over their digital identity.
A more cautious approach may be especially important for content that reveals personal information, captures embarrassing situations or shows a child in a vulnerable moment. Once such material is posted publicly, parents may not be able to control who saves, copies or redistributes it.
Ultimately, preserving childhood memories does not require placing every memory online. Parents can continue celebrating their children’s milestones while choosing carefully what remains within the family and what, if anything, is appropriate for a wider audience.
