French Armed Forces Warn Parents Against Posting Photos of Kids to Facebook

The French Gendarmerie – a branch of the French Armed Forces responsible for police duties and civilian public safety — is warning French parents to “Please stop posting pictures of your kids on Facebook.” Part of their original post, which can be read on their Facebook page, as translated into English:

“Well, of course, you can all be proud or proud to be a mom or dad beautiful toddlers, but be careful! We remind you that post pictures of his kids on Facebook is not without danger!

It is important to protect the privacy of minors and their image on social networks.

A question and a danger on which leaned besides Jay Parikh, Vice-President of engineering of Facebook, as reported by an article in the Figaro.

Sometimes, the good times deserve to be “just” shared in real life!”

Meanwhile, the Telegraph is reporting that “French parents ‘could be jailed’ for posting children’s photos online.” Parents can be sued by their grown-up kids for posting photos of them without their permission, specifically for “breaching their right to privacy or jeopardizing their security.” Parents can be sued by their grown-up kids for posting photos of them without their permission, specifically for “breaching their right to privacy or jeopardizing their security.” Penalties could include a year in prison and a fine of €45,000 if convicted of publishing intimate details of the private lives of others — including their kids — without consent.

We closely follow news about digital privacy as it relates to kids and parents here at Parent.co.

That’s partly because we make Notabli, a platform designed to make saving and selectively sharing photos of your kids’ safe and secure. But we’re also interested in the much bigger cultural question about what it means that we parents publicly post hundreds or even thousands of photos of our kids online. In surveys that we’ve run on Parent.co, we’ve learned that parents mostly post photos to Facebook for three main reasons:

• So relatives and friends can see what their kids are doing and how they’re growing up.
• So the parents have a place to find their photos later (even though Facebook is a horrible place to archive photos of value)
• To get likes and comments on their wall (dopamine is a powerful motivator).

In covering this topic, we try to avoid alarmism and outrage — even though we read news every day that confirms our worst fears about kids and digital privacy . For example, parents in Lancashire England learned that pictures of their kids posted to Facebook ended up on a website used by Russian pedophiles. Or the creeps who role play with stolen photos of other people’s babies. Or the fact that Facebook lets advertisers use photos of your kids without your permission – and you can’t stop them. Or the fact that anyone can easily see where you took photos of your kid on Instagram.

There are other, less alarmist reasons to avoid posting photos of kids on social media.

These include respecting children as people with an inherent right to privacy, giving kids freedom to portray themselves however they choose when they’re old enough to do so, and shielding kids from corporations that seek to collect data about them.

Maybe this is why Notabli is used by a significant number of families in France.

Notabli is designed in part to give parents and families the best of both worlds – the joy of sharing and the peace of mind of privacy. While most parents will continue using Facebook to share photos of their kids (including some of us at Parent Co), we’re glad to see that the French Gendarmerie is putting attention on the potential dangers and downsides of the social network.