Italy is considering an anti-sharing law to protect children’s privacy

Parents in Italy may have to think twice before posting images and videos of their children on social media.

On March 21, 2024, a bipartisan coalition presented a bill to the House of Representatives (Camera dei Deputati) to protect children’s privacy online and their right to their own image.

Following on from a recent one French lawthe proposal aims to regulate a growing digital problem known as sharenting – a portmanteau between part And parenting, which denotes the practice of over-sharing content depicting children on social media platforms. Lawmakers are trying to open this debate, they said, and mitigate the safety risks and psychological consequences the trend poses for young people.

What is sharing and why does Italy want to regulate it?

“In a world where every aspect of our lives becomes content, driven by visibility mechanisms that regulate the social media platforms we use every day, we must work to raise awareness for minors based on a simple principle. Faced with the temptation to go viral, we must prioritize the need for privacy,” Serena Mazzini, a social media strategist and author who helped write the bill, told the House of Representatives: Here is the full video in Italian.

With a quick scroll through your Instagram or TikTok feeds, you’ll see countless accounts of moms, dads, and families sharing every aspect of their lives with an online audience. Family influencer accounts often start as amatory activities and then follow appropriate editorial strategies, using their children’s images as a marketing ploy to claim their piece of the industry that’s out to reach $24 billion by the end of 2024.

With more than a decade of experience in the social media industry, Mazzini was one of the first in Italy to shed light on the risks of oversharing children’s images and videos online – an activity in which European parents an average of 300 photos of their children per year. This practice becomes especially dangerous when parents want to make a profit from this content.

She first encountered what she described as “the dark side of social media” while going about her daily duties. This reached a tipping point during the pandemic as the brands she worked for were looking for new ways to monetize their online presence.

“I was confronted with a world unthinkable for an ordinary user,” said Mazzini. “A world where children become the most important content for some parents to get as many views as possible.”

According to Mazzini’s research on more than 100 accounts in Italy and Portugal, content featuring children can generate up to three times more interactions and opinions than content featuring adults only. Children served a social function to help accounts gain more followers and interactions, she explained, ultimately increasing their commercial value.

The massive online presence of children takes place long before they can legally be present on these platforms, namely from the age of 13. An even bigger problem is that children never consent to their image being shared or exploited. The bill aims to counter this.

The Italian partial bill

The three-article bill, signed by the coalition between Green Europe (Europa Verdi) and the Italian Left (Sinistra Italiana), does not ban parents from sharing their children’s images online, but aims to limit the risks.

The first article requires parents to do this officially declare the use of their children’s image online to the Italian Communications Regulatory Authority (AGCOM). If there is a direct profit to be made from these activities, parents will have to do the same transfer the money to a bank account in the child’s namewhich will be accessible to the child after he or she turns 18 years old.

However, baby influences and the children of politicians and celebrities aren’t the only young people whose parents exaggerate every waking moment on social media.

Despite the goodwill behind this excessive sharing, most parents are guilty of broadcasting highly sensitive information about their children on a daily basis without realizing the inherent security risks.

For example, a Carnegie Mellon CyLab Study A 2011 study found that identity theft was 51 times more common among children than among adults. a Australian study from 2015 also found that about half of the material on pedophile sites comes directly from social media.

A recent one New York Times investigation revealed how images of children often attract men who are sexually attracted to them. The problem is compounded as AI-generated deepfakes make it even easier to turn innocent photos of children into oversexualized content.

That’s why legislators are too pushing technology companies to do more to prevent share sharing by introducing stricter guidelines for account holders.

The right of children to be forgotten

Another major concern for Italian lawmakers is the psychological impact that rights sharing has on young people. In fact, Generation Alpha (children born between 2010 and 2025) is the first generation that will have to come to terms with a publicly accessible digital library of their childhood once they reach adulthood.

According to Leah Plunkettauthor of the book ‘Sharenthood: Why We Should Think Before We Talk About Our Kids Online’, these images frozen in time can hinder children’s ability to develop their own identities later in life.

“Each of us decides what we share and how we represent ourselves on social media. Children are denied this choice,” says Mazzini, citing cyberbullism and other mental health issues as unintended consequences.

The law aims to return the right to be forgotten to today’s children and introduces the right to be forgotten possibility to ask for “digital oblivion” after they turn 14.

The bill is now at the beginning of the legislative process in Italy, with a similar proposal also being presented by the Five Star Movement Party (Movimento 5 Stelle). So it is still too early to say what the final legislation (if any) will ultimately look like. What is However, it is certain that this is another positive step towards better child data protection practices in Europe.