Stop Posting Your Children Online - The Internet Is More Dangerous Than It Used to Be

That innocent photo of your child at a birthday party, on holiday or on their first day of school may feel like nothing more than a proud parent’s Facebook post.

But artificial intelligence has changed the risks that come with putting children’s photographs online.

Research has found identifiable photographs of children scraped from the internet and included in enormous datasets used in the development of AI systems.

Human Rights Watch found children’s images in the LAION-5B dataset, including photographs originally posted by parents and family members years earlier.

There is an even more disturbing development.

AI tools can now take an ordinary photograph of a fully clothed child and generate fake sexually explicit images using the child’s likeness.

The original photograph does not need to be sexual. In some cases, an ordinary image of a child’s face can be enough.

Child-protection organisations are warning that the problem is growing rapidly.

The Internet Watch Foundation says it identified 3,443 AI-generated child sexual abuse videos in 2025, more than 260 times the number it identified the previous year.

Recent UNICEF research has also highlighted the scale of AI-enabled abuse.

Across nine countries where the issue was specifically measured, an estimated 1.1 million children reported having AI-generated sexual images or videos created depicting them.

The images may be fake. The child being harmed is real. None of this means that every photograph of a child posted online will be stolen or manipulated.

But it does mean parents may need to rethink what it means to share their children’s lives publicly.

For years, the question was simply: Who can see this photograph?

Today, parents should also be asking: Who can save it, and what could they do with it?

Consider making accounts private. Think carefully before posting photographs showing school uniforms, locations or daily routines.

Be particularly cautious with images involving swimwear, bathing or changing clothes. And as children grow older, ask whether they actually want their photographs shared online.

A child may be too young to understand what a permanent digital footprint means.

The internet, however, can remember those photographs long after they grow up.