Posting photos of children online could be criminal

The next time you take an embarrassing picture of your child, you may want to reconsider posting the photo online.

The picture could be more than potentially embarrassing. In France, it could be a crime that sends parents to prison.

As reported by Britain’s Daily Telegraph, parents in France could be fined more than $50,000 and spend a year in prison, if they’re convicted of “publicizing intimate details of the private lives of others – including their children – without their consent.”

“Your favorite picture of your child sitting on the potty for the first time may not be their favorite picture of themselves when they’re 13,” child psychologist Catherine Steiner-Adair told Britain’s The Guardian.

French legal experts told the Telegraph that adults who sue their parents for photos posted when they were children could get a lot of money. Eric Delcroix, an expert on internet law and ethics, said parents should consider how children would feel about photos of them online later in life before sharing.

It’s not just to avoid the kids’ humiliation: French police have warned that pedophiles may target children based on the photos they see online.

It’s unclear if kids in the United States would be able to press charges against their parents. Many states have laws that say you can’t publish private information about another person, even if the information is true, unless it’s newsworthy. Private information includes medical conditions, sexual orientation and financial status. Most state laws also require that the published information would be offensive to a reasonable person. However, it is not a crime that could include jail time in the U.S.

But, like their French counterparts, American children like to have a say in what pictures of them end up online. A study conducted by the University of Washington and the University of Michigan found that three times more children than parents thought there should be rules about what parents share about them on social media.

Facebook officials said they are considering setting up a notification system that will alert parents who don’t have privacy settings before they post pictures of their children.

This story was originally published May 9, 2016 at 10:33 AM with the headline "Posting photos of children online could be criminal."