Sharenting Statistics 2026
How many photos of children are posted online, by whom, and with what consequences. A reference compilation of the most cited sharenting research, updated for 2026.
How early does a child's digital footprint begin?
- The average newborn has their first photo posted online within one hour of birth.
- About 1 in 3 children appears online within their first 24 hours.
- Roughly 23% of children have a digital footprint before they are born, typically from posted ultrasound images.
- By age 2, about 80% have a recognisable online presence.
- By age 5, the average child has nearly 1,000 photos of them online.
Who is doing the sharenting?
- Mothers post about their children roughly 3x more often than fathers.
- Around 89% of mothers with children under 5 have shared photos of them publicly.
- Grandparents are the second most common posters — about 40% of grandparents share photos of grandkids on platforms the parents don't use.
- Roughly 56% of parents share information that could identify their child's location (school, neighbourhood, daily route).
Consent and children's feelings
- Fewer than 25% of parents ask their child's permission before posting.
- In a UK survey of 10–16 year-olds, over 70% said their parents had posted embarrassing content without consent.
- About 1 in 3 teens have asked a parent to take down a post about them — and roughly half were refused.
Identity fraud and digital kidnapping
- Barclays projects sharenting will drive two-thirds of identity fraud against young people by 2030 — about 7.4 million incidents/year and £670M in annual losses.
- An estimated 50% of images on certain paedophile image-sharing forums originally came from public family social media accounts.
- "Digital kidnapping" — strangers reposting children's photos as their own — has been documented across Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest since at least 2014, and the practice has scaled with AI-generated "baby roleplay" communities.
AI training on children's photos
- Human Rights Watch found identifiable photos of real children in the LAION-5B open training dataset in 2024 — including from family blogs and Brazilian school yearbooks.
- Meta has publicly confirmed that public Facebook and Instagram posts are used to train its Llama and Meta AI models.
- Once a photo enters a foundation model's training set, it cannot be removed from the deployed model.
Regulatory response
- France (2024): Passed a law explicitly giving children a right to image privacy, allowing courts to restrict parents' posting rights.
- EU GDPR-K: Children under 16 cannot consent to data processing in many member states without parental approval — and arguably, neither can parents consent on their behalf for indefinite public use.
- Illinois "child influencer" law (2024): Requires parents to set aside earnings for children featured in monetised content.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many photos do parents post of their children online?
By the time the average child turns 13, an estimated 1,300 photos and videos of them have been posted online — most of them by their own parents, grandparents, and extended family. By age 18, that number commonly exceeds 70,000 individual data points including photos, captions, locations, and tagged moments.
What percentage of parents post photos of their kids on social media?
Roughly 75% of parents in the US and UK post photos or videos of their children on social media. About 80% of children have some form of online presence before their second birthday, and around 23% of children have a digital footprint before they are born — usually from ultrasound photos.
How young is the average child when their first photo is posted online?
Studies consistently find that the average child has their first photo posted online within the first hour after birth. Approximately one in three has an online presence within their first 24 hours of life.
Do parents ask their children for consent before posting?
No — surveys find that fewer than 25% of parents ask older children for permission before posting. Among parents of children under 5, the rate of asking consent (or considering future consent) drops below 10%.
How much of identity fraud against minors is linked to sharenting?
A widely cited Barclays projection estimated that by 2030, sharenting will be responsible for two-thirds of identity fraud committed against young people, accounting for roughly 7.4 million incidents per year and £670 million in losses annually.
Are kids photos used to train AI?
Yes. Investigations by Human Rights Watch in 2024 found that LAION-5B, one of the largest open AI training datasets, contained identifiable photos of real children scraped from the public web — including from family blogs and social media. Meta has publicly confirmed using public Facebook and Instagram posts to train its AI models.
Sources
Statistics compiled from publicly available research including: AVG "Digital Diaries" surveys; Ofcom Children and Parents Media Use reports; University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll; Barclays UK identity fraud projections; Human Rights Watch LAION-5B investigation (2024); Meta public statements on AI training data; and academic work by Stacey Steinberg (University of Florida Levin College of Law) on the legal dimensions of sharenting.
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