Last May, it was 10 years since the video of two British children went around the world. An everyday scene: a pair of brothers - the oldest three years old and the youngest one - sitting in an armchair. Then, the minor takes his brother's hand, bites him, and he releases the phrase that makes the public fall in love: "Charlie bit me" (Charlie has bitten me).

This simple sequence managed -probably due to that tenderness and naturalness characteristic of children- to become one of the first viral phenomena on social networks and -with more than 850 million views- it is one of the most viewed videos in the history of YouTube .

The private life of the child belongs to the child, not to his parents”

This happened at a time when social networks did not have –not even close- the scope they have today: the video platform was only two years old, Facebook one and Instagram was still three years away from being born.

In just a decade the number of social media users has grown overwhelmingly into the billions, and all of them can access this video and many other images of minors found on the Internet.

Beyond the debate about "where do these photos go" and the obvious danger that this poses, there is another question that we adults rarely ask ourselves, probably because we do not share these photos with any malicious intent. Without realizing it, we are violating your right to privacy.

A right, which also in the case of children, is protected by different regulations both nationally and internationally, and that parents and States (ultimately) must respect and – above all – protect. The privacy of Spanish children is defended by the Law on Rights and Opportunities for Children and Adolescents of Catalonia, the Spanish Law on the Protection of Minors, the Data Protection Regulation of the European Union and the Convention on the Rights of Children.

Year One have been doing their D&T food unit today and been learning how to prepare fresh fruit and vegetables, gra… https://t.co/3oVmaPB8G3

— Y1 Devonshire Road Primary School Wed Jun 30 15:57:00 +0000 2021

Young people are increasingly aware of the rights they have”

"The private life of the child is his, not his parents'," says child psychologist Silvia Álava. “It may seem very funny to us, but it may not be to the child,” she adds. “You have to think about whether the child will like to appear dressed as an Indian on social networks”, adds the president of the section for children and adolescents of the Col·legi D'Advocacia de Barcelona (ICAB), Javier Puigdollers.

Although, as the psychologist indicates, "children are not yet old enough for us to see the consequences", there have already been a couple of cases in which children denounce their parents for violating their right to privacy.

Complaints of children against parents

An example of this is an 18-year-old girl in Carinthia (Austria), who in 2016 sued her parents for sharing more than 500 photos of her on Facebook without her consent. That same year, a 13-year-old Canadian boy, Darren Randall, also filed a lawsuit against his parents for posting photos that, in his opinion, "ruin his reputation."

Although for now only these two cases have emerged worldwide, the immense number of photos of babies posted daily on social networks multiplies the chances that the number of cases will be much higher in the future. "Young people are increasingly aware of the rights they have," says the president of the family law section of the Madrid Bar Association, Isabel Winkels. And also of the mechanisms that exist to protect themselves.

An overexposure of the minor to social networks could be considered a lack of protection on the part of the parents”

In France, for example, the State can sanction parents who share photos of their children on social networks with fines of up to 45,000 euros or one year in prison. In Spain, for now, this does not happen. In fact, Winkels explains that "if both parents agree, they can post the photos on their social networks."

“Paternal authority grants parents the duty and responsibility to protect the image of their minor children and -according to the Supreme Court- the agreement of both parents will be necessary to be able to publish images of the common child on social networks, but parents must avoid, in the interest of the minor, an overexposure of their child in these areas”. Something that ratifies the Civil Sentence 360/2017 of the Provincial Court of Barcelona.

If there is an overexposure, it could be considered that the parents are not fulfilling their obligation to protect the child. In these cases, it is the duty of any member of society (person or institution) to communicate this lack of protection or abandonment to the competent entities, indicates Organic Law 1/1996, of January 15, on the Legal Protection of Minors and ratified by Puigdollers: “If someone has knowledge, they have the obligation to report it.”

Minors also have different ways to report it personally in case they do not agree with the behavior of their parents and if they have not managed to remove their photos from the networks.

An issue more related to education than to the laws”

"You can file a complaint with the Juvenile Prosecutor's Office or the police court," explains Puigdollers, adding that they can also contact social services or the child care telephone line.

Beyond the legal issues, the president of the ICAB considers that it is a problem more related to education than to the law. "We must try to educate to make use of the networks with respect," says the coordinator of the pedagogy seminar of the Professional College of Education, Pedro Santamaría.

Basically, Santamaría indicates, it is about “paying attention to logic and reason. There is a right of the minor that should not be stepped on. The educator appeals to the parents' sense of responsibility and points out that if they are still going to upload the photos to the networks, they should do so "in private and safe places".

“They are your children, but they are an independent part of you. They have their own life and their own rights”, concludes the psychologist.

They are your children, but they are an independent part of you.