There are two factions of parents on TikTok: those who crack eggs over their kids’ heads for laughs, and those who obsessively make sure the internet doesn’t know anything about their kids.

In 2020, a TikTok star who posts under the name Kodye Elyse had a bad experience online. A video in which his little daughter danced attracted millions of views… and salacious comments from shady internet users. Since then, she no longer includes her three children in her publications.

(Kodye Elyse asked that her name not be published because she and her children have already been doxxed, meaning their personal information was leaked.)

“The internet is kind of like the Truman Show,” said Kodye Elyse, 35, who has 4 million followers on TikTok and posts about her work as a tattoo artist and her experience as a single mother. “You never know who’s watching. »

After this mishap, she removed photos of her children from the internet. She traced all of his online accounts – Facebook, Pinterest, etc. – and deleted them or made them private. She has since joined the TikTok faction that urges other parents to never post images of their children.

But in September, she discovered that her troubles were not over. Kodye Elyse used PimEyes, a disturbing search engine that finds photos of a person on the internet using facial recognition. She uploaded a photo of her 7-year-old son: the results included an image of him she had never seen. To see where she was coming from, she had to subscribe for $29.99.

Her ex-husband took their son to a soccer match, and they were seen in the background of a photo published by a sports media outlet, sitting behind the goal. She was unable to get the photo removed from the online media site, but she filled out a form asking PimEyes to remove her son’s image in case someone else searched his face. She also found a photo of her daughter, now 9, used to promote a summer camp she had attended. At his request, the camp removed the photo.

“Everyone should check this out,” she said. This is a good way to ensure that no one takes your children’s photos. »

Whether or not to post photos of your children is a hotly debated topic online. In the United States, we call it sharenting, a portmanteau that could be translated as parenting.

At first, parents who share too much online were criticized for putting their children’s privacy at risk. But artificial intelligence (AI) offers bad actors new ways to hijack children’s online content.

Let’s just name the hyper-fake (deepfake) scams imitating children’s voices and the possibility of a stranger finding the name and address of a child from a search on their photo.

Jennifer DeStefano, who lives in Arizona, recently received a call from a man claiming to have kidnapped her 15-year-old daughter. “I answered the phone and said ‘Hello’; On the other end of the line, I heard our daughter Briana, sobbing, saying, ‘Mommy,'” she said last summer in testimony before Congress.

Ms. DeStefano was going to pay $50,000 to the kidnappers when she discovered her daughter was in her room, “safely in her bed.”

Obscure photos and videos online can be found using facial recognition, which has recently become more powerful and more precise. Photos taken at school, daycare, a birthday party, or a playground may appear in a search. (The school and daycare are required to ask your permission; feel free to refuse.)

“When the child is small, the parent has more control over their image,” says data privacy consultant Debbie Reynolds. “But kids grow up. They have friends. They go to parties. There are school photos. »

Debbie Reynolds recommends that parents search their children’s faces on PimEyes or FaceCheck.ID. If they don’t like what comes out, they can ask the sites that posted the photos to remove them, she says. (Some say yes, but others, like the media, refuse.)

In a 2020 Pew Research poll, more than 80% of parents reported putting photos and videos of their children on social media, along with news. Experts say it’s unclear how many parents share these images only on private, not public, accounts, but private sharing is increasingly common.

Mimi Ito, a cultural anthropologist and director of the Connected Learning Lab at the University of California, Irvine, said facial recognition technology is making it more difficult to share otherwise enjoyable photos of children online.

“People are realizing that with AI, we don’t control all the data we throw into the social media ecosystem,” she says.

Lucy and Mike Fitzgerald, professional dancers from St. Louis, are very active on social media for advertising purposes. They don’t post photos of their daughters, ages 5 and 3, and have asked their parents and friends to do the same. They fear that photos will be used for malicious purposes. Their daughters will create and control their own online footprints, in due time, they say.

“The fact that you can steal someone’s photo with a few clicks and do whatever you want with it is worrying,” says Lucy Fitzgerald. I understand that we want to publish photos of our children, but ultimately, we don’t want to put them at risk of unintended consequences. »

Ms. Fitzgerald and her husband are not experts “on the lookout for new technologies,” but they “had a feeling” a few years ago that there would be “unpredictable capabilities that will ultimately pose challenges problems to our children.”

The parents best able to discern what’s on the technological horizon hide their children’s faces on social media. Examples ? Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency employee turned whistleblower, and Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook. On Instagram, Mark Zuckerberg put a big emoji on the heads of his oldest children. Edward Snowden and his wife, Lindsay Mills, placed one of their two sons behind a balloon to hide his face.

“I want my children to have the choice to reveal themselves to the world, however they want, when they are ready,” Lindsay Mills said.

A spokesperson for Mark Zuckerberg declined to explain why his baby’s face was visible and whether it was because facial recognition doesn’t work very well on young children.

Many experts say teens manage their digital identities thoughtfully, often using pseudonyms to prevent parents, teachers and potential employers from finding their accounts. But if an image of their face is on that account, it might be possible to link it to them using a face search engine.

She suggests that parents involve their children from the age of 4 in the decision to post and explain to them what can and cannot be shared.

Amy Webb, CEO of the Future Today Institute, a technology consultancy, pledged in a Slate article 10 years ago not to post photos or personal information about her baby online. (Some readers found a family photo that Ms. Webb had inadvertently posted, showing the difficulty of keeping a child off the web.) Her daughter, now a teenager, says she enjoys being an “online ghost”; she thinks it will help her professionally.

Future employers “will literally find nothing about me, I have no platform,” she says. This will help me succeed in life. »

Arielle Geismar, 22, a student at the University of Washington who advocates for digital safety, calls it a “privilege to grow up without a digital identity created for you.”

“Children are the guinea pigs of technology,” she says. It is our responsibility to take care of them. »

This article was published in the New York Times.