Childhood as social media content: the blurring lines between sharing and exploitation

A video showing a child encouraged to drink alcohol sparked outrage on social media, highlighting the growing phenomenon of children's exposure on digital platforms. This includes "prank" videos, viral challenges, scripted family content for views, and influencer accounts where children are central to monetization strategies. Najat Anwar, president of the "Touche pas à mon enfant" association, describes the situation as alarming, stating that children are increasingly used as tools for family monetization, with their daily lives staged, filmed, and sold. She emphasizes that intimate or degrading images of these children circulate online, leaving a permanent digital footprint without their consent, which she considers pure exploitation of their innocence for platforms like TikTok or YouTube. This trend is particularly evident in "family" content where children appear daily, sometimes for hours, as part of a production aimed at retaining subscribers. Anwar states that the line is crossed when a child becomes a product, with their screen presence planned, regular, and generating income or commercial partnerships. She adds that when a family home becomes a studio, and a child works without a contract, protection, or rights, it is no longer family sharing but exploitation, where the child's interest is lost. The association receives increasing reports of accounts where minors are central to monetized content and advocates for legal recognition of these new forms of undeclared work