There’s a box of old photos of me next to my desk. A handful are sweet, but mostly I have a face only a mother could love: baleful, bejowled baby; beret-wearing, simpering tween; thunderously embarrassed teenager in terrible glasses. They are safely analogue, but would that easily mortified 14-year-old have liked her GCSE geography class to have had access to a picture of her seven-year-old self doing a headstand wearing only a pair of red hot pants?
I’m wondering because a proposed new French law would enshrine the protection of children’s privacy on social media as a parental duty. If parents disagree about what can be shared online, a judge could prevent them from posting without the other’s consent and, in extreme cases where a child’s dignity is seriously affected, could even appoint a third party (such as another family member or social worker) to act on the child’s behalf in relation to images online.
