Alex Trelinski
SPAIN will clamp down on parents who publish images of their children on social media- ignorant of any future consequences for their offspring.
‘Influencer’ parents who use their children to boost traffic to their social media pages and websites like YouTube pages to earn more money via extra ‘clicks’ will come under the new rules.
The Ministry for Youth and Children is drafting a law to protect minors in the digital world to take account of the concept of ‘sharenting’
Minister Sira Riego said: “There are many unprotected children, sometimes because families are not aware of the effect of uploading photos of youngsters to social networks.”
Rego also expressed his concerns about the ‘monetisation of the image of childhood’.
Ana Caballero chaired a government-appointed committee of experts to work out the best ways of protecting children online.
He warned that ‘influencer’ parents are using their offspring as ‘clickbait’.
Caballero stated that studies showed when a minor is used on social networks, up to 42% more likes are obtained.
Some parents work out thatby recording a few seconds of video with their children, they are rewarded with a massive and apparently harmless response from their followers.
The problem is the consequences that this can leave in the life and privacy of a child who at some point will be an adult.
He or she would then have the footage permanently on the internet without the ability to do anything to get it removed.
Meanwhile the FAD Foundation’s Reina Sofía Centre on Adolescence and Youth reveals that more and more teenagers see content creation as a possible career path.
A third of people between the ages of 15 and 29 would like to dedicate themselves to it and one in ten is already trying.
Faced with this increasingly common scenario, there are countries that have begun to set limits, such as Australia, which will block social networks for children under 16 years of age.
France has passed a law to protect child influencers which regulates the hours that children under 16 years can work.
The Labour Ministry in Spain is looking at introducing similar legislation with guarantees and protection for their status as minors in all artistic endeavours, including those online.
