Famous at five: risk assessing digital child labour

Commercialised representations of children and babies have been normalised as content on social media platforms in the same way as child models and actors have in traditional media. This paper explores the impact of this workload on children in practice, evidencing a range of potential risks of harm which are not currently provided for in policy or practice. This paper synthesises approaches to parental digital sharing (sharenting) alongside child labour considerations in order to analyse this legal lacuna, which is not constituted within any privacy, child labour, or child online safety laws within the UK. It proposes that pre-existing legal frameworks cannot effectively address these risks, which extend beyond issues surrounding data protection and financial security, and include impacts on children’s identity, dignity, and psychological development. This paper suggests alternative contemporary approaches to policy and practice, which could provide new and enhanced safeguarding processes for children working in digital spaces.