Today, 20 November, marks the International Day of the Convention on the Rights of the Children.
Nuno Cerejeira Namora, Managing Partner of Cerejeira Namora, Marinho Falcão, writes an opinion article for the newspaper Jornal de Notícias, where he reflects on the presence of children's image in the digital environment, namely in the sharing of photos and videos on social networks by their parents, and alerts to the following: "can parents have the right to the image of their children?"
We diagnose, nowadays, a real compulsion in society to share their private life on the internet, either by publishing photos or videos on social media, or by sharing personal information in forums, exceeding well beyond reasonable the need for acceptance and the exacerbation of personal egos. For many, there is a new maxim: "what is not on the internet is not in the world".
In this metric of constant sharing and likes, if, on the one hand, the dissemination of information about children, a phenomenon known as sharenting - constant publication by parents of photographs of their children - can become attractive, given the general acceptance of this type of digital content; on the other hand, takes on special contours when confronted with all the dangers of cyberspace, since while the publication of children's photographs is just a click away and is garnered with countless likes and reactions, these can become a real weapon for sexual predators, putting children's safety and privacy at risk. Despite these problems being constantly underestimated, there is no doubt that incidents, frauds and crimes, namely morphing - a term related to the practice of copying photographs taken from the Internet and editing with photos of a pornographic nature - have increased exponentially, which fully reflects how the safety barriers of children, as especially vulnerable beings, have been broken down.
The advances in the digital world and the consequent changes in the family environment have also brought new challenges to the exercise of parental responsibilities. When the International Day of Children's Rights is being celebrated, the question must therefore be asked: can parents have the right to the image of their children?
The answer is not linear, requiring a case-by-case reflection: on the one hand, the rights of children, and, on the other hand, the obligations of parents, which must always be guided by the best interests of the child. In Portugal, the Court of Appeal of Évora has already ruled on this issue, determining that the imposition on parents of the duty to refrain from disclosing photographs or information that identify the daughter in the Social networking is suitable for safeguarding the right to privacy and protection of the safety of children’s.
Thus, recognizing that it is not easy to know the best criteria for parents approaches regarding the internet and assuming that they do not have a real right to disclose photographs and information about their children, sharing this kind of content by parents should always be carefully considered and limited, as far as possible, to restricted groups, in order to minimize the real dangers of the digital world. If it is true that parents have a duty to protect their children, even more certain is that they have a duty to guarantee and respect their rights, namely those relating to privacy and personal data protection. To sum up, considering the interests and rights in conflict, the best interests of the child must always prevail, even when this determines a substantial reduction in likes and reactions on social media.