Family influencers, almost 80% of children posted on social media are between 0 and 5 years old

Protect minors by educating parents first. This is the only way we can imagine governing the phenomenon of the family influencers, those parents who involve their underage children in commercial activities on social networks, often neglecting, mainly due to a lack of awareness, the risks and damage to which their children are exposed by publishing images and videos from birth.

It sounds, in fact, like a call to responsibility on the part of parents and to action on the part of politics the research 'Aware protagonists? La tutela dei minorenni nell'era dei family influencer", presented yesterday, in Milan, and conducted by Terre des Hommes Italia with Istituto dell'autodisciplina pubblicitaria, Almed - Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, lawyer Marisa Marraffino, expert in digital media law, and technical partner Not Just Analytics.

Of 20 family influencer profiles and 1,334 pieces of social content analysed, it emerges that children appear in one in two organic pieces of content and in one in four sponsored pieces. In about one third of the advertising content, children are an active part of the advertising. In most cases, no forms of privacy protection are adopted, such as back shots, pixellated images or the addition of emoticons on the face. "In 29% of the contents there are potentially problematic situations with respect to privacy: in 21% of the cases intimate moments are shown; in 6% the minor is involved in trends or challenges," explained Elisabetta Locatelli, researcher in Sociology of Cultural and Communicative Processes at the Cattolica University. The most exposed children turn out to be those aged between 0 and 5 (almost 80%).

The most used social network is Instagram (91%), the preferred format is that of stories (83%), the shooting locations are divided between outdoor (53%), indoor common space (29%), indoor intimate space (10%). Two elements are particularly interesting: only in 12% of the cases the involvement of children on a commercial level is linked to the promotion of children's products; organic content has a higher interaction rate not only because people are inclined to avoid advertising, but also because they identify with the emotional and aspirational message conveyed.

Informed consent is complex to implement because even when they realise that they are being registered (36% of cases), minors do not know what consequences their exposure on social networks will lead to (risks of adultisation and sexualisation), 'not to mention the difficulty of relating to a parent who also becomes an employer', recalled Federica Giannotta, Head of Advocacy and Programmes Italy at Terre des Hommes.