Responsible Kidfluence Code
Guidance for Parents
Social Media Marketing Guidance for Parents
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Creating social media content as a parent, or guiding the social media journey of a child who visible on social media, can be powerful. But as we all know, when children are part of that journey, we have a responsibility to protect them in ways the industry currently doesn’t.
Right now, there are very few clear rules about how children can or should be involved in commercial content online. In many places, there are no legal protections for their time, their earnings, or even their image. Where laws do exist, they’re slow to emerge and often inconsistent. Meanwhile, social media continues to evolve at a rapid pace, and children are growing up in public with little say over how their digital footprint is formed.
We know that for most parent influencers, these decisions are being made alone, on instinct, and with care. But we also know it can be overwhelming, and there’s rarely guidance tailored to this unique experience.
That’s where the Responsible Kidfluence Code comes in.
This project is a collaborative industry effort to create a shared pact, a respectful agreement between parents, agencies, and brands, to prioritise children’s rights and wellbeing in all stages of commercial content creation.
This guidance is designed to support you as a parent who features your child in content - not to criticise, but to offer ideas, tools, and standards that can help protect what matters most.
Together, we can create a healthier, safer, and fairer space for the next generation.
Who This Is For
This guidance is for any parent or guardian whose child appears in commercial content on social media - whether as part of your own channel, or as a creator in their own right.
A parent influencer who occasionally features your children in family lifestyle content
A content creator who collaborates with brands using your child’s image or presence
The parent or guardian of a child creator, managing their account, partnerships, or content calendar
Our Four Pillars of Protection
This guidance is built around four essential areas of care and responsibility when featuring children in content:
Mental & Physical Wellbeing
Is your child emotionally supported, rested, and genuinely happy to be involved in the content you’re creating? Are they being treated as a child first, and not a performer?
Privacy
Does your child understand what it means to be online, and do you have boundaries in place to limit what’s shared about their identity, routine, and environment?
Financial Wellbeing
If your child is contributing to commercial success, are they benefitting in a fair and future-focused way? Are there clear protections in place for their earnings?
Safety
Are you confident that your child is physically, emotionally, and digitally safe across every brand partnership or piece of content they’re involved in?
Mental and Physical Wellbeing
Mental and Physical Wellbeing
🧠
🧠
Children are not small adults, and being part of content creation can affect their mental and physical development in ways that may not be immediately visible. Even when they seem excited to be involved, it’s essential to create boundaries that protect their energy, emotions, and sense of agency.
This pillar is all about preserving their childhood first, and recognising that content creation should never feel like a job, an obligation, or a source of stress.
61% of industry professionals rely entirely on parents to manage their child’s wellbeing during at-home content creation, with no additional guidance provided.
62% of parent influencers do not involve their children in decisions about participating in content creation.
Only 21% regularly check in with parents to verify that the child's mental and physical wellbeing is prioritised.
source: a survey of 25 brand and agency professional marketers, Q1 2025, influencermarketingresearch.com
Only 33% of parents consistently monitor their child's emotional and physical health throughout the content creation process.
Just 8% offer proactive guidelines to ensure content doesn’t disrupt the child’s routine
36% of parents explicitly worry about how their child will manage ongoing public attention and pressure as they grow older.
source: a survey of 100 parenting influencers, Q1 2025, influencermarketingresearch.com
This shows a clear need: parents absolutely want to do the right thing, but they’re not always given the tools, space, or support to do it consistently.
🧠 Mental & Physical Wellbeing: Our Guidance
Here are some things you could consider when involving your child in content creation, to ensure their emotional and physical wellbeing is protected every step of the way.
💬 Let them lead
Ask your child: “Do you feel like filming today?” Give them permission to say no, and honour that choice without pressure.
If they seem tired, distracted or uninterested, that’s your sign to take a break or stop entirely.
Try This:
Create a visual schedule to let your child know when content is happening, and when it’s completely their time.
⏱ Keep it light and short
Limit filming sessions to short, manageable windows, for example, under 30 minutes, and build in regular breaks.
Avoid complex setups or long days that feel like work. Keep things flexible and spontaneous wherever possible.
Try This:
Set a ‘soft cap’ on content creation time, for example, no more than 20–30 minutes per week.
🎭 No acting required
Don’t expect your child to perform, repeat takes, or deliver scripted lines unless it’s something they truly enjoy.
Natural, playful moments often perform better, and are far more comfortable for kids.
🌈 Focus on play, not pressure
Frame content creation as a fun activity you do together, not something they’re responsible for.
If brand requirements are too rigid or intense, it’s okay to push back or adjust the brief.
🧭 Stay tuned in
Check in after each content day: Did they enjoy it? Do they want to do it again? This builds trust and allows you to spot patterns or discomfort early.
Keep a loose log of how they respond over time, it helps you make longer-term decisions around what works best.
Try This:
Keep a wellbeing journal to note how your child felt about each piece of content you made together. It could help to build awareness over time.
📚 School, rest and free time come first
Protect time for education, hobbies and unstructured play. Content should never interfere with your child’s developmental needs or social life.
🗣️ Consider the impact of comments - online and offline
Even if your child isn’t reading the comments on your posts, those words still exist, and they may find them one day. Children can be highly sensitive to how they are seen by others, especially as they grow older.
Ask yourself:
“How might my child feel if they read this when they’re 12? Or 18?”
Think about how their friends, teachers, or classmates might interpret the content, especially as children begin navigating social circles and school life.
Be mindful that content seen as funny, silly, or harmless now may be used against them later - intentionally or not.
“Our survey results showed that over 75% of parent influencers are concerned their child may one day regret being in the public eye without understanding the implications.”
Financial Wellbeing
Financial Wellbeing
💸
💸
Money can feel like a delicate subject, but when your child is helping to generate income, it’s important to handle it with clarity, fairness, and care.
If your child is featured in branded content, or if a campaign performs well because of their presence, they deserve to benefit from that contribution in a way that’s secure and future-focused. Protecting their earnings now shows respect for their involvement and helps them develop a positive relationship with money as they grow up.
Currently, the financial side of content creation involving children is rarely formalised, and the data highlights this:
56% of industry professionals say all payments go directly to the parent or guardian, with no child-specific protections in place.
52% maintain a dedicated savings account for their child’s earnings from content creation.
None of the industry professionals that we surveyed require proof that a portion of income is set aside for the child.
source: a survey of 25 brand and agency professional marketers, Q1 2025, influencermarketingresearch.com
14% use the earnings for family expenses or reinvest them into future content, rather than setting them aside specifically for the child.
source: a survey of 100 parenting influencers, Q1 2025, influencermarketingresearch.com
This inconsistency means some children are building significant brand value - without guaranteed access to the income they helped create. By introducing even simple structures, families can protect that value and model financial respect.
⚖️ What Are the Laws on Child Influencer Earnings?
Right now, there is no global standard protecting children’s earnings from social media content. In most countries, earnings go directly to the parent or guardian, with no legal requirement to save or protect a portion for the child.
Historically, the closest thing we can understand is the Coogan Law, which was designed to protect the earnings of child performers during the Golden Age of Hollywood - famously after child actor Jackie Coogan discovered his parents had spent nearly all of the millions he had earned.
The law, passed in California in 1939, required that 15% of a child performer’s earnings be placed into a trust, inaccessible until they turned 18. It also introduced regulations around education, work hours, and parental responsibilities. While it was groundbreaking at the time, the Coogan Law was designed for the film and television industries, and hasn’t yet been properly adapted for digital platforms or social media content, where work is often unlicensed, unpaid, or informally arranged at home.
🌍 Current Child Influencer Laws around the World
🇺🇸 United States
Only one state - Illinois - currently has a specific law protecting child influencer earnings.
The Illinois law (2023) guarantees children under 16 receive at least 30% of earnings from monetised content that uses their likeness, name, or image.
🇫🇷 France
Passed a law in 2020 requiring:
15% of income from child influencers (under 16) to be held in a protected account.
Platforms and parents to seek permission from local authorities before monetising content featuring minors.
Content to be removed if requested by the child later in life.
🇨🇦 Canada, 🇦🇺 Australia, 🇳🇿 New Zealand
No specific influencer legislation, though some provinces (e.g. Quebec) apply entertainment industry child labour laws.
Legal grey area for user-generated online content involving kids.
Charlie Chaplin (centre) and Jackie Coogan (bottom) in The Kid (1921).
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
No specific legislation yet for children featured in social media content.
Child performance laws require licensing for acting/modelling, but don’t clearly extend to online commercial content filmed at home.
Guidance exists via child labour laws, but loopholes are common, especially in influencer marketing.
💸 Financial Wellbeing: Our Guidance
Here are some things you could consider when involving your child in content creation, to ensure their emotional and physical wellbeing is protected every step of the way.
⚖️ Set a dedicated amount of earnings aside
Laws to protect the earnings of children in this space are limited, but growing.
Even if you’re not legally required to do so, setting aside at minimum of 30% of campaign income is a great ethical benchmark.
You should consider setting a higher percentage aside depending on how heavily the child features in the content.
You could also consider negotiating the child’s appearance fee separately from your own.
You could consider facilitating the brand’s payment of your child’s proportion of the fee directly into a bank account that is in the child’s own name, enhancing transparency for both the brand and the child.
🏦 Set up a dedicated financial space
Create a child-specific savings account to hold a portion of the income from any campaigns where your child appears.
If income is regular or significant, consider a Junior ISA, trust fund, or similar vehicle for longer-term planning.
✍️ Keeping a record
Keep a simple record of which pieces of content involved your child and what income was associated with them.
Even a spreadsheet or notebook can help track their involvement and ensure transparency.
💬 Communicate with brands
If a brand campaign relies heavily on your child’s presence, don’t be afraid to discuss additional compensation or ask for separate talent usage terms for content that features just adults, compared to the content that features your child.
You can also request separate contracts for each person featuring in the content, ensuring that the contract terms for the child are stricter than those for the adults.
🤝 Plan for the future
Share age-appropriate conversations with your child about what the money is for - whether it’s for education, savings, hobbies, or goals.
Let them see that their participation is valued, and that their future is part of your planning.
Privacy 🔐
Privacy 🔐
Children can’t truly understand what it means to have a digital presence - especially one that’s commercial, permanent, and public. That’s why parents play a crucial role in acting as a gatekeeper for their child’s visibility online.
Even if the content feels light-hearted or innocent, once it’s posted, it can be copied, shared, downloaded, or archived - sometimes in ways that are completely out of your control.
We understand that protecting your child’s privacy can’t always mean hiding them entirely. So instead it means making intentional, informed choices about what you share, how it’s shared, and who sees it.
48% of parents actively limit the personal details they share about their children, such as age, specific location, and school details.
29% regularly blur or obscure their children's faces in publicly shared content.
43% consciously avoid sharing local landmarks or other identifiable location information.
56% of brands and agencies say they have no formal privacy guidelines, and simply trust the parent to manage it themselves.
Just 19% of parents opt for pseudonyms or alternative names for their children online, further reducing the risk of identifiable tracking or misuse.
source: a survey of 25 brand and agency professional marketersm a survey of 100 parenting influencers, Q1 2025, influencermarketingresearch.com
🔐 Privacy: Our Guidance
Here are some steps you can take to protect your child’s identity and dignity, both now and in the future.
🕵️♀️ Limit identifiable content
Avoid showing school logos, uniforms, daily routines, or home locations.
Think twice before sharing birthdates, names, ages, or any consistent patterns that can build a full profile of a child over time.
👥 Control visibility
Consider posting child-related content to stories only, which are less permanent forms of post.
Avoid overexposure: Even if posts feel light or casual, frequent or routine sharing of a child can build a complete picture over time. Try to space out how often your child appears, and reflect on whether it’s becoming a default habit.
🪞Think like a future version of your child
Would your child be embarrassed by this later? Could it be used against them at school, online, or in social settings?
If in doubt, save it to the camera roll and reflect - not everything needs to be posted in real time.
🎭 Use creative alternatives
Try over-the-shoulder shots, backs of heads, or blurred faces.
Use nicknames, emojis, or pseudonyms to add warmth while maintaining distance.
Let your child "approve" images if they’re old enough, or involve them in choosing what goes up.
🧑⚖️ Understand consent
A child cannot give informed consent to being within social media content. Whilst they may find the process fun in the moment, they aren’t truly old enough to know the long term impacts of being on social media.
This means that as parents, you are the only one who can decide what is respectful and safe to share.
What feels comfortable today may not be acceptable tomorrow, and your child should always have the option to opt-out or have content removed in the future.
Safety
Safety
🛡️
🛡️
Keeping your child safe isn’t just about preventing physical danger - it’s also about protecting them from emotional harm, content misuse, online risks, and inappropriate attention. When your child is part of commercial or public-facing content, their image travels much further than it might seem, and you may not always know where or how it ends up.
Safety in this context is about thinking ahead: Who might see this? How might it be misused? What could this open the door to? This doesn't need to mean being afraid, but you should be proactive and protective.
56% of industry professionals do not have formal guidelines in place to ensure child’s safety
source: a survey of 25 brand and agency professional marketers, Q1 2025, influencermarketingresearch.com
🛡️ Safety: Our Guidance
Here are some proactive ways to protect your child’s safety before, during, and after content creation.
🧩 Understand the risks
Even innocent-looking content can be screenshotted, downloaded, edited, or used in harmful ways. Once something is online, it’s online for good. Even story posts can be saved and downloaded.
Public-facing posts can also open children up to attention from strangers, or make them a focus in their social environments offline (e.g. school).
✋ Set your own safety standards
Establish your non-negotiables before entering a partnership - for example, no bedtime routines, school-related visuals, or emotionally vulnerable moments.
Politely push back on creative briefs that feel too intrusive, overly demanding, or inconsistent with your child’s comfort level.
Remember: you are the expert in your child’s wellbeing. If something doesn’t feel right - even if it’s subtle - you are allowed to say no or ask for adjustments.
Not every campaign needs to include your child. If you feel unsure, consider reframing the content or excluding them altogether.
🔒 Use protective tech
Use platform settings to limit who can see, save, or share your content (e.g. disabling duets or stitches on TikTok, disabling downloads on Reels).
Consider adding watermarks or subtle branding overlays to discourage reuse or misappropriation.
Use tools like Google Reverse Image Search or social monitoring platforms to spot unauthorised reposts of your content.
📝 Make it official
For high-value or recurring brand partnerships, ask for contracts that:
Acknowledge your child is featured
Clarify usage rights and how long content can be live
Confirm no unauthorised edits or repurposing will occur
If your child is a creator in their own right, safeguard their business interests as well as their personal safety.
🧠 Emotional safety matters too
Avoid filming when your child is upset, sick, or vulnerable, especially for branded content.
Never share tantrums, punishments, or emotionally sensitive moments. These can go viral in ways you can’t control, and can cause distress now and later.
This guidance is just the beginning. You don’t have to do everything at once, but small, intentional changes in how we share, collaborate, and advocate can make a huge difference.
Here’s how you can take this work forward:
📢 Use your influence
You’re not just a parent, you’re a professional with a platform. Use your voice to encourage brands and agencies to follow these standards too.
If something doesn’t feel right in a brief, speak up. Ask questions. Suggest improvements. You might be the reason that brand thinks differently next time.
🤝 Stay part of the movement
If you’d like to stay involved with the Code as we develop industry guidance, resources, or procurement standards, we’d love to hear from you.
Join our contact list or share your experiences: we’re building this together, and your insight matters.
✨ Start where you are
Pick one or two pillars - wellbeing, finances, privacy, or safety - and make a small change that feels achievable for your next post or partnership.
📒 Create your own family guidelines
Use the checklists to write down your boundaries and values as a content-creating family. Share them with your child if they’re old enough, and revisit them as things evolve.
Next Steps
Take our Free Self Assessment
We’ve created a simple Content Care Survey designed for brands and agencies working with creators who feature children in commercial content.
Use it to stay grounded in your values, brief responsibly, and embed child-first thinking into your campaign planning, approvals, and partnerships.
Creating content as a parent can be incredibly, but when our children are involved, the stakes shift. Their presence in our platforms carries real-world consequences: financial, emotional, social, and digital. And right now, there’s no consistent safety net to protect them.
That’s why we created the Responsible Kidfluence Code: not as a rulebook, but as a support system. We intend for this guidance to be a way for parents, agencies, and brands to come together and raise the standard, together.
The Responsible Kidfluence Code is here to give you the language, tools, and confidence to protect your child in a space that was never really built for them, and to model what good influence looks like for the rest of the industry.
Thank you for doing the hard, thoughtful work. Your voice matters.
And your child’s future is worth protecting.
Get In Touch
Get In Touch
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