How to Protect Your Child’s Online Reputation

To protect your child’s online reputation, post less about them and more carefully, lock down privacy settings and location data, and teach them early that what goes online can be copied and kept. If something harmful appears, report it to the platform, involve the school if classmates are involved, and use removal tools built for minors, such as Google’s request process for images of under-18s and NCMEC’s Take It Down for explicit images.

A child’s online reputation starts long before they have an account. Much of it is built by the adults around them, through sharenting: parents (and grandparents, schools and clubs) sharing a child’s photos, milestones and stories online. That’s not a reason for guilt; it’s a reason for a few habits that make a real difference later, when a college, an employer or a new friend searches their name.

Why your child’s online reputation matters now

Children can’t consent to what’s posted about them, and they can’t yet judge what they’ll want public at 16 or 25. A bath-time photo, a detailed post about a diagnosis, or a video of a tantrum can feel harmless to share with friends. Once online, it can be screenshotted, reshared, indexed by search engines and found years later.

Older kids and teens add their own posts to the mix. Most of what they share is ordinary. The risk sits in a small number of moments: a joke that reads badly out of context, a group chat screenshot, or something posted by someone else. You can’t prevent every one of those, but you can reduce how much is out there and how easy it is to connect to your child’s full name.

Think before you post: a sharenting checklist

Sharing isn’t wrong, and good child online reputation habits don’t mean never posting. A quick check before each post keeps it to things your child is unlikely to mind later.

• Would they be embarrassed by this at 15? Skip bath photos, potty training, meltdowns and punishments.
• Does it reveal health, behavior or school struggles? Keep diagnoses, therapy and discipline details to private groups or conversations.
• Does it show where they are? School logos, uniforms, street signs, your house number and car plates can all pinpoint a child.
• Does it use their full name? A first name or nickname is harder to connect to a future search for their full name.
• Who can see it? A post shared with close family is very different from a public one.
• Once they’re old enough, did you ask them? From around school age, asking “can I share this?” teaches consent and gives them a say.

Privacy settings that make a difference

1. Make your own accounts private or use close-friends lists. Most photos of young children are posted by parents, grandparents and family friends, not the children themselves.
2. Ask family to follow the same rules. A short, friendly note to grandparents and godparents (“we’re keeping the kids’ photos private, please don’t post them publicly”) avoids awkward conversations later.
3. Review photo tags. Turn on tag review where the platform offers it, so you approve anything that links your account or your child’s name to a photo.
4. Set up teen accounts with the platform’s own controls. Most major platforms have teen account settings and parent supervision tools. Go through them together rather than setting them silently.
5. Search your child’s name occasionally. A quick search in a private browser window shows what a stranger would find. Our guide on cleaning up your digital footprint covers what to look for.

School photos, location data and sports sites

Plenty of what’s online about children isn’t posted by their parents at all. Schools, sports clubs, summer camps and local news all publish photos and names.

• Photo consent forms. Schools and clubs usually ask for permission to publish photos. Read the form and choose the level you’re comfortable with, such as photos without names.
• Team rosters and results. Youth sports sites often publish full names, ages and team photos. Ask the organizer whether first names or initials can be used.
• Location data in photos. Depending on phone settings, photos can carry the location where they were taken. Some platforms strip this data when you upload, but files shared directly may keep it. Turn off location tagging for the camera if you often share photos by message or email.
• Live location sharing. Posting “at the park now” with a recognizable place tells strangers where your child is in real time. Post after you’ve left, if at all.

Teaching kids and teens about permanence

Rules work better when kids understand the reason behind them. Short, repeated conversations beat one big lecture.

• “Disappearing” doesn’t mean gone. Anything shown on a screen can be screenshotted or recorded, including messages on apps that promise to delete them.
• Private isn’t permanent. A private account protects posts from strangers, not from friends who fall out, share, or show someone else.
• The grandma test. If they wouldn’t want a grandparent, teacher or future coach to see it, they shouldn’t post it.
• Never share images under pressure. Explain that anyone asking for intimate photos is doing something wrong, and that your child can always come to you without getting in trouble.
• Build a positive footprint. For teens, a portfolio of art, sports, volunteering or projects gives a future search something good to find.

For older teens applying to college, our guide to social media and college admissions goes into what admissions offices may see and how to prepare.

What to do if something harmful is posted

If a photo, video or post about your child is causing harm, act quickly and calmly. Your child needs to know you’re on their side before anything else.

1. Save evidence. Take screenshots showing the content, the account name, the date and the URL. Don’t reshare it.
2. Report it to the platform. Every major platform has reporting routes for bullying, harassment and content involving minors. Content about minors is often handled with more urgency.
3. Talk to the school if classmates are involved. Many schools have policies on bullying that happens online, especially when it affects students at school.
4. Ask Google to remove images of your child. Google accepts requests to remove images of people under 18 from its search results, from the young person or their parent or guardian. There are exceptions for cases of compelling public interest or newsworthiness. This removes the image from Google Search, not from the website hosting it, so pair it with a report to that site.
5. Use Take It Down for explicit images. If a nude, partially nude or sexually explicit image or video of someone under 18 is involved, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) runs Take It Down, a free service. It creates a digital fingerprint (a hash) of the image on your device, without uploading the image itself, and participating platforms use that fingerprint to find and remove copies. It doesn’t reach encrypted services or sites that don’t participate. Our guide on removing intimate images shared without consent covers the other routes.
6. Contact the police for threats, sextortion or explicit images of minors. These can be crimes, and NCMEC’s CyberTipline also takes reports.

If the problem is ongoing targeting of your child by a person or group, our guide on what to do about online harassment explains how to document it and escalate.

COPPA basics for parents

The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) is a US federal law enforced by the FTC. In general terms, it requires websites, apps and online services directed at children under 13, or that knowingly collect personal information from children under 13, to get verifiable parental consent before collecting that information. Parents also have the right to review and ask for deletion of their child’s data. The FTC updated the COPPA Rule in 2025, including requiring separate parental consent before a covered service shares children’s data with third parties for purposes such as targeted advertising.

COPPA is why many platforms set a minimum age of 13. It doesn’t cover what parents or other people post about a child, and it doesn’t apply the same protections to teens aged 13 to 17. That makes your own posting habits, and your teen’s, the main line of defense.

A worked example

This is an illustrative scenario, not a real family.

Keisha’s 14-year-old son, Jordan, comes home upset. A classmate has posted a video of him falling during gym class, with a mocking caption and his full name, to a public account. Other students are commenting.

• Keisha screenshots the post, the account name, the comments and the date, and tells Jordan he’s not in trouble.
• She reports the video to the platform as bullying of a minor, and asks Jordan to report it from his account too.
• She emails the school counselor with the screenshots, since the video was filmed at school and shared among classmates.
• The platform removes the video a few days later. Keisha searches Jordan’s name in a private window and finds a still from the video on a repost page, so she submits Google’s request for images of minors and reports the repost to that site.
• Afterward they review Jordan’s privacy settings together and talk about who can see his own posts.

Outcomes vary by platform and situation, but documenting early, reporting through every route and keeping Jordan involved gave the best chance of containing it.

When to get help

Most of what’s in this guide is best done by parents themselves. Outside help makes sense when harmful content keeps resurfacing across many sites, when search results for your child’s name are dominated by something damaging, or when a family member is in the public eye and your children’s details are exposed. Our personal reputation management service can help with removals, monitoring and search results, and we’ll be honest about what can and can’t be taken down.

Frequently asked questions

Can I get photos of my child removed from Google?

Often, yes. Google accepts requests from people under 18, or their parent or guardian, to remove images of them from search results, except where there is compelling public interest or newsworthiness. The image stays on the original website unless that site removes it too.

What is sharenting?

Sharenting is parents sharing photos, videos and stories about their children online. It isn’t harmful in itself, but oversharing can create a permanent record your child didn’t choose and may not want later.

What should I do if an explicit image of my teen is shared?

Don’t share or forward it. Use NCMEC’s Take It Down service to create a hash so participating platforms can find and remove copies, report it to the platform and to NCMEC’s CyberTipline, and contact the police.

Does COPPA protect my teenager?

COPPA’s core protections apply to children under 13. Teens aged 13 to 17 aren’t covered in the same way, which is why privacy settings, teen account controls and conversations about posting matter so much at that age.