If you haven’t seen it, there’s an unsettling two-minute video circulating online called “A Message from Ella.” A young girl stares anxiously into the camera as she explains to her parents how identity thieves destroyed her credit, scammers cloned her voice to commit fraud, and an AI-generated deepfake featuring her face swept through her school, wrecking her reputation. Ella isn’t real—the clip is part of a European online privacy-awareness campaign—but it’s profoundly uncomfortable.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]In a simpler America, “the talk” was a right of passage—an awkward but necessary discussion to prepare kids for the realities of adulthood. Today parents face a new conversation: teaching kids to protect their privacy in a world where every misstep can be recorded, reshaped, and made permanent. The dangers of sexting and sharing intimate photos are old news to most. But AI deepfakes, digital identity theft, and financial sextortion schemes are targeting minors at alarming rates. By 2030, watchdogs predict two-thirds of identity thefts will stem from “sharenting.” That is, parents oversharing their children’s lives online.
Modern privacy threats aren’t theoretical. The risks are real, and they’re actively shaping our kid’s futures because our kid’s futures are tied largely to the data that exists about them in the world. Tackling these new dangers means threading a needle between being proactive and practical.
But don’t panic. Start small. A good first step is to cover the webcams on every computer your family owns. A pack of tiny plastic sliders costs about $4, they’re discreet, snap on in seconds, and offer robust protection against webcam hacking—an increasingly common crime. Think about some of the more private things you or your kids might do in front of your laptops when alone. Now imagine getting an email containing a video of your child doing exactly that, with a demand that you wire $8,000 somewhere or the video gets sent to your social media contacts and your child’s classmates. It happens all the time. It happened to former Miss Teen USA Cassidy Wolf. And it’s incredibly easy to prevent.
Next, look into using devices and platforms that offer parental controls specifically tailored toward children’s privacy. You probably already own one. Big tech knows parents are worried—and they’re increasingly eager to profit from that concern by offering privacy-friendly products. But don’t assume that you’re covered by your device’s default settings. Spend a few minutes reviewing and fine-tuning privacy controls on all family devices and social media accounts (there are many videos online that can help). Also, set up a Google Alert for your child’s name, email address, and other personal details so you’ll know immediately if sensitive information starts popping up where it shouldn’t.
And take stock of your sharenting, how much of your child’s life you’re putting online, and who exactly can see it. Law professor and children’s advocacy attorney Stacey Steinberg, a leading scholar on sharenting who regularly confronts the fallout faced by kids whose privacy has been compromised, drastically curtailed her own children’s online presence years ago. “I’m an adult, and when I put my own life on display, I’m ultimately responsible for the outcomes,” she says. “But, my younger kids—they didn’t get the choice. They had a digital identity long before they were able to speak their own words.”
You may not want to stop sharing photos of your kids entirely. But when you do, limit posts to private, tightly controlled accounts accessible only to family and trusted friends. Identity thieves thrive on public profiles precisely because they offer detailed, easy-to-access information about your kids.
But while filters and monitoring help a lot, they’re not a substitute for real conversations about privacy. The modern privacy crisis demands a new kind of partnership between parents and children, built on honest dialogue and practical thinking. That means first coming to terms with the fact that the kind of privacy we enjoyed as kids is no longer achievable. Society simply isn’t going to suddenly ditch our devices and go live in the woods somewhere. And so the path forward boils down to mitigating risk, which is sad and frustrating. But how well you mitigate the risks at hand can mean the difference between a scare and a scar.
Children today exist simultaneously as flesh-and-blood individuals and digital selves, with the latter often having outsized influence over their real-world opportunities. Kids need to understand that control over their digital footprint equals control over the joy they’ll experience in the future. Every piece of online information—whether posted by themselves, friends, or even their parents—can influence everything from social circles to job prospects.
The trick is not to make your kids feel paranoid. Make them feel empowered. Convince them that it’s empowering to own their own reputations instead of passively allowing others to define who they are.
You can accomplish this by making privacy real and tangible. One way to do this is to play a simple open-source intelligence (OSINT) game together. Pretend you’re strangers trying to piece together the lives of people you know using only what’s publicly available online: names, usernames, tagged photos, posts from friends, school websites. You’ll quickly find detailed information about their hobbies, favorite spots, daily routines, birthdays, and even home addresses. The goal isn’t to frighten your kids, it’s to vividly illustrate how scattered digital crumbs can form a surprisingly complete portrait. More importantly, it empowers your kids to see their data as valuable—something they own and control.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends creating a “Family Media Use Plan” to explicitly outline your family’s values around privacy and technology. The purpose isn’t as much about setting rules as it is to cultivate lasting privacy instincts. Older generations internalized these instincts naturally, but today’s youth require deliberate guidance.
The ultimate goal is to get them to a place mentally where every time they consider sharing online they do so deliberately, thoughtfully, and with a natural reluctance—no more mindless sharing. Just as importantly, they should learn to respect other people’s privacy, understanding intuitively that something shared by a friend doesn’t equal consent to share elsewhere.
Perhaps the most crucial thing to teach your kids is what to do when something goes wrong or seems off. Kids should speak up the moment they suspect their privacy has been compromised, whether through an unexpected message, a shared photo, or even just a vague feeling something’s not right. Problems identified early often remain minor and manageable, but small issues can quickly escalate. Parents also need to know what to do if something problematic happens with your kids’ data. Federal law, through the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), offers robust protections for children under 13. After 13, protections become patchier and vary widely state-by-state. If you believe your child’s rights have been violated you should contact your state Attorney General’s office immediately and they can explain the options available to you.
There’s no perfect path through the digital privacy maze. Not even for professionals like myself. Every family will chart a different course, reflecting their unique values and comfort levels. Which is exactly as it should be. The very act of taking privacy seriously, of modeling good behavior regardless of your family’s level of engagement, will show your kids that their digital lives matter and that their personal data is something worth seizing control of.
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