Kids online · The Philos blog

Sharing a new baby, privately

Luca Daniel — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In short

Share the first photo with your Family Circle, so only they see it.
Widen it later with Change who sees it. Check who gains access before you save. No one is told.
Delete a post and it's gone for everyone, so the photo stays yours to take back.

A new baby makes you want to tell the world. Then you think about where that first photo will be in five years, and the world starts to look a lot smaller: Mum, Nani, a few friends.

Here's how to share those first photos on Philos, step by step. The screens below are from the app, with an example family.

Start with the people who'd frame it

The first people most of us want to show are family. Put them in a Family Circle, then post the photo, open Who sees this?, tick Family and tap Done.

Shared with Family, and nobody else.

When they respond, you see their names on the post: Mum and Nani responded. Names, not a count.

Widen it when you're ready

A week later you might want your close friends to see the baby too. You don't need to post again. Open the post's menu, choose Change who sees it, and add Close friends.

Check who this affects before you save. No one is told.

Philos shows exactly who will gain access before you save. Nobody gets a notification that they've been added, and Mum and Nani aren't told either.

Keep it yours

What stays in your hands

Only the people you choose see the photo, and they can't pass it on.
You can change who sees it at any time. No one is told.
Delete the post and it's gone for everyone.
You can download everything you've shared from Settings, to keep for them.

Why not post it publicly?

A photo posted publicly can be copied, saved and scraped by people and tools you'll never meet. Human Rights Watch has found real children's photos in data used to train AI tools, and it warns that once a model has learned from a photo, it can't forget it. Your child can decide what to share about themselves one day. Until then, their photos can stay with the people who love them.

Your photos don't train AI

Suhail — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In short

Philos doesn't use your photos or messages to train AI.
Researchers have found real children's photos in a dataset used to train AI tools.
Once a model has learned from a photo, it can't forget it, so the best protection is not posting publicly.

A photo of your child's first day at school feels like it belongs to your family. Online, it can end up somewhere else entirely: in the data that AI tools learn from.

What researchers found

In 2024, Human Rights Watch found links to 170 personal photos of Brazilian children in LAION-5B, a large dataset that has been used to train popular AI image tools. Weeks later it reported 190 more photos of Australian children in the same dataset. The photos came from personal blogs and photo and video sites, some posted by the children's own parents years before.

Current AI models cannot forget data they were trained on.

That's the hard part. Deleting a photo from the place you posted it doesn't take it out of a model that has already learned from it.

Where Philos stands

Philos doesn't use your photos or messages to train AI. There's no AI anywhere in what we do with them. Your posts go to the people you choose, and to nobody else.

What we promise

Your photos and messages are never used to train AI.
Your data is never sold. Not your contacts, not your photos, not who you talk to.
You can download everything you've shared, or delete your account, any time in Settings.

The simplest protection

The surest way to keep a photo out of AI training data is not to post it publicly in the first place. Share the first day at school with the grandparents and the godparents, not with the whole internet. That's what Philos is for.

Sharenting: the childhood you post before they can say no

Suhail — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In short

A 2016 UK survey found parents had posted about 1,500 photos of a child online by their fifth birthday.
Since February 2024, French law says parents protect their child's image together, and must involve the child as they grow.
Share with your people, not the public, leave out the details that identify a child, and ask them once they're old enough.

There's a pavement in most towns with a child's handprint in it. Someone pressed a small hand into the wet cement years ago, and there it still is, long after the child grew up and moved away.

Wet cement is easy to mark and hard to change once it sets. A child's first years online work the same way.

A childhood in 1,500 photos

In 2016, the UK domain registry Nominet and the online safety group The Parent Zone surveyed 2,000 British parents. By a child's fifth birthday, parents had posted around 1,500 photos of them online, up by more than half on the year before.

For many children, it starts even earlier. In a 2010 survey of mothers in ten countries by the security company AVG, 81% of children under two already had some kind of online presence, and 23% had their prenatal scans online before they were born.

None of this comes from bad intentions. We share because we're proud, because Grandma lives in another country, because the first day of school is a big deal. The question isn't whether to share. It's where, and with whom.

Where the photos go

A photo posted publicly doesn't stay where you put it. It can be screenshotted, saved and shared on by people you'll never meet.

It can also be collected by machines. In 2024, Human Rights Watch found links to 170 personal photos of Brazilian children, and later 190 of Australian children, in LAION-5B, a dataset used to train AI image tools. Some had been posted on family blogs by their parents. We wrote about what that means for your photos.

And details add up. In 2018, the British bank Barclays predicted that by 2030, sharenting would account for two-thirds of the identity fraud facing young people. That's a forecast, not a measurement, but the reasoning is simple: a child's name, birthday, school and hometown, scattered across years of posts, are the pieces a fraudster needs.

What children think

Here's the part we rarely ask about. In a 2016 study, the researchers Alexis Hiniker, Sarita Schoenebeck and Julie Kientz asked 249 American families what rules each side thought parents should follow with technology. Children were twice as likely as parents to say adults shouldn't overshare about them.

One child's rule was hard to argue with: "Don't post anything about me without asking me."

France wrote it into law

Some countries have started to agree. In February 2024, France passed a law on children's right to their own image. It doesn't ban parents from posting. Instead it says:

Protecting a child's privacy is part of a parent's job.
Parents protect their child's image together, and must involve the child according to their age and maturity.
If parents disagree, a family judge can stop one of them posting about the child without the other's agreement.
In serious cases, a judge can hand the child's image rights to someone else.

The law's backers called it a law of teaching more than punishment. Its message for every parent, French or not, is the same: a child's image belongs, in part, to the child.

Five ways to share with care

Share with people, not the public. A Family Circle of ten people who love your child is a different audience from the whole internet.
Leave out the identifiers. Full name, date of birth, school, home address. Your family already knows them.
Skip the bath and the meltdown. If you'd be mortified to have that photo of yourself online at fifteen, so will they.
Ask, once they're old enough. Even a five-year-old can say "not that one". It teaches them their image is theirs.
Look back now and then. Delete what no longer needs to be there.

How Philos helps

We built Philos for exactly this kind of sharing. Nothing on Philos is public. Every photo goes only to the people you choose, such as a Family Circle, and nothing can be forwarded. Philos removes location and camera details from every photo you share, and your photos are never used to train AI.

The handprint in the cement is lovely because it's in front of a family's own door, not in the middle of a motorway. Share your children's first years the same way: close to home.