Want to post a family photo, or a photo with friends, that shows your child? Before you share it, here is what French law says, what the CNIL advises (France's data protection authority), and some good habits.
Updated October 5, 2026
Article 9 of the French Civil Code provides that everyone has the right to respect for their private life. Image rights derive from it, and they apply to children as well as adults: as a rule, you don't share a recognizable image of someone without their consent. For a child, that consent belongs to those who hold parental authority.
Law no. 2024-120 of 19 February 2024, which aims to guarantee respect for children's image rights, made this right part of parental authority. The new article 372-1 of the Civil Code reads (our translation):
“Parents jointly protect the image rights of their minor child, with respect for the right to private life mentioned in article 9. Parents involve the child in exercising their image rights, according to the child's age and maturity.”
The same law added the child's private life to the duties of parental authority (article 371-1). When parents disagree, the family court judge can forbid one parent from sharing content about the child without the other parent's permission (article 373-2-6). And if parents sharing their child's image seriously harms the child's dignity or moral integrity, the judge can hand the exercise of that right to a third party (article 377).
According to the CNIL, “publishing photographs of children, particularly on social networks, is a non-routine act that requires the consent of both parents”. Posting a photo of your own child therefore already means agreeing as a couple, and involving the child according to their age.
French law has no separate rule for group photos: every recognizable child in the photo has the same image rights, exercised by their own parents. That's why schools, clubs and holiday camps ask for written permission before publishing a photo.
So before posting a photo in which other children can be recognized, you need, as a rule, their parents' consent. When you can't ask everyone, the simplest option is to make those children unrecognizable, and leave only your own visible.
Rather than a social network, the CNIL recommends that you “prefer sharing via secure private instant messaging apps”. But even in a private group, the class or club chat, a photo can be saved and forwarded: it's best if it only shows what everyone agreed to show.
To do it in practice, see our guide on how to hide a child's face in a photo.
Every face is masked right away, you show the adults with one tap, and your child's face stays hidden. The copy goes out without its GPS location. Free, no account, no ads, 100% on your phone.
This page summarizes public texts to help parents. It is not legal advice.