When did it become normal to take photos of other people’s children?

And can we please stop?

“That man’s taking our photo!” my daughter yelled. She and her friends were sitting high up in a tree in a local park, and the man had simply walked up and taken their picture. When she yelled, he said sorry, and stopped.

At the British Museum, my children were taking part in an art class in the galleries. Half a dozen children and their brilliant, charismatic teacher sat on the floor around a statue of Paris holding his golden apple. Total strangers pulled out their phones and started photographing it. It happened repeatedly in what was only a 20-30 minute session.

A friend who cycles around London with her three children attached to her bicycle reports that they are often photographed, and that recently the children complained because they’d spotted it happening five times in the space of a single outing.

I tell you these stories not because they are unusual, but because they are increasingly normal.

It’s become such a common occurrence that I have gone from feeling uncomfortable and embarrassed about asking people not to photograph my children, to feeling emboldened, and frankly cross. I now have no compunction at all about telling them to stop.

When did it become normal to photograph children you have never met, without even asking them if they’d mind? When did the default assumption become that it’s just totally fine?

I’m not worried about anything sinister. I know these people just see something cute and reflexively want to capture it, like we capture everything these days. But children are not the Instagram-friendly meal you photograph in a restaurant. They are people—whole, complete people, even if they’re only 8 years old. “A person’s a person, no matter how small.” Maybe they don’t want their photograph living on some stranger’s phone, or on someone’s grid for anyone to see and like and comment on.

It occurs to me that the way we photograph children today has similarities to the way we photographed indigenous cultures in the past, and sometimes still do. Without consent and for our own purposes, and as if the subject has nothing in common with ourselves. They are ‘other’, and can therefore be photographed like a sunset or a balloon arch or an exhibit in a museum.

When my daughter yelled from her perch high up in the tree, it was very effective. It gave her a voice, instead of me talking to the adult on her behalf. It also highlighted the absurdity and bad manners of the man’s behaviour. So now I’m encouraging the children to call it out when they see people taking their photo.

But this shouldn’t have to be a child’s responsibility. When I told the British Museum about our experience in the art class, their response was that they have a policy in place. Indeed, it’s Section 14.4 of their 21-point Visitor Regulations. As a regular visitor to the British Museum, I have never once noticed this policy or had it pointed out to me, and I’m willing to bet I’m not alone.

As it has become normal practice to photograph children without their permission, it needs to become normal practice to make it clear that this is not acceptable. A ‘no photographs please’ sign in the art class, for example, instead of a policy nobody’s read.

People are not exhibits, no matter how old they are. Please, stop taking photographs of other people’s children. And if you work in a public setting where it happens regularly, please think about what you could do to prevent it.

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(The image for this post is by Priscilla du Preez on Unsplash.)