Many parents post photos of their child on social media without a second thought. New UAE ruling suggests separated parents will require consent before posting images of their child online.

The Judgement

On 9 June 2026, the Abu Dhabi Civil Family Court ruled in a landmark case on a child’s right to privacy. With a growing digital age, this ruling speaks to a child’s right to privacy and the future implications of an early-age presence on social media.

The dispute was between a father and his ex-wife, who works as a high-profile influencer. The couple divorced in Germany in July 2025 and shared joint custody of their two daughters, aged ten and five years old.

The father asked that the court prohibit the mother from “exploiting the minor children in her custody through digital media platforms” This includes posting images of the children for commercial and promotional use. He asked that she remove the posts or conceal the children’s identities in public facing content. Beyond this, the father asked to bar the creation of profiles in the children’s names without the consent of both parents, or the court.

In the UAE, photographing someone without their consent is a criminal offence, even if taken in public. In this case, the father argued that a child cannot consent and therefore his ex-wife could not post a photo online without said consent. A child cannot make informed consent because of their inability to comprehend the wide-reaching, permanent nature of posting online.

The court found that both parents had failed to adhere to proper conduct in raising the children, because each parent had posted pictures of the children online. The court ordered both parties to refrain from any activity that could harm the children mentally or physically, endanger their wellbeing or future – including posting photographs online. In the case of a breach, the consequences could extend to imprisonment or removal from joint custody. The basis for this judgement came from “Wadeema Law” which is the UAE child rights law, which acts to protect children from exploitation and guarantees their rights and best interests.

A Global Issue

This ruling speaks to a bigger, global, issue of social media and children. The expanding industry of digital content creators has given rise to family influencers – a sub-genre of social media users that post images and details of their family and convert views and likes to monetisation.

In addressing the family creators using their children as main characters in their content, certain states in the USA have regulated the child labour aspect of the issue. States such as California, Minnesota and Illinois have legislation requiring parents to place a share of earning from monetised content featuring their children in a trust.

Meanwhile, France adopted legislation in 2020 that expressly classifies child influencing as a form of child labour and prescribes specific working conditions standards for children under the age of sixteen, working on social media as the “main subject”. The legislation requires school attendance, adequate working conditions and implements a trust for the earnings.

Whereas in England and Wales, the influencer industry is largely unregulated. There is no dedicated statute governing child influencers. For example, there is no regulation requiring parents to pay a child a fair earning into a trust or limiting the working hours of a child in relation to monetised online content. By contrast, there is legislation reserved for child actors, which requires the child’s work to be licensed by their local education authority. The regulatory gap creates a legal grey area, failing to protect children’s rights in this new age of working child ‘actors’.