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UIC John Marshall Journal of Information Technology & Privacy Law

Abstract

Social media is about sharing information. If you are a parent, often the tendency is to relate every aspect of your children’s lives. Most of the time, children do not consent to postings about them and will have a permanent digital shadow created by their parents that follows them the rest of their lives. The purpose of this article is to analyze the current status and potential future of children’s online privacy from a comparative legal approach, highlighting recent case law in the United Kingdom, which is trending toward carving out special privacy rights for children. This contrasts with the United States approach, where once a photo or similar content is posted online, a right to privacy is essentially lost. Based on recent United States Supreme Court case opinions, and the state law movement to regulate in this area, as exemplified by the so-called “Eraser Law” in California. the time may be ripe to reexamine the “reasonable expectation of privacy” for children online and develop methods and a cause of action that allow children to take control of their own online story.

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