Think twice before uploading that sweet photo of your munchkin on Facebook or Twitter. Especially if you live in France. The country's strict privacy laws could see parents fined $65,000 and jailed if convicted of publishing personal details about their children without consent.
And parents with grown children can't afford to rest easy. Children who sue retrospectively may receive compensation for breach of privacy.
"Children at certain stages do not wish to be photographed or still less for those photos to be made public," said internet law and ethics expert, Eric Delcroix, who warned such lawsuits may soon become a reality.
The warnings follow a recent announcement by the national police, the Gendarmerie (ironically, on Facebook) urging parents to stop posting images of their children on the social media site.
[PRÉVENTION] Préservez vos enfants !Si vous avez suivi Facebook, une chaîne de publication est à la mode en ce moment...
Posted by Gendarmerie nationale on Tuesday, February 23, 2016
"Remember that posting pictures of your children on Facebook is not safe," read the post. "It is important to protect the privacy of minors and their images on social networking sites."
With so much of children's lives being documented online from the day they are born, the warning raises an interesting debate.
Do parents ever have the right to share photos or information about their children on social media? At what point would privacy laws take effect and a child's autonomy come into play - at the onset of puberty or from birth?
After all, privacy settings only go so far. As we know, data lives on and on, even after deletion.
Many of us have come to rely on social media as a means to document our lives (particularly that of our growing children) for friends and relatives. It would be a hard cord to cut.
According to a 2015 social media awareness survey by the University of Michigan, the vast majority of us feel the fear but do it (post) anyway because of a herd mentality. What's troubling is that 51 per cent of parents give away enough personal data alongside photographs to enable a child's location to be identified.
We go online to find our tribe, our community, and to avoid isolation. But there's a catch. What if France isn't simply being a paranoid killjoy, but a front runner when it comes to protecting its children?
Health Canada and Dollarama have recalled the above three-piece wooden animal puzzles for children 24 months and up with the item #08-3032698 and UPC 6 67888 17495 9.
The wooden knobs may detach from the puzzle pieces, posing a choking hazard.
Although Dollarama received one report of a knob dislodging from a puzzle piece, no injuries were sustained.
Customers are advised to immediate remove the recalled puzzle from children, and return the item to a Dollarama store to obtain a refund (no receipt required).
For further information, customers may contact Dollarama online or by phoning 1-888-755-1006, ext. 1000, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
From June 2015 to January 2016, approximately 23,952 of the puzzles were sold at Dollarama stores in Canada.
Identical twin jokes abound. Just how do you tell them apart when they are babies? One dad's struggle to differentiate his infants is no laughing matter, given one boy needs frequent medical attention.
As user Thrwydad explained on Reddit, 12-month-old identical twins Aaron and Adam were born prematurely, and no one - not even their parents - can tell them apart.
The couple had taken to marking Adam's arm with permanent marker, but that method wasn't full proof. The marker washed off, and only irritated the infant's skin.
After one boy was mistakenly given medication needed by the other, leaving both infants hospitalized, their parents decided something had to be done.
“This is a serious extreme situation and I don't want to take this risk again," wrote the anonymous dad. "We have had other mix ups with the boys but it has never wound up this bad ... I really hate to say it but we are here.”
Nothing else - nail polish, bracelets, different clothing and even shaving one of the boys’ heads - has worked. The popular colour-code dressing is clearly not a foolproof option for these twins, particularly when it's a life and death situation.
The boys' parents are now considering having a dot tattooed on the boy's foot or having his ears pierced to help set him apart.
Body modification on a baby is a highly controversial decision. After all, most permanent solutions involve inflicting some element of pain on a baby.
I sympathize with the father's dilemma. There is no easy answer. I remember the day my newborn's heel was pricked for the vitamin K shot. As a mom, it was horrible for me to witness, even though I knew he'd have absolutely no recollection of it.
If a tattoo prevents situations in which both infants could feasibly die, then perhaps a tattoo is a small price to pay to keep both boys healthy and safe.
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