When a Child Becomes Part of Commercial Content: Who Owns the Value Created by Their Image?

Photos of children on social media have long ceased to be merely a digital version of the family photo album. For some content creators, family life – and with it, their children – has become part of commercial content. Children appear in advertisements, product promotions, trips and events, and in some cases their lives, reactions and personalities become a central element of the content that attracts and retains an audience.

Parents may receive payment for such content. Lithuanian law, however, does not yet provide a clear answer to a much more complex question: who is entitled to the economic value generated through the use of the child’s own image?

The Lithuanian Civil Code recognises the right to one’s image as an independent personal right. Article 2.22 of the Civil Code provides that a person’s photograph or other image may be reproduced, sold, displayed or published only with that person’s consent, subject to the exceptions established by law. A violation of this right may give rise to claims for both pecuniary and non-pecuniary damages.

This right belongs to the child – not to the parents. While a child may be too young to exercise the right independently and the parents therefore make decisions on the child’s behalf, parental representation does not mean that the child’s image becomes the parents’ property or that it may primarily be used to advance their own economic interests.

This distinction becomes particularly important when a child’s image is not merely shared online, but monetised.

Posting a photograph from a family holiday on social media is one thing. Systematically involving a child in paid advertising or in a social media channel whose commercial value significantly depends on the child’s participation is quite another.

Consider, for example, a paid advertising video in which a mother and her five-year-old child promote a family-oriented product and receive EUR 5,000 for the campaign. Legally, the agreement with the advertiser may have been concluded by the mother. She may manage the account, create the content and have built the audience.

But if the advertiser specifically requires the child to appear in the campaign, a more difficult question arises: was the entire economic value of the collaboration really created solely by the mother or father?

The Lithuanian Civil Code already contains principles designed to protect a child’s property. Parents must manage a child’s property exclusively in the child’s interests, and the law separately recognises property acquired by the child using income earned by the child personally.

The current legal framework, however, does not establish when a child’s participation in a parent’s commercial social media activity should itself be regarded as economic value or income generated by the child.

Nor does the law specify what proportion of such income should belong to the child, how that proportion should be calculated, or whether parents should be required to preserve it until the child reaches adulthood.

This legal gap may become particularly significant when the children growing up on social media today reach adulthood.

Imagine a dispute fifteen years from now. A young adult brings a claim arguing that, from the age of three, they were one of the central figures in their family’s social media account. Their childhood was systematically filmed, their image was used in advertising, and posts featuring them generated revenue – yet all of that income was received and spent by their parents.

They were never compensated and, as a young child, could not have understood the long-term consequences of such extensive exposure.

Would such a claim be entirely without merit?

Under the current Lithuanian legal framework, it would have to be constructed on the basis of general principles of civil law.

If the unlawful use of the child’s image or private life were established, Article 6.249 of the Lithuanian Civil Code could become relevant. It provides that a benefit obtained by a liable person as a result of unlawful acts may, at the creditor’s request, be recognised as losses.

In other words, in certain circumstances it may be possible to raise not only a claim for non-pecuniary damage, but also a claim relating to the economic benefit obtained by parents through the infringement of the child’s right to their image.

Such litigation would nevertheless involve complex evidentiary questions. It would be necessary to establish the infringement itself, demonstrate a causal link between the child’s participation and the income received, and determine what proportion of the economic benefit was specifically attributable to the use of the child’s image.

In addition, applicable limitation periods would likely significantly restrict the scope of any potential claims.

Some jurisdictions have already begun adapting their legal frameworks to this new reality.

In the US state of Illinois, specific rules are already in force requiring that, where a child participates to a legally defined extent in monetised content created by their parents, a portion of the income generated by that content must be set aside for the child in a dedicated account. The legislation also gives the child a right to seek legal recourse if this obligation is not complied with.

In California, the so-called Coogan Law protections, traditionally designed to safeguard the earnings of child performers, have been extended to certain minors involved in digital content creation. A proportion of their earnings must be preserved until they reach adulthood.

France has also responded to the issue. Special legislation regulates the commercial use of the images of children under the age of sixteen on online platforms. Where a child plays a central role in monetised content and the statutory conditions are met, the law provides not only safeguards relating to the child’s work and filming, but also mechanisms designed to protect the income generated through their participation.

These approaches reflect an emerging principle: if a child contributes to the commercial value of content, the law should not automatically treat all resulting income as belonging exclusively to the parents.

Lithuania already has general legal mechanisms for the protection of children’s rights and property. The digital economy, however, has created a new type of relationship for which those mechanisms were not specifically designed.

There is currently no dedicated regulation defining when a child’s participation in commercially monetised content created by their parents becomes the child’s own economic contribution, what proportion of the resulting income should be reserved for the child, or how the child should be protected where their legal representative is simultaneously financially incentivised to make increasingly extensive use of the child’s image.

Perhaps, therefore, the key question today is no longer simply whether parents are entitled to share images of their children online.

A more important question is emerging: if money is being made from a child’s childhood, why does our legal framework not clearly protect the child’s economic interests and determine what proportion of that value should belong to the child?