Influencer stops using her children in ads after beach shoot leaves her uneasy

Paulina Lykke, a Danish influencer and podcast host, has decided to stop using her children in social media advertisements and to no longer show their faces on her profile, she said in an Instagram post. The decision follows a shoot last year on a beach where she filmed her youngest son, who had just learned to walk, in a diaper advertisement for a diaper company. Lykke told DR that she felt “a really bad taste in my mouth” as she directed her child to walk in specific ways to capture the agreed clips for her 90,000 followers.

Lykke said the requirement by Denmark’s Work Environment Authority that work permits be obtained for children appearing regularly in influencer ads was a decisive factor. “If I have to apply for a work permit for my children, it’s also because I’m saying they are employed in my company. And they are not,” she told DR. She noted that her children had not asked to be in the videos; rather, she asked them to make her business run. “It shouldn’t be that way,” she said.

The Work Environment Authority clarified last year that under the Working Environment Act, children under 13 who “participate or appear” as “a fixed part or regularly in advertisements or posts on social media” must generally have a work permit. The authority does not separate influencers as a group in its data and could not say how often permits are actually obtained. It has not yet carried out any inspections specifically for child work permits for social media ad shoots, it told DR.

Bente Boserup, chair of the National Council for Children, an independent state body that advises authorities on children’s rights, said children in the influencer industry lack necessary protection. “If we look at the Work Environment Authority’s figures, we don’t really have an overview of how it looks. And that is problematic in itself,” she told DR. Boserup believes there are many unreported cases and that many parents are unaware of the permit rules. She said the law should not allow children under 13 to appear in social media ads at all, and at minimum must be updated because it is difficult for authorities to conduct inspections inside private homes. “Children shouldn’t be living billboards,” she said.

Lykke shot her last advertisement featuring her children in early April. She said showing them on social media had been a natural extension of influencer life, giving followers an insight into her daily routine, but she now maintains that boundary.

Tags: influencer marketing, children’s rights, Denmark