Won't somebody please think of the children

Molly-Mae has really crossed a line this time.

Oct 22, 2025

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I took a week off for my birthday, but I’m back now. You may also be pleased to see that the newsletter's audio versions are back!

I know it’s Wednesday, but this is timely, so we’re getting it out there early this week…

Love Island star Molly-Mae Hague is back on our screens with a new season of her reality TV series for Amazon Prime. I’ve not watched the show, just clips on social media, but I couldn’t not take this chance to wade in on the ✨discourse✨— particularly with regards to her toddler daughter.

Molly-Mae’s daughter is just a few months younger than my own. In the show, Molly shares that she worries about how she is perceived as a mother and is constantly judged no matter what she does.

mollymae

A post shared by @mollymae

When it comes to parenting, there are so many things that Molly Mae and I don’t see eye-to-eye on: she is famously a ‘beige’ mam, she has shared photos of her daughter in unsafe car seats, she’s flown longhaul with a tiny baby, she gave her a questionable name… but in the scheme of things, these are all pretty commonplace. I wouldn’t do those things, but I won’t waste my time ranting in her comments section about them either.

However.

There is one thing Molly has done, and continues to do, that I think is utterly unforgivable— putting her in the limelight.

…and this has peaked in season two of her show.

Animated GIF from The Simpsons of Mrs Lovejoy crying saying "Oh! Won't somebody please think of the children!"

Since the moment her child was born, she has been all over our screens.

I would recognise her at the park, even if Molly wasn’t there. I know her full name, her birthday… there are even several Instagram fan accounts dedicated to her.

A little girl. Younger than my own. I don’t even follow Molly-Mae! Everything I have learned has been against my will.

It really makes me feel unwell.

The latest installment of Behind It All focuses heavily on her daughter. In fact, there are (blurred out) clips of her potty training and in the bath. Someone filmed this (likely men, according to IMDb) and added the blur. So, there is footage somewhere in someone’s cloud or on a drive of Molly-Mae’s daughter in the bath without the blur.

As a parent, this is the stuff of my nightmares.

That also poses the question…

Why are we sitting at home watching a child we do not know and will never know take a bath?

You might be thinking, Chill out, Ellen, it’s not as sinister as you think.

Oh, but it is.

There’s an ongoing epidemic of influencers who share videos of their children on TikTok. Some have even noticed an uptick in views if their child is doing something ‘suggestive’, such as eating a banana. These TikTok videos have hundreds of thousands of saves.

If you don’t believe me, or want to learn more about this quite shocking revelation, I recommend checking out Hannah Alonso’s video on parents who overshare. Hannah includes some horrific examples (all censored) of videos, including one creator who shared a video of her toddler eating phallic-shaped frozen honey, which has 390,000 saves.

Who is saving these videos to watch later?

There’s really only one logical answer to that.

That’s before you take into account the vast and very real risk of deep fake technology, which can take a face and turn it into a pornographic image. That means, photos of children (even clothed ones) can easily be manipulated for more sinister uses.

Molly-Mae takes zero steps to prevent this from happening. She shares her daughter’s face far and wide and even (essentially) sells it to Amazon for a pretty penny.

Consent and privacy

I was active online from a young age, but everything that was ever on the internet about me was put there by… well, me. I consented to all of it, even if I was young and naive.

What’s happening here is different. A whole generation of children is having their privacy infringed upon for financial gain. They are not consenting to be online or on TV, and we all know that whatever ends up on the internet will be there forever.

Despite what people might think, children have the right to privacy.

Under The UN Convention On The Rights of the Child, article 16:

Every child has the right to privacy. The law should protect the child’s private, family and home life, including protecting children from unlawful attacks that harm their reputation.

How is Molly-Mae protecting her child by allowing her most private moments (bath time, potty training, etc) to be broadcast to millions of people on Amazon Prime? She’s not.

I am trying so, so hard to empathise here, but as the mother of a three-year-old, I simply can’t. Many influencers have had children in recent years and choose not to publicly share their faces or even names. In a couple of years, Molly’s daughter will start school. Everyone will know her. Teachers and parents will have seen her whole life on their phones.

How is that fair to anyone? Sure, she has all the material possessions a little girl could want, but at what cost?

No one reading this has a platform like Molly’s, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take our children’s privacy very, very seriously.

A 2018 report found that by the time a child is 13, parents have posted over 1,300 photos of them online. I can tell you this is definitely much, much higher for my and Molly’s daughter’s generation.

If you post photos or videos on Facebook, the platform does not own them, but it does gain non-exclusive rights to share them if they are made public. That doesn’t even cover the illicit and illegal use of imagery, such as the creation of deepfake pornography.

Even now, in the year of our Lord 2025, I see parents sharing photos of their kids at the beach or in the bath. This not only puts your child at risk but also breaches their human right to privacy.

While I wouldn’t want to pin it all on Molly Mae, I will say that in her job as an influencer, she is doing just that— influencing people to share their lives in the way she does.

Often, when we criticise women in the public eye, we are unintentionally ignoring a bigger beast in the background. And yes, I guess we should mention Amazon Prime, and question the platform’s motives. But Prime is not this child’s legal guardian— it’s Molly-Mae who ultimately decides what the world sees of her daughter, and she chooses to put plenty of this on her Instagram too, even with sponsored content.

Both on television and social media, this child is working.

Children can work, but there are very strict child labour laws. According to Regulation 22 of the National Network for Child Employment and Entertainment, a child of Molly-Mae’s daughter’s age (2) has a maximum period of continuous performance or rehearsal of 30 minutes, with minimum breaks between performances of 1 hour and 30 minutes (reg 23).

There is no way in hell that this child is only working for 30 minutes at a time when filming for Prime’s Behind It All. The show follows Molly-Mae and her daughter for full days, even with editing this just wouldn’t be possible.

So, child labour laws haven’t caught up with reality TV, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay for parents to ignore them. We’re already seeing the results of this as YouTube child stars age out and reveal what it was really like to be filmed every minute of every day by their narcissistic parents.

Even if you aren’t planning to monetise your child, you need to seriously consider what you’re putting online. Do you really want your child to remember you with a smartphone in front of your face?

Think twice before uploading that photo. Check your privacy settings. Create a Close Friends list on Instagram.

Do anything.

And, if you think this is wrong, don’t engage with it. Don’t watch the show.

The better the viewing figures, the more likely we’ll see her back for a third season.

Vote with your eyes, I beg you.

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

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