Over 75% of parents share their kids' data on social media – this called “sharenting”. Sharenting is a social media problem. As Europe’s biggest telecommunication provider, Deutsche Telekom knew that social media had to be part of the solution to change parents’ online behavior.

So we created the ultimate influencer for parents – a grown-up version of a child called “Ella”, created with AI technology. Ella spoke directly to all parents on social media, sending an urgent call to #ShareWithCare.

With the help of thousands of parenting influencers her video became a viral hit on social media reaching millions worldwide.

Social media exists to share one’s life with others, and there is nothing more important in a parent’s life than their children. By the age of five, the average child has 1,500 pictures of them on social media – shared without their consent. This is called “sharenting”.

With the current rise of AI making it easier than ever to abuse this data, The New York Times warns that by 2030, two-thirds of identity fraud cases will be connected to sharenting.

Even though lawmakers around the world are slowly turning their attention to this matter, the mass audience is still mostly unaware of the dangers of carelessly sharing children’s pictures and videos online. 2 out of 3 parents have followers and social media connections they’ve never met in real life before – making it easy for criminals to infiltrate their private circles.

2023 was the year AI tools became easy to use for everyone, raising a lot of concerns about the safety of the data we share in social media.

Yet, parents still share their kids' data on social media, unaware of potential consequences on their future: identity theft, scamming, harassment, deepfake pornography and child sexual abuse material.

As Europe’s leading telco brand, Deutsche Telekom’s ambition is to connect everyone to the opportunities of the digital world. But with the privacy of a whole generation at risk, Deutsche Telekom wanted to build on its legacy and step up to protect children against the recent arising threats.

The brief: Develop a social-first campaign that brings awareness to the digital threats of online sharing, inspires behavioral change, and strengthens the brand’s perception as a protective force for the digital society.

Using the latest Al technology on a single photograph, we created the virtually aged version of a 9-year-old girl: Ella. The ultimate influencer for parents.

In our social media film, she confronts her parents — and by extension, parents worldwide — with the consequences of sharing kids' data online, sending a gut-wrenching warning about her endangered future. This way, our film became both a literal demonstration of AI manipulation capabilities and an emotional plea for the online safety of all children.

Her testimony was crafted to turn all parents into advocates of Ella’s cause, triggering them to use their voices on social media and elsewhere to fight to protect children’s digital privacy.

As part of the campaign, we also created a solution to the problem: a social media filter pixelating children’s faces, empowering parents to #ShareWithCare and easily protect their children’s privacy.

Sharenting is a social media problem, so we knew the solution would need to come from social media. Today’s oversharing generation of parents grew up in a time when social media was carefree.

Our survey among German parents with young children confirmed their ambiguous risk assessment: While 69 % agree pictures once posted are probably staying online forever, only a minority of them considers cyberbullying (38 %), child sexual abuse material (29 %) or identity theft (27 %) as likely threats.

We had to show parents how their actions today affect their children tomorrow.

Leveraging the popularity of “parenting” content across all platforms and the huge number of parenting influencers, we created a social-first approach to reach parents worldwide.

Relying on parents’ natural protective instinct and their willingness to share emotional content, we created a gut-wrenching film with a testimonial no parent could ignore: a child’s cry for help.

Since the biggest influencer of any parent is their own child, we

created Ella, an AI-generated daughter, who became the most influential voice in the social media space on the topic of online safety for children.

Ella’s video message, which directly addressed parents with a caring and loving tone, looking straight at the camera, was crafted in a way that made every parent who watched it feel like Ella’s words were those of their own child.

Making Ella’s message resonate deeply in the hearts of parents, turning it into a viral social media hit, shared by parenting influencers worldwide.

But that was just the beginning. The true transformation came when Telekom launched its social media filter that used facial recognition technology to automatically blur any child's face in a picture, allowing parents to easily #ShareWithCare, turning the conversation into action.

Ella’s message became a viral hit, reaching 71 countries with over 51 million views and 3.7 billion earned impressions, sparking the public’s demand for data privacy and security information, leading to a record of over 184.000 visits to the German campaign landing page since its launch on 3rd of July 2023.

Thousands of social media comments indicate behavioral change, confirmed in a pre/post-exposure survey where 2 out of 3 parents stated they changed their opinion on “sharenting” and 55% of parents, who previously shared their children's images, said they would conceal their identity in the future.

62% of non-customer parents affirmed that Telekom’s data safety and virtual privacy commitment will make them consider the company as a telecommunications provider in the future.

Furthermore, Ella’s message is now an educational tool used by European police agencies, such as the Scotland police and the state police of North Rhine-Westphalia and Hessen, Germany.