If you’ve visited our social media pages recently and noticed fewer photos from our sessions, you’re not imagining it — and there’s a very deliberate reason behind it.
Throughout 2026, we made a conscious decision to take no images of young people at our holiday camps — and going forward, we won’t be taking photos of young people during our activities at all. This isn’t a reactive policy or a snap decision. It’s something we’ve been thinking carefully about for a long time.
Young People Come to Us to Be Kids — Not Content
The internet is saturated with images of children posted for likes, shares, and engagement. We don’t believe that serves the young people we work with. When children come to North East Sport, they’re here to play, to have fun, and simply to be kids. They shouldn’t have cameras in their faces while they’re doing it.
Children have a right to experience childhood without being turned into content for social media. That principle sits at the heart of everything we do, and our photography policy reflects it.
Our Camps Are Phone-Free — For Everyone
There’s another important dimension to this decision. Our staff are here to coach, mentor, and support young people — not to wave phones about. North East Sport camps are strictly phone-free, and that rule has to apply to the adults just as much as it does to the children.
If we’re asking young people to put their phones down and be present, we need to model exactly that behaviour ourselves. Credibility comes from consistency. We can’t tell kids to disconnect while staff and volunteers are standing on the sidelines with a screen in hand.
The Work Speaks for Itself
Our activities are thriving. Sessions are full, the young people are happy, and we’re proud of the work we’re delivering every single week across Sunderland and the North East. We don’t need photographs to prove that.
In a world where organisations feel pressure to document everything for social media, we’re choosing to let the outcomes speak for themselves — in the wellbeing of the young people we serve, in the feedback from families, and in the sessions that keep growing week on week.
What About Our Football Teams?
This policy applies specifically to our activity sessions and holiday camps. Our football teams are a different context entirely. Match days, tournaments, and team achievements are moments the players and their families want to celebrate and remember — and we’ll continue to share those, always with appropriate consent.
Football team photos are about the players and their achievements. That’s an entirely different purpose to photographing children in a play or activity setting, and we think it’s an important distinction to make.
An Unusual Decision — But the Right One
We’re aware this is an unusual stance. To our knowledge, we’re one of the only youth sport and activity providers in the North East — perhaps in the country — taking this position. But doing what’s right for young people doesn’t always mean doing what everyone else is doing.
If you’re a funder, partner, commissioner, or supporter who wants to see the work in action, you are always warmly welcome to visit us in person. We’d love to show you what’s happening on the ground.
Young people first. Always.
— North East Sport
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