Since moving to the US six years ago, the Sussexes have rarely shared pictures of their children’s faces. But recently, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet have featured more prominently in the Duchess’s Instagram account, with their faces never shown.
Apart from her first-birthday portrait in 2022, Lilibet’s face has not been shown to the public.
The closest anyone ever got to seeing her face was back in February, when Meghan shared a picture of Prince Harry holding “Lily”, who had half her face showing to the camera.
Fans on Reddit claimed this is due to California laws that aim to protect the children of actors and other content creators from having their presence monetised online.
Two new laws, Assembly Bill 1880 and Senate Bill 764, went into effect in January 2025 and provide legal and financial protections whenever a minor is the focal point of monetised content by influencers or “vloggers”.
Under the new law, if a minor is involved in at least 30% of a “vlogger’s” compensated content online in a month, a portion of their income needs to be protected in locked trust funds until they turn 18.
Both laws are part of the California Child Actors’ Bill.
But according to fans on Reddit, if the children’s faces are not shown, the “influencers” are not required to compensate.
One user said: “It turns out that California has a law, the ‘Child Vlogger Bill of Rights’, that requires parents to put money into a trust fund for kids shown on social media for monetisation purposes.
“However, there is a loophole that if you dont show the kids faces, you are exempt from this law. It’s just another possible reason the children’s faces are always hidden.”
It is not known whether that is the true reason behind Harry and Meghan’s decision to keep their children’s faces hidden.
Notably, neither of the new laws specifies whether the faces of the minors need to be shown, but says that at least 30 % of the “vlogger’s compensated video content or the vlogger’s compensated image content” in a month needs to include “the likeness, name, or photograph of the minor” for the compensation to be required.
Since her fourth-birthday post last year, Meghan has mentioned or shown Lilibet at least 13 times on her personal Instagram page across 53 posts.
In June alone, Lilibet was mentioned or featured in five of eight posts.