Children under 15 who appear in vlogs, livestreams, podcasts or digital advertisements in the Philippines now clearly need a work permit from the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) first. The agency spelled this out in Labor Advisory No. 12, Series of 2026, and the point of the advisory is not a new law. It is a statement that an existing child labour law already covers the internet.
What Labor Advisory No. 12 actually says
The advisory tells employers, advertisers, production companies, content creators and parents that Republic Act 9231, the law protecting working children, applies to digital platforms in the same way it applies to television and film. The Manila Times reported that it was signed by Labor Secretary Francis Tolentino, who framed it as a clarification rather than a new restriction.
DOLE defines "public entertainment or information" broadly. It covers artistic, literary and cultural performances distributed through television, radio, cinema, theatre, commercial advertisements, public relations activities, print, and the internet. SunStar reported that the listed digital formats include streaming services, social media, vlogs, digital advertisements, web series and web-based publications, with podcasts and educational content also named in the advisory's coverage.
One detail in the advisory is doing a lot of the work: the scope is decided by the nature of the work performed and the platform it is distributed on. In plain terms, a child does not have to be paid, credited, or signed to anything for the rule to apply. If the content is public and the child is performing in it, it is in scope.
One caveat on the record: reports differ on the exact signing date, placing it variously in late July 2026. The advisory number and its substance are consistent across all of them.
The rule underneath it
RA 9231 starts from a prohibition. Children below 15 are generally not allowed to work at all. There are only two exceptions:
- The child works directly under the sole responsibility of a parent or legal guardian, and only members of the child's family are employed.
- The child's participation in public entertainment or information is essential.
Even under those exceptions, a working child permit from DOLE must be secured before the child is engaged. There is no version of this where the permit is optional. The law also carries safeguards that come with the permit: limits on working hours, rules on how the child's earnings are handled, and protection of the child's access to education and health care.
Why family vlogging is the hard case
The first exception is where most Philippine family channels sit, and it is narrower than it looks. It requires that only family members are employed. A family channel that hires an editor, a videographer, or a brand manager arguably falls outside it, and would need the permit route regardless.
The monetisation layer complicates it further. Filipino creators increasingly earn through affiliate and commerce programmes rather than ad revenue alone, including the Instagram affiliate programme Shopee and Meta launched for creators in the Philippines. When a child appears in content that directly drives product sales, calling it a home video gets harder to sustain.
What the advisory does not settle
Be careful about what is actually established here. The advisory is a clarification of existing obligations; the reports on it do not spell out a new penalty schedule, and sanctions are described as falling under existing law rather than something newly created. Nor do the reports describe an enforcement mechanism aimed at platforms. DOLE has asked the public to report suspected violations to authorities for investigation, which is a complaint-driven approach, not automated monitoring.
So the realistic near-term effect is on the formal end of the industry: agencies, brands, production houses, and anyone commissioning content with children in it. A brand that books a child for a TikTok ad now has an explicit, citable reason to ask for a DOLE permit. A parent posting their own child on a small channel is legally covered by the same advisory but far less likely to encounter enforcement.
What creators and brands should do now
- If you commission or produce content featuring anyone under 15, treat the DOLE working child permit as a standard pre-production requirement, the same as a location clearance.
- If you run a family channel that employs anyone outside the family, assume you need the permit.
- Keep records of working hours and how the child's earnings are handled. Those are already obligations under RA 9231, not new ones.
The Philippines is not first here. Several countries have moved to bring child influencers under child labour or earnings-protection rules in the past few years. What this advisory does is close the argument that the internet was somehow outside the existing law.
