Picture This!
If a tree falls in the forest, but you didn’t take a picture, did it really happen?
“Com’on, be a good boy. Smile.”
“Do I look nice?”
Sound familiar? Our children are growing up in photographs. From the moment they emerge from the womb (and to some extent even prior), every second of their lives is increasingly captured by photography. We have zillions of photographs of our kids stored on hard drives and on the cloud.
“Oh so cute, take a picture.”
It’s become a reflex. Rarely do we even bother to ask why.
And our children quickly learn to comply and pose for our approval, or sometimes rebel for our attention.
A part of their experience of the parental gaze is mediated by the camera lens. And the camera can be cold and unforgiving.
How do interactions like these shape their psyches?
What happens when a child’s sense of self is mediated by a photograph? What happens when their understanding of being a good boy or looking nice is framed by the extent to which they can accommodate their parents’ desire for a picture?
Posing for a photograph also requires a child to behave in a certain predictable way, which stifles spotenaity and play. So often, I see well-intentioned parents interrupt their child’s imaginative adventures to ask them to smile for the picture.
On some level, this conveys to the child that smiling for a picture is more important in the eyes of their parents than their creative play.
Pausing play to pose for a photo also interferes with the extent to which children and parents can be present in the moment. Because in some sense, taking photographs makes it no longer about the moment, but instead about some future moment, in which we or others will look back and see what a great time we had. Trying to capture the moment can make us forget to savour it. I wonder too if our tendency to make memories with photographs could have any impact on the acuity of our recollection of past events.
Our best moments are captured in pictures. And due to the nature of social media, the photographs we share tend to be catered to our target audience, which makes it even less about the moment, and more about how others will react to the image of the moment.
One need look no further than to the thousands of big social media accounts that serve up picture-perfect snapshots of their daily lives to their multitudes of followers to see the full-blown phenomenon on display. These big accounts have learned to harness the envy of millions, many of whom probably struggle to get their own families to comply in the hope of recreating that shot.
Can it hardly then be surprising that anxiety is rising among the younger photo-savvy generations?
The years 2010 to 2015 coincide with the proliferation of smartphones and social networking websites.
As a parent of young kids, I worry about how their generation will compare to the Gen Zs and Millenials studied by Haidt. But I remain hopeful.
Now I’m not suggesting that we stop taking pictures of our children altogether. I don’t think that would be realistic in most cases any way. Let us simply be a little bit more mindful and intentional about it when we do.
Smile!
