Kin — the alternative to the pitfalls of ‘sharenting’
Are you guilty of ‘sharenting’? If you’re a parent with an internet connection and a smartphone, the answer is most likely, yes. And you’re not alone. 90 percent of 2-year-olds already have a digital presence in the US according to a survey.
In her book, “Sharenthood: Why We Should Think Before We Talk About Our Kids Online,” author and law professor Leah Plunkett defines sharenting as any time an a parent or caretaker transmits private details about a child over digital channels — these can be public channels such as posting images or videos on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and blogging about your kids, but they can also include seemingly more private channels such as baby milestone apps, Nest cameras, Amazon wish lists or even photos stored in the cloud. All of these can inevitably turn your child into a set of data points. These types of platforms aren’t necessarily exploitative individually, Plunkett says, but they do all accelerate a child’s entry into “digital life.”
The Danger of the Ever-growing Digital Footprint
Every piece of information we share online about our kids, their name, their birthday, their address, their likeness, creates a bigger digital footprint that potentially can be exploited later on in their lives — some in ways we can predict, such as identity theft. A Barclays study estimates that by 2030, sharenting may account for nearly two-thirds of identity-fraud cases affecting today’s children.
“Data brokers build profiles about people and sell them to advertisers, spammers, malware distributors, employment agencies, and college admission offices. Because the babies’ and children’s merchandise market is in the hundreds of billion dollars
in the US alone, it is not surprising that data brokers are already seeking to compile dossiers on children,” according to the NYU professors and authors of “Children Seen But Not Heard” paper which was presented at 24th International World Wide Web Conference. There are other ways their data points could be exploited in ways that have yet to be invented. Though it sounds a bit “Black Mirror”, Plunkett asks, what if a child’s development could be tracked and data points used to determine their “personal capital” similar to China’s “social credit” system, and that personal capital was used as a determining factor in university admissions, job placements or receiving loans?
And on a more immediate and practical level, we may not consider that the innocent photos we share online can be lifted and photoshopped for more nefarious purposes. In law professor Stacey Steinberg’s paper “Sharenting: Children’s Privacy in the Age of Social Media,” published in the Emory Law Journal, she describes a mummy blogger who posted photos of her twins while they were potty training. “She later learned that strangers accessed the photos, downloaded them, altered them, and shared them on a website commonly used by pedophiles,” Steinberg wrote. “This mother warns other parents not to post pictures of children in any state of undress, to use Google’s search features to find any images shared online, and to reconsider their interest in mommy blogging.”
Why We Sharent
So why do we feel compelled to sharent? Perhaps it’s a mix of parental pride (we can’t help that our kids do so many adorable things), a way to reach out and find our tribe when the early years through our lives into chaos, a practical way to keep long-distance family and friends updated on our lives and a convenient way to capture all the special memories and family moments we want to freeze in time.
And while our kids are young, it’s up to us to determine what’s appropriate to share, but as they get older, we have to respect their right to privacy even as it often conflicts with our own impulses.
In a move many parents will relate to, Gwyneth Paltrow innocently posted what she thought was a cute selfie with her daughter Apple on a family ski trip, and was immediately rebuked by the teen in the comments. Applemartin: “Mom we discussed this. You may not post anything without my consent.” To which Gwyneth replied immediately underneath, “You can’t even see your face!”
Taking a Lead from the Digital Natives
Though Apple must have come around because the post is still up, she shares a common sentiment amongst digitally native teens: a frustration with a snap-happy parent and the desire to control her own image online. It’s a bit of a role reversal in which instead of parents warning their progeny of the risks of the internet, digitally savvy kids are schooling their parents on internet privacy and the necessity of granting permission to post photos.
Although the phenomenon of kids being embarrassed by their parents is nothing new, social platforms have increased the potential audience of these incidents exponentially from the kids in their class at school to anyone with an internet connection. And the shelf-life of embarrassment has increased from a few minutes of ribbing from their friends, to the digital realm where a mortifying moment can live forever. Anyone from a college admissions office to a potential employer or even a potential date could come across a sensitive photo or embarrassing post about how badly Jonny’s potty training is going.
The New York Times made a video series on sharenting in which kids discussed their concerns and aptly called their parents out on sharing photos and information about them on social media without their permission. “I absolutely think kids should have veto power over photos and it’s because of how aware I am of the implications of the digital footprint,” said one teenager to her mum.
And the law is on the kids’ side, at least in France. Under French privacy law, anyone convicted of publishing and distributing images of another person without their consent can be fined up to €45,000 and even face up to a year in prison. This includes parents publishing photos of their own kids as well.
The Way Forward
So how can parents balance their desire to sharent when traditional and most commonly used social media platforms offer little to no protection from, and in some cases encourage in order to generate revenue and garner more user data?
Even in private Facebook groups, “there is this false sense that everybody in the group knows each other and has the same interests in mind,” law professor and author of “Sharenting: Children’s Privacy in the Age of Social Media,” Stacey Steinberg told The Atlantic in an interview. “Parents and caregivers don’t just have to trust that the people they choose to share with won’t download, redistribute, or otherwise misuse images — they also have to trust that the people who can access shared baby photos have their own robust privacy settings, and that they control who else can use their social media accounts, and so on. Many parents believe privacy settings are enough of a safety net they use little discretion sharing with their chosen audience. In reality, even these posts can reach a large audience.”
Perhaps we should follow our privacy-conscious teen generation’s lead, the ones who have jumped ship from Facebook and the like in search of more privacy-led apps such as Snapchat. My Kin co-founder Matt Blom and I thought that seemed like a sensible idea, but we couldn’t find one that suited our needs so we decided to develop our own.
Kin — The Private Media Space Alternative
As proud parents, Kin was born from the desire to communicate to a 2 year old in the future the thoughts and feelings of the present, a feature we now call Future Messages. From there, we decided we needed to create a safe, secure online space for immediate family and friends to upload their most precious photos, memories and moments without worrying where their photos and data may end up. Our core tenet is to remain ad-free, a network built by families for families, not for advertisers. Your data will never be sold. Your photos are only seen by you and the people you hand select for your family page.
A safe, familiar online space where you and your nearest and dearest can congregate to let their hair down and share the stuff that really matters with only the people who really matter. Upload as many baby photos as your heart desires, but we’d still advise asking your older kids’ permission of course. We’ve created memorial accounts so you can tag the family members in photos who are gone, but not forgotten. And we’ve created Young Person accounts so you can tag children under 14 in photos and when they are old enough, convert their account to a full access version.
Let’s all take a moment to consider how we communicate with, and crucially about, our loved ones and our little ones in particular. What we do now, will impact what they can do, and the freedoms and choices they will have in their own futures. They can’t decide how their data is used or abused now, but we can, and we should. Kin gives us all peace of mind that the information and media we share about them is and was at least shared with loved ones, in a secure and private space that they can look back on, eventually take control of with Young Persons Accounts, and decide what to do with, in their future.
