Privacy Please! The Dangers of Sharenting
We all know that mum.
The oversharer. She loves to share photos of every single moment of her child’s life from the moment they enter this world. She’ll update you on the baby’s first steps, first crawl, first everything.
And for some, you’ll be thinking… “What’s wrong with that?”
I get it. You’re on social media and you want to show the world how adorable and proud you are of your kid.
But how much is too much? And what are the ramifications of oversharing?
If You Didn’t Sharent, Did You Even Parent?
Blum-Ross defines ‘sharenting’ as parents who regularly post detailed information about their children on social media.
Being a 90s kid, I remember going to Kmart and printing out photos to add to our family photo albums. Whenever my relatives would visit from South Korea, my mum would take out these albums and pass it around for everyone to see.
Now fast forward to 2019, you can stumble upon an account of a child and know where they go to school, what their favourite food is, and what their plans are for the weekend. This is a child you will probably never meet, have no relation to and could be living in a completely different country. From a click of a button, you are granted direct access into their everyday life.
McAfee research shows 30% of Australian parents share a post of their child on social media platforms a minimum of once a week. Social media platforms like Facebook have facilitated in sharenting with their Scrapbook feature, that allows parents to automatically collect photos of their kids and store it in one place. This act of sharenting has become so common that you might perceive it as part of a fun, innocent, 21st-century lifestyle.
However, my concerns lie with the young stars who are being deliberately “used, framed, and appropriated” by their (over)sharenting mothers in order to maximise their advertorial potential.
Welcome To The World Sweet Nameless Girls
Take @kcstauffer’s Instagram account, for example. Mila and Emma are four-year-old twins who have gained immense fame from viral videos posted on social media. By following a script, the kids discuss relatable ‘grown-up’ issues such as not wanting to go to the gym, being single, and getting that summer body.
The girls’ mother, Katie Stauffer, was an influencer before her twins were born; having grown a following from sharing photos of her three older children. Therefore, Mila and Emma are what is described by Crystal Abidin as ‘micro-microcelebrities’, as they are children who have inherited celebrity from obtaining fame and exposure from their influencer mother.
Like most micro-microcelebrities, the twins’ exposure on social media began through sonograms and pregnancy bump updates . Although these types of posts have become increasingly common, influencer mothers deliberately share these images to “to claim digital estates for their micro-celebrities to-be”.
The Child’s Digital Footprint
A digital footprint is “the digital traces each one of us leaves behind as we conduct our lives”. Children in today’s digital era have little involvement in establishing their own online identity. This is due to parents and loved ones who in advance, begin constructing a child’s “digital footprint on their behalf”.
As explained by Anna Brosch, it’s worryingly common to see parents sharing intimate details about their child such as their personal information, or content that may be embarrassing for children. By creating this digital footprint, there is a risk of unanticipated circumstances both now and in the child’s future; such as the child’s societal development and future job prospects.
These children might grow up and become young adults who choose not to create a digital footprint at all. However, their past will continue to follow them into adulthood because, as we all know, once something is online, it’s there forever.
So What Can Be Done?
I believe what this boils down to is consent with these child influencers. Kids have the right to control their digital footprint, and adults should respect this.
As a parent, you might think you know what’s best for your child, but ultimately this is their lives you are dealing with not yours.
So, you may be wondering…are you not going to post photos of your future baby online? Call me old fashioned, but I’ll do what my mum did with my baby photos. Keep it safely stored away in a photo album.
