Guest Post: Chubby Cheeks, Tiny Hands, and Digital Footprints

Chubby Cheeks, Tiny Hands, and Digital Footprints

By Kira Vandermeulen

We’ve all seen those sweet posts featuring snaps of our friend’s baby with chubby cheeks and little hands. Today, social media is filled with children. This only makes sense: what with kids being so cute, why wouldn’t you Instagram it? However, as it becomes easier to share information, it can conversely become more difficult to decide what should and shouldn’t be posted.

The New Norm of ‘Sharenting’

Sharenting is “the habitual use of social media to share news, images, ect. of one’s children.” [1] The Collins Dictionary’s addition of this term in 2016 highlights just how commonplace it has become to post content about children online. Take a look at celebrities like DJ Kahled, who have Instagram handles for their kids or family Youtube channels, such as vloggers like Britney Morrow. [5, 7] Parents want to celebrate the close connection between parent and child and often do so by sharing images, videos, or stories about their children online. While it may be true that social media is a wonderful tool for sharing in the challenges and joys of parenting, it can also become unsafe and have a lasting impact on the digital identity of the child when photos, locations, and personal information are shared.

So, what are the risks?

Oversharing about children online can provide pedophiles with access to intimate photos of children through hashtags like #bathtime. [3] Locational safety can also be compromised by photos with geotagging, ‘check in’s,’ or any information that allows for identification of a child’s home or school address. Furthermore, institutions like Barclay’s Bank project that by 2030, online oversharing of personal information through mediums like sharenting will account for nearly 800 million US dollars in online fraud. [2] Concerns are also being raised over data mining and facial recognition technologies being used on children by corporations due to parents’ sharing. [4]

It’s an issue of consent

Sharenting may have ‘innocent intentions,’ or it can be overtly exploitative, such as sharing stories about emotionally vulnerable things a child says or experiences, sharing photos of children at extremist events to promote political views, or commercial exploitation of children’s lives on parent vlogs for followers and/or monetization. Whether parents have the best of intentions or the worst of intentions, the outcome may be the same. Thus, sharenting opens up many questions around consent.

Most children now typically possess a digital footprint by the age of two, and almost a quarter of American children make their online debut with sonogram photos before they have even entered the world. [6] Many of today’s children are inheriting a social media presence from birth to which they were unable to meaningfully consent. As legal guardians, parents have a right to share. However, children should also have a right to privacy and should possess agency in the curation of their own digital identities. Parents must seek to strike a balance between these two rights.

The Significance of Digital Footprint

Current parents and potential parents of the future have a responsibility to understand that any information, once shared online, is no longer within the sharer’s complete control and has the potential to exist indefinitely. Posting that cute photo of #pottytraining or that tantrum video might not be so sweet in ten years. Down the line, anything posted could be manipulated, cause embarrassment, or be visible to future employers and academic institutions. Posting about yourself as a parent creates a digital tattoo for your child that can have implications throughout the course of their lifetime.

What can parents do to mitigate risks for their children?

● Keep account settings on private
● Avoid posting naked or intimate photos
● Share via more private platforms, such as individual Whatsapp chats or baby media sharing platforms like tinybeans
● Do not share any information about children that are not your own without permission
● Never share information that reveals the address of your child’s home or school, such as a photo of your child in their school uniform
● Place your device on airplane mode prior to taking photos
● Use a nickname when posting about your child
● Include your child in the conversation and selection of what and how much gets posted
● Before sharing ask, “is this something that I would be comfortable sharing if it were about me?”, as well as “do I want this to be a part of my child’s digital footprint indefinitely?”

Are you someone who is conscious about how your online activities affect your digital footprint? Had you ever thought about how your online activities could also affect today’s children as well as future generations? Feel free to leave a comment below to tell us about your thoughts on the involvement of children on social media.