Anyone that reads my articles knows I have a lot to say about social media. It is so easy to abuse, and a lot of people make a habit of doing just that.
One of the most irksome ways people misuse these sites–Facebook in particular–is by creating a digital identity for their children before they are old enough to consent.
Far too often, excited mothers and fathers chronicle every aspect of their child’s life and post them for the world to see, doing away with any sort of privacy for the child. This behavior is actually common enough that it has spawned its own word: “sharenting.”
The Atlantic claims that 90 percent of all two year olds in the United States have some form of an online presence due to sharenting, and I do not think this number is a reassuring one.
Sharenting creates a wealth of problems for younger generations that no one has ever had to deal with in the past. For the same reasons that taking and posting a picture of a random stranger is wrong, posting excessive pictures of your child is wrong, too.
Facebook is not a photo album to be kept stashed in a closet. It is a medium that gives, at the very least, hundreds of people access to potentially sensitive information.
One might think that parents are responsible in what they post about their children on social media, but Medical Daily states, “28 percent of parents discuss trying to get their kids to sleep, 26 percent share advice on nutrition and eating tips, 19 percent share about discipline, 17 percent about daycare or preschool, and 13 percent about behavior problems.” As any person old enough to have been in middle school knows, information like this will create a sense of glee in the hearts of bullies everywhere.
Parents must come to realize that children are not pets, and that parents must be more careful about what they post regarding their children than they are even about themselves.
People can and will use sensitive information against others, and parents have to be aware before they throw caution to the wind.
Embarrassment is only the least damaging outcome of sharenting, however. It can also result in real danger for children.
With the information commonly posted on social media, people with malicious intentions can easily find out everything they need to know about a child, and unfortunately, that list of people also includes criminals.
An article from the Washington Post states, “parents may be divulging not just their struggles in raising their children, but also their child’s physical location and habits, which can be fodder for predators.” Yes, it is not terribly likely that anything will happen, but why leave an online paper trail directly to your child if you do not need to?
Aside from real-life consequences, there are instances of people engaging in “digital kidnapping.” This entails downloading pictures of another child and using them to pretend as if they belong to one’s own child.
It is easy for us to take the internet for granted, but children are unable to defend themselves and take their digital footprint into their own hands.
Because the internet is a place of anonymity, it is easy to fall victim to the bad intentions of others, and it is almost impossible—even as a parent— to know something like digital kidnapping is happening to your child.
It is simple to remedy the problem: do not take the risk. We owe it to younger generations to allow them to have control over their own digital destinies, just as the rest of us do.
It is impossible to know what consequences may occur as a result of sharenting, and it is wise to not risk incurring unnecessary grief for children in the future.
