If there’s one thing that all parents love to do, it’s share pictures of their children. Now, sharing pictures with grandparents, other parents or family is one thing but sharing stuff on social media can have some consequences in the long run.
What is Sharenting?
Sharenting is a newly coined word for oversharing a large part of your children’s lives online. While sharenting seems like a new concept, it has existed in various forms even before social media. Parents have always shared info with friends, family and extended friends and acquaintances about their kids. It’s just now, that social media has caused us to take a relook about oversharing. But what’s important to remember here is that you are building a child’s image which your child may not like or may not agree it at all.
Support v/s peer pressure
Many times, parents are quite anxious about parenting and feel the need to build a parenting community to share their woes and wins or to just plain help each other. And social media naturally offers a platform for this. The flip side to this is the pressure that parents face, to keep up with other parents. Anyone posting anything new about their child, can indirectly coax others to join the band wagon. Am I buying the right things for my child? Am I see the right doctor? Am I a good parent? All these are doubts that are created by sharing, comparing and reading too much on social media. So what’s important is to understand your limits and choose what you want to do online carefully. If you want help, ask for it. But you needn’t post a pic of your child with your question even if others do it.
Digital online privacy for kids
When you post something about your child, always remember that you’re building an online personality for him/ her. And the crazy thing is, your child is not even aware of it. Radically speaking, a child can sue a parent for doing this without permission. For now, let’s look at the non-legal damage. Eventually, when your child grows up, they would want to build their own profiles for work, school, dating etc as per their choice. Now, when you’ve already uploaded so much online throughout their childhood, their online identity is already established. And it may be very hard for them to change it, remove it or even start all over again. We don’t know what the impact of sharenting will be over the years to come.
It’s ‘always’ public online
No matter how many security filters you use, or privacy policies you read/ follow, what’s online is info that you have ‘no control’ over. Irrespective of all the accounts you have in private on social media, your best friend can easily take a screenshot of you in a lovely dress to share it with her mother. All this is done in good faith. Her mother shows it to her friend, who sees you carrying your child and says, “ what a lovely baby.” It’s not necessary that your best friend will misuse the pic. But, think about whether you want to give the whole world access to your personal info.
Share responsibly!