Sharenting: Are parents protecting or imperiling children?
Baek Ji-min
Last year, Korean actress Lee Si-young shared photos of her trip to Busan with her son on social media. She posted pictures of her going swimming and walking along the beach with her son. However, one particular photo that revealed the back of her son standing on the terrace without clothes attracted attention. Netizens who came across the image expressed concerns, urging her to remove the photo. Consequently, she decided to take down the post, sparking a broader discussion on the potential pitfalls of “sharenting,” where sharing positive moments with children on social media could inadvertently upset or harm them.
Sharenting, a portmanteau of the words “sharing” and “parenting,” refers to the act of parents sharing photos and videos of their children on social media, such as Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok. The rise of technology, especially social media, made recording and sharing easier for parents. As social media enabled parents to share their parenting experiences, it brought a new wave of parenting culture—the sharenting syndrome. In 2013, an article in The Guardian first coined this terminology, describing it as a common phenomenon on social media. We can easily notice that there are thousands of posts of children on Instagram with hashtags including #baby, #motherlove, and #sweetheart. Sharenting is not limited to social media creators or influencers. Like baby stars who have thousands and millions of followers, the growth of children within sharenting could be watched and tracked by anyone on social media. Newborn babies have their images uploaded to social media within an hour of their existence. The everyday life of a child, such as trips to the zoo, holidays, and school performances is displayed and shared online. According to a study by Parent Zone, conducted on behalf of Nominet, which polled 2000 people, 92 percent of infants have parents sharing nearly 1200 images of their child by their fifth birthday. Social media has effectively become the modern-day child photo album.
Parents post their children’s pictures on social media because they can easily upload photos, earn information, and get emotional support. As parenting requires lots of information and advice, sharenting is a great source for parents and gives them a feeling of camaraderie as they nurture their children. Parents comment on each other, share information, and give advice about children-caring, worries, etc.. They can alleviate the feeling of social alienation due to child-rearing by communicating with fellow parents. Parents try to share the achievements of their children not only to communicate with others, but also to be supported and validated through the comments. Furthermore, parents share the moments of their children to document their growth, creating a timeline of the child to look back on.
However, sharenting does not happen in that idealistic and positive way. The oversharing debate has raged on for a long time, especially when it comes to children. As parents share every moment and detail of their child’s life including toddler tantrums, bed-wetting problems, and awkward teen moments, these posts become “oversharenting.” Sharing photos on social media is far more public, which means there is no control over the images. The act of uploading a child’s photo could lead to more profound and even dangerous ramifications. The photos or videos shared online differ from those which are found in homes or casually placed in photo albums. The audience for these images extends beyond family, close relatives, or friends, rapidly expanding as they circulate online. Parents have numerous social media followers or viewers who they have never met before, unintentionally exposing children's pictures and videos to potential abusers online, including data brokers, hackers, and pedophiles.
Parents have no way of knowing how far children’s pictures or videos can go and how they are used. According to the reports by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, half of the child sexual abuse photos were first posted by parents on social media. This summer in July 2023, Deutsche Telecom, one of the telecom companies in Germany, raised awareness for responsible handling of photos and data with a social experiment “A Message from Ella (fictional character)” for the campaign “ShareWithCare.” Through one photo shared online by Ella’s parents, researchers showed that it could create an adult deep fake model of 9-year-old Ella even with the voice of the adult Ella exquisitely incarnated by the videos. The researchers send out a warning that sharenting, considering the latest technologies, could leave children vulnerable to identity theft and fraud crimes.
Concerns about the impact of children's privacy are being raised, as they can be exposed to serious crimes such as identity fraud through the parents’ actions. Experts from Barclays predicted that by 2030, two-thirds of identity theft cases will involve sharenting. Sharenting posts such as photos, videos, and captions lead to a high possibility of identifying a child’s home, frequent location, or any disclosure of essential information that could pose potential risks. A study conducted by Security ORG revealed that more than 80% of parents use their children’s real names when sharing pictures on social media. Cybercriminals can readily parse photos, figure out information, and steal the child’s identity.
In the long term, digital content could leave permanent digital footprints of children. From the moment it is shared, anything posted online is almost impossible to completely erase, because anyone can access and disseminate the source. According to Futurism, by the age of two, more than 80 percent of children have digital footprints. Possible risks of digital footprints could involve online harassment and cyberbullying. Parents might have posted photos of children when they were little, but the photos can pop up later on, which leads to troll comments, criticism, bullying, and stalking. What parents share about their children online could leave potentially dangerous digital footprints that follow them for the rest of their lives.
Every child has a right to make their own decisions for their images posted online. With sharenting, children do not have control over what their parents are posting or what descriptive words their parents are adding to the photos or videos. It would be important for the parent to ask for their children’s consent if they are old enough to understand social media and its ramifications. For instance, Gwyneth Paltrow posted a selfie of herself and her fourteen-year-old daughter Apple Martin on Instagram, one day in 2019. In the photo, Paltrow is smiling proudly and Apple is wearing a ski helmet with her face largely covered with goggles. Only Apple’s mouth could be seen in the selfie. After the post was uploaded, more than 150,000 people liked the picture. But Apple didn’t seem to like this post; she commented on this post, showing great discontent publicly. “Mom, we have discussed this. You may not post anything without my consent.” Her mother replied, “You can’t even see your face!” Apple publicly criticized and reprimanded her mother for posting her picture. The Oscar-winning actress had upset her child by not asking for permission.
Children who are younger than Apple often have no voice to speak out against the images posted by their parents. Parents should be more careful about the pervasive nature of social media and be aware of uploading anything that contains true information, like real names, birthdays, and places they frequent. Instead, they should use nicknames or other descriptive phrases.
Some countries have legal systems that provide children the right to their own images. Recently, the French parliament introduced strict laws, which means parents could face fines and even jail sentences if they post photos that violate children’s privacy. According to a statement from the Personal Information Protection Commission made in April 2023, people under 24 in South Korea now have the option to delete digital information created when they were minors. With the aid of the government, concrete steps to address sharenting concerns could provide support for children, assuring their “right to erasure” or “right to be forgotten.”
There is still considerable complexity surrounding children's rights to online privacy and the parental role in sharing within that context. Parents, as guardians of their children, are regarded as gatekeepers of their kids' information, including matters of cybersecurity. They are the primary figures children rely on and trust the most. Parents are best positioned to determine whether certain information can be shared or not. While children may not always agree with their parents' decisions, in many cases, they may be too young to express their own thoughts and feelings. Since children are not technically allowed to join social media services until they are 13, their lives are shared through a parent's account or through their own account created by their parents. Parents are responsible for protecting and managing the digital footprint of their children. They must be careful, as sharenting can lead to unconscious, undefined consequences for the child. Communicating and trying their best to understand the voices of children is important for parents. Recently, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, used emojis to cover his children’s faces. As such, rearranging privacy settings and using blurry faces or emojis, could also be considered as a means to protect children’s privacy.
Another example of parents who chose to protect their child’s privacy in the midst of sharenting is the Korean YouTube duo Real Couple. Over the years, these parents had regularly shared videos capturing their baby's precious moments, presenting a seemingly positive side of sharenting by spreading joy to their subscribers. The father even noted that engaging in sharenting had motivated him to become a better parent, prompting him to step out of his comfort zone and partake in diverse outdoor activities with his child. However, the couple recently revealed their decision to discontinue their channel. They noticed that their baby had become aware of the camera and began altering her behavior consciously. Out of concern that sharenting would negatively affect the child, the parents made the protective decision to stop sharing frequent videos of her life.
While there may not be a perfect solution, the increasing social interest in sharenting could create an online co-parenting community, displaying the sentiment of the proverb “It takes a village to raise a child.” This means that parents, friends, neighbors, and even local communities could work together for one child’s well-rounded growth, especially in the online realm, where their collective vigilance could safeguard the child. In the ever-evolving environment of social media, where anyone can access posted photos, parents could protect each other’s children from potential danger through mutual monitoring like the platform users did for Lee Si-young. As sharenting arises as a pressing issue, and as the first generation of children grown within the Web 2.0 social media era currently reach their pre-teen years, ongoing social discussions will be essential. Initiatives such as the “ShareWithCare” social campaigns would help raise awareness of the issue, and governmental support such as education could help parents set their own appropriate parameters. All in all, sharenting itself may not be a bad thing. Instead, it could be understood as proof that parents desire to share the joy they feel as their lives unfold with their children. With collaborative efforts, a balance could be reached, both maintaining the benefits of sharenting and protecting our beloved children.