- Adopt a public health model to disseminate info to parents on dangers of sharenting and responsible social media use through edu. progs.
- there is a need to balance the parents’ right to freedom of expression with the child’s right to privacy
- Privacy, respect and trust is vital in a healthy parent-child relationship
The extent to which sharenting is a problem in Sri Lanka at present should be assessed in the context of the socialisation and parenting-related practices within the local cultural context in order to design educational programmes in a background where experts recommend that a public health model should be adopted to disseminate information on the dangers of sharenting and the responsible use of social media among parents.
These observations were made in an opinion piece written on "Sharenting: How much is too much?" which was authored by Senior Lecturer at the Sri Jayewardenepura University's Medical Sciences Faculty's Psychiatry Department and Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist at the Colombo South Teaching Hospital in Kalubowila, Y.M. Rohanachandra and published in the Sri Lanka Journal of Child Health's 52nd Volume's third issue in September 2023.
Sharenting
Social media has become a popular method of communication, for sharing information, entertainment, marketing and keeping up to date with current news and trends. By July of last year (2022), per "Global social media statistics", there were 4.7 billion social media users globally, which is a 5.1% increase from the previous year (2021). Social media is commonly used to share photos and videos, with 70.2% of Instagram users and 64.5% of Facebook users reporting using these sites for this purpose.
In such a background, A. Blum-Ross and S. Livingstone in "Sharenting, parent blogging, and the boundaries of the digital self" notes that posting images, videos and information about one’s children has become a social norm. Often, as pointed out in S.B. Steinberg's "Sharenting: Children's privacy in the age of social media", the sharing of information about one’s children precedes their birth, with close to a quarter of parents sharing the images of their antenatal sonograms. More than 90% of parents post about their children on social media and close to half, creates separate social media accounts on behalf of their children. Not surprisingly, per AVG Technologies's "‘AVG digital diaries – Digital birth’", by the age of two years, more than 80% of children have a digital footprint created by their parents.
The term ‘sharenting’ has been coined to describe this new phenomenon. Sharenting is defined as the habitual use of social media to share news, images, etc., of one’s children.
It is formulated, according to M. Marasli, E. Suhendan, N.H. Yilmazturk and F. Cok's "Parents’ shares on social networking sites about their children: Sharenting" and P. Otero's "Sharenting-Should children’s lives be disclosed on social media", by combining the terms ‘sharing’ and ‘parenting’. The main reason that parents post about their children online is to share the milestones and information of their children with relatives. The validating feedback that the parents receive in return, reinforces the sharing behaviour.
Parents are often anxious about their children’s use of social media and its effects. However, when it comes to posting about their children, parents tend to overlook the possible negative effects that it may have on their children. Sharenting may also be associated with similar detrimental effects. Hence, there is a need to balance the parents’ right to freedom of expression (FoE) with the child’s right to privacy.
A. Brosch's "When the child is born into the Internet: Sharenting as a growing trend among parents on Facebook" shows that parents who use Facebook have 200 or more friends on the platform on average, and that this includes people that they would not consider as friends in the offline world. Many parents have profiles that have minimal privacy settings, making the shared content accessible to more people than they think. Per L. Battersby's "Millions of social media photos found on child exploitation sharing sites", in Australia, it was found that 50% of the images shared on paedophilic sites were taken from social media sites, which highlights the dangers of posting pictures of children online. Half of the parents share personal information of their child, such as their name, school and location at a specific time, which makes children vulnerable to abuse, exploitation, kidnapping and identity theft. K. Haley's "Sharenting and the potential right to be forgotten" shows that 76% of the kidnappings of minors are done by relatives or acquaintances, which shows the risk of sharing the personal information of the child, even among acquaintances. Personal data shared online can be collected for marketing purposes and be accessible to “dataveillance” firms who then sell this information to employment agencies and college admission offices, among others. This may even lead to potential college and job rejections in children later in their lives.
Parents’ FoE vs. Child’s privacy
Parents are also known to share content that their children may find embarrassing. M.M. Davis's "Parents on social media: Likes and dislikes of sharenting" shows that 56% of parents share potentially embarrassing content and that another 27% share potentially inappropriate content of their child (e.g., pictures in which their child is only partially dressed), which could possibly damage the child’s reputation and also lead to bullying. S. Udenze and O.S. Bode's "Sharenting in the digital age: A netnographic investigation" explains that sharenting may give children a distorted view of privacy, leading to an acceptance of their personal details being widely accessible.
While children and adolescents generally view sharing positive content about their achievements and happy family moments by their parents as acceptable, E. Levy's "Parenting in the digital age: How are we doing" and G. Ouvrein and K. Verswijvel's "Sharenting: Parental adoration or public humiliation? A focus group study on adolescents' experiences with sharenting against the background of their own impression management" suggest that children often feel embarrassed, frustrated and annoyed by their parents’ sharing practices. Parents and children may have different views on what is suitable to be shared. While adolescents are preoccupied with the perfect physical appearance, parents may be less concerned about the physical appearance of their children when posting pictures. While parents consider using endearments (e.g., my princess, my angel) while referring to their children on social media as an expression of love, adolescents consider this as highly annoying and unsuitable. This may, according to M. Lipu and A. Siibak's "‘Take it down!’: Estonian parents’ and pre-teens’ opinions and experiences with sharenting" lead to conflicts within the parent-child relationship as children are often unable to voice their opinion on their preferences on what is being shared by their parents, or their views are often ignored. Privacy, respect and trust is vital in a healthy parent-child relationship, and disregarding the child’s right to privacy and their opinions when posting on social media can impact the child’s ability to build a trusting relationship with their parents.
Darkside of sharenting
Sharenting can undermine the parental authority in regulating their children’s use of technology and social media. By frequently posting about their children on social media, parents, per B. Nansen and D. Jayemanne's "Infants, interfaces, and intermediation: Digital parenting and the production of 'iPad baby' videos on YouTube', not only introduce their children to social media, but also become the mediator between their children and the social media.
Sharenting can influence identity development during adolescence. Having the freedom to create one’s identity is vital during adolescence. However, the online identity that parents create for their child, by posting pictures and updates, may conflict with the identity that the adolescents want to create for themselves, which may lead to identity confusion and parent-child conflict.
Although there are certain risks associated with sharenting, those do not imply that parents should stop sharing any content of their children online. The aim is to raise awareness among parents about the dark side of sharenting, so that they are empowered to make informed decisions about their sharenting practices. B.E. Keith and S. Steinberg's "Parental sharing on the Internet: Child privacy in the age of social media and the pediatrician’s role" suggests that paediatric practitioners play an important role in helping parents navigate the sharenting experience while protecting the best interests of the child.
As a general rule, experts advise parents not to share online any content of their child that they would not share publicly. Parents also need to familiarise themselves with the privacy policies of the social media sites that they use and set their personal privacy settings to make the shared contents only accessible to restricted audiences. Furthermore, parents should be cautious when adding friends to their social media sites, in order to ensure that anyone who has access to view these posts do not use them for unintended purposes. Moreover, parents are advised against posting pictures of their child, no matter how young, in any state of undress. Parents should also refrain from sharing personal identification data (e.g., full name, date of birth) or posts displaying the location of the child at a particular time (e.g., posting the child’s school and class will let anyone know where to find the child when school ends).
Parents also need to consider the child’s views and take their consent before posting about them on social media and avoid sharing potentially embarrassing content. If parents are sharing their parenting struggles or their children’s mental or physical health problems online, in order to get advice and support from others, it is advised to share this anonymously. Parents should also keep in mind the close relationship between parental social media use and social media use in children and the need to model healthy ways of social media use.
A public health model should be adopted to disseminate information on the dangers of sharenting and the responsible use of social media among parents.