Babies, like dogs and cats, are nowadays everywhere on the Internet. In the United States, over 90 percent of 2-year-old children already had a presence on the web and over 80 percent of youngsters below that age are already making a presence on social media, according to a 2010 survey. Collins English Dictionary calls this phenomenon 'sharenting' or the habitual use of social media to share photos and news of one's children. However people can't help to wonder, what sharenting is all about or is it safe for kids.
Sharenting allows parents to proudly present their children to family and friends all over the world. However according to Stacey Steinberg, associate director of Center on Children and Families at the University of Florida, most parents who do "sharenting" have not yet thought of the dangers and possible reach of what they are posting and sharing on the Internet. To shed light on this matter, pediatricians, researchers and other advocates of childcare have been developing a campaign to increase awareness on the clash between the right of a child to privacy and the freedom of parents to publish.
Steinberg wrote on her paper, "Sharenting: Children's Privacy in the Age of Social Media," how the online photos of a child could be an aim of different threats of security and safety. Too much information of a child online, whether on private or public social media accounts, can bring so many risks to the child like identity theft and digital kidnapping.
Though parents only do what is good for their child, sometimes it is nearly inevitable to be ensnared and be victims of the vast influence of digital age and social media, where even traditional parenting style become a primary paradigm change. Even celebrity parents can't escape the influence of social media.
Just recently, celebrity parents Zoe Foster, and Hamish Blake has been criticized for regularly splashing videos and photos of their 2-year-old baby boy Sony on Instagram. The two have been accused of "sharenting", a word used to define the too much use of social media by parents to share and post any content about their children, according to Mail Online.
However, the two hit back by posting and sharing more photos of their child. They may have probably not yet considered the impact of sharenting to their child, just what like Steinberg said.
