What is ‘sharenting’? How parents could be harming their kids on social media
When sharing online, parents should consider only posting photos of their kids in private social media accounts and take other actions that reduce the potential risk of harm or embarrassment.
One of the increased dangers kids could face on social media this week comes from an unexpected source: their parents.
On National Daughters Day on Wednesday, many parents will share pictures of their children on their social media feeds.
Moms and dads may do the same on National Sons Day on Saturday. But “sharenting” — when parents share pictures of their kids on social media — comes with potential risks to children.
School bullies, predators and presidential campaigns
As a professor who studies social media use, I previously interviewed one teenager who told me she worried that schoolmates would use pictures of her posted by her parents — both comedians with large followings on Instagram — to make fun of her. Most bullying these days happens on phones, she said. Young people will sometimes add someone into a group chat and then post an embarrassing photo to humiliate the person.
Another possibility is that the photos could be used against children — perhaps out of context — in the future. For example, goofy photos could resurface one day when they are running for political office and trying to be taken seriously and be used in political ads by the opposition.
My past research shows girls are particularly vulnerable to coming under fire for social media content because society judges women and girls especially harshly for things such as not being perceived as polite or not being perfectly coiffed and camera-ready in every picture.
An even scarier prospect is the possibility that photos parents post could attract the attention of criminals. For example, images of children could be taken from their parents’ accounts and reposted on sites for pedophiles. And information parents post — such as the name of their children’s school or photos of their bus stop — could give away information that predators could use to track them down offline.
What kids learn from sharenting
Parents should also consider what kids learn from sharenting. If children grow up feeling responsible for constantly posing for photos to attract attention from others, they could take away the message that they should seek external affirmation — rather than focusing on their own needs and desires or doing what they think is right, even if it’s not documentable for online audiences. Seeking a lot of external approval is associated with anxiety and symptoms of depression, according to past research.
This is a particularly problematic lesson to teach girls because “they’re coming of age in a society where girls and women are judged on their physical appearance and ability to please an audience,” Leah Plunkett, executive director of Harvard Law School Online and author of “Sharenthood: Why We Should Think Before We Talk About Our Kids Online,” told me in an interview for my book.
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