This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here.
My baby pictures and videos are a source of embarrassment. I have images of myself wearing nothing but a diaper and videos of me smearing food on my face instead of eating it. However, being old enough, these embarrassing moments are safely stored away in physical photo albums and VHS tapes in my parents’ attic. Even my earliest digital activities, such as posting emotional MySpace photo captions and homemade music videos, are lost to time. I feel relieved when I remember that these artifacts have vanished. It’s even more alarming to see children on the internet today, who won’t be so lucky.
In December, I came across a TikTok video of two young sisters named Olivia and Millie opening Christmas presents. When they opened the large boxes in front of them and found suitcases instead, Millie, who appeared to be around 4 years old, burst into tears. It was clear that luggage was not what she wanted from Santa. Her parents tried to explain that the real presents, tickets to a four-day Disney cruise, were inside the suitcases. However, Millie couldn’t stop screaming and crying. Her breakdown was witnessed by millions of strangers, with thousands of them commenting on it. One comment even said, “This is a great ad for birth control.” (The TikTok video has been deleted since then.)
Two decades ago, this tantrum would have been a family anecdote or a home video shown to relatives on Christmas Eve. But now, thoughtless choices made years ago, such as a keg stand being photographed or an argument in a grocery store being recorded, can define our digital presence. A generation of parents, like Millie’s, are burdening their children with an online dossier that they have no control over.
The children of the Facebook era, which began in 2006 when the platform opened to everyone, are growing up and facing the consequences of their parents’ social media use as they prepare to enter the workforce. Many of them are stepping into a digital persona that has already been created for them, and erasing it is not within their power.
Caymi Barrett, now 24, had a mother who publicly posted Barrett’s personal moments on Facebook, including bath photos, her MRSA diagnosis, the fact that she was adopted, and the time she was involved in a car accident caused by a drunk driver. The distress caused by this eventually led Barrett to become an advocate for children’s internet privacy. However, when she was a teenager and had just signed up for her first Twitter account, she followed her mother’s example and complained about her siblings and openly discussed her medical issues. It was the younger users who pointed out the problem, urging her to take down those posts. Today’s teens are also cautious about oversharing and often joke on TikTok about the fear of their peers discovering their parents’ Facebook accounts. Stephen Balkam, the CEO of the nonprofit Family Online Safety Institute, mentioned that even younger children are experiencing a “digital coming-of-age” and finding discomfort in it. He said, “What we’ve seen is very mature 10-, 11-, 12-year-olds sitting down with their parents, going, ‘Mom, what were you thinking?'”
In the United States, parental authority overshadows a child’s right to privacy, and we have normalized sharing information and images of children that we would never do with adults. Parents regularly share stories of diaper-changing mishaps, potty-training successes, and details about a child’s first period to an audience of hundreds or thousands of people. There are no real rules against it. While social media platforms have guidelines for combating truly inappropriate content involving minors, such as physical abuse, child nudity, neglect, and endangerment, sharing non-abusive content can also have damaging effects on children whose lives have been meticulously documented online.
For parents, quitting posting on social media can be difficult. Views, likes, and comments provide a form of positive reinforcement, especially for parents whose work is mostly invisible and often unappreciated. Sara Petersen, author of the book Momfluenced: Inside the Maddening, Picture-Perfect World of Mommy Influencer Culture, stated, “The most tangible proof of our work is children themselves.” She added, “And sometimes it’s really just nice to post a cute photo and have 10 or 12 people say, ‘So cute.'”
Getting likes and comments is one thing, but money is another. Families who extensively document their lives on YouTube or TikTok can build large audiences, secure sponsorships, and earn ad revenue. Currently, no state or federal laws entitle the children of these family vloggers to a share of the earnings. However, legislation has been introduced in states like Washington and Illinois to address this issue, as reported by The Washington Post.
Some new parents believe that subjecting children to invasive public scrutiny is inexcusable. Kristina, a 34-year-old mother from Los Angeles, has only posted a few photos of her daughter and always covers her face in them. She explained, “We didn’t really want to share her image publicly because she can’t consent to that.” However, many adults don’t respect Kristina’s decision. She shared, “I had someone basically insinuate if there was something wrong with my daughter because I wasn’t sharing her.”
Even if parents decide to keep their children off social media, they can’t control what other people do. Kristina mentioned that she has had to ask friends and family to take down photos they have posted of her daughter. With everyone having a camera in their pocket, encounters on the street or at birthday parties have the potential to breach her family’s boundaries, whether knowingly or unknowingly.
Barrett still feels the effects of her mother’s decade of oversharing. When she was 12 years old, she was followed home by a man who recognized her from the internet. Later, classmates bullied her because they knew intimate details about her life that her mother had posted online. Eventually, she dropped out of high school. Her relationship with her mother suffered greatly due to her mother’s social media habits. Even with other people, Barrett is extremely private and paranoid about sharing personal information. She confessed, “I get afraid to even tell my friends or my fiancé something because in the back of my mind, I’m constantly thinking, ‘Is this going to be weaponized against me on the internet?'”
Denial of responsibility! VigourTimes is an automatic aggregator of Global media. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, and all materials to their authors. For any complaint, please reach us at – [email protected]. We will take necessary action within 24 hours.