1 day ago
22
While it’s important to recognise that “sharenting” can impact children, should we really be blaming parents and telling them that their children are going to rebel (Brooklyn Beckham and Prince Harry are the canaries in the coalmine. The children of Instagram will be next, 25 January)? Many parents feel under immense pressure from family and friends to share their children’s photos. Academic research with parents shows that many struggle to reconcile their concerns about protecting their children’s privacy with their desire to make their family proud and to respond to family demands to share photos with them.
There are increasing numbers of parents who are making money out of sharenting, but we also need to think carefully before we criticise these parents and consider why they may be doing so. Research again shows that pressure on parents to ensure their children do well, expectations that parents are physically present to support their children, and workplace environments that fail to support parents juggling home and work, are all key drivers for them becoming influencers. And where parents start earning money through sharenting, but subsequently express concerns about harming children’s privacy, it can be a struggle to get out of it.
It is in the interests of social media platforms and the brands that work with influencer parents to ensure that parents post content regularly and that their posts are of interest to a wide audience. Pictures of children are appealing to a wide audience; they sell products. The information that sharenting parents reveal on social media, and also what the parents visiting platforms reveal, is valuable to those platforms.
Let us stop criticising parents and instead think about how best we can ensure that parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles understand the potential consequences of sharenting. There are alternatives to mainstream social media that parents can use to share photos with their families privately, such as the Kin and Familink apps. Instead of criticising parents, why aren’t we telling them about these options?
Dr Claire Bessant
Associate professor, Northumbria Law School, Newcastle upon Tyne
Hear, hear! Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is absolutely right about children’s right to privacy and parents parading their children on social media. I hope that one day their right to privacy is protected, and that exposing children’s lives for the world to consume will be recognised as a sign of harm. Psychological abuse is already recognised in safeguarding legislation. There is a right to privacy in article 16 of the UN convention on the rights of the child, and in article 8 of the European convention on human rights.
What will it take before parents and society see this practice for what it is – inherently damaging to children? With governments exploring banning young people from accessing social media, surely the natural companion is that young people shouldn’t be paraded on social media either? The harms of being on social media and documenting your life on social media are well documented. Why is there an exception that allows parents and caregivers to inflict this harm on those who are too young to consent?
Parents are wringing their hands at the erosion of their teenagers’ self-esteem because of social media, but they put their children on that path. They modelled it for them. Granted, when we started we didn’t know it was wrong. But now we do. So let’s stop.
Rachel Linthe
Little Downham, Cambridgeshire
