Pretty much everyone knows what the phrase "Charlie bit me" relates to. Uploaded to YouTube in 2007, the clip of an English toddler and his baby brother is the most viewed viral video in the world (excepting professional music videos). But has the success of this and similar clips encouraged parents to over share their children's exploits on social media? According to a new report, three quarters of parents have witnessed episodes where this "sharenting" trend has gone too far.
By the time children are old enough to use social media themselves, many of them already have an established online identity created for them by their parents.
By the time children are old enough to use social media themselves, many of them already have an established online identity created for them by their parents.
Although most of us find videos and photos of kids doing funny things cute or entertaining, the researchers behind the report, the University of Michigan (U-M) C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health, note a dark side to sharing this kind of information about children online.
For instance, there is an extreme phenomenon called "digital kidnapping," which involves strangers hijacking online images of children and presenting them as being their own children within their social media - often creating elaborate, fictitious parallel lives for these children.
Another potential risk is more prosaic, but no less damaging - cyberbullying. For instance, the report authors refer to the news in 2013 of a Facebook group notorious for making fun of "ugly" babies.
Indeed, by the time children are old enough to use social media themselves, many of them already have an established online identity created for them by their parents.
As Sarah J. Clark, associate director of the C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health and associate research scientist in the U-M Department of Pediatrics, explains:
"Sharing the joys and challenges of parenthood and documenting children's lives publicly has become a social norm so we wanted to better understand the benefits and cons of these experiences. On one hand, social media offers today's parents an outlet they find incredibly useful. On the other hand, some are concerned that oversharing may pose safety and privacy risks for their children."
Clark and colleagues found that parents found social media useful as a way of getting advice from more experienced parents. Almost 70% of the parents in the study said they used social media in this way.
In particular, the following were popular topics the parents taking part in the poll reported discussing online:
- Getting kids to sleep (28%)
- Nutrition and eating tips (26%)
- Discipline (19%)
- Daycare/preschool (17%)
- Behavior problems (13%).
Social media helps parents to 'feel less alone'
Nearly three quarters of parents said social media helped them to feel less alone. But although 62% of parents said this use of social media for parenting advice helped them to worry less, nearly two thirds of parents reported being concerned that strangers would learn private information about their child or share photos of them.
Three quarters of parents said they knew parents who "over shared" - behavior which can include posting inappropriate photos, making information public on their child's identity and location or simply posting embarrassing content.
More than half of the parents were worried that their child might be embarrassed by what was being shared when they get older. Indeed, just a few months into their new found fame, the mother of the "Charlie bit me" boys told British newspaper The Telegraph that they were already embarrassed by the attention they were receiving.
"These networks bring parents together in ways that weren't possible before, allowing them to commiserate, trade tips and advice, share pride for milestones and reassure one another that they're not alone," Clark says.
And yet the potential remains for "sharing" and "over sharing" to become easily blurred, Clark acknowledges:
"Parents may share information that their child finds embarrassing or too personal when they're older but once it's out there, it's hard to undo. The child won't have much control over where it ends up or who sees it."
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