Sharenting and Children's Right to Privacy
- capricekent
- Apr 24, 2021
- 4 min read
It is a fair assumption that most young people that have grown up with social media have had to have an awkward conversation with a family member to delete an embarrassing post or picture of themselves. It raises an interesting question as to whether young children have a right to privacy and if there should be regulations surrounding what can be shared without their consent. ‘Sharenting’ is a term coined to define parents sharing their children’s personal pictures and lives on social media.
Right to Privacy
On a philosophical level, sharenting exposes children to the larger digital world without their consent, which does raise the issue of a child’s right to privacy. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child sets out the human rights of every person under 18, Article 16 contains the right to privacy:
Legally, a child has protection over their privacy and family life, however, this can become an issue when the parents or family members are the ones sharing the information online. It begs the question of whether there should be stricter regulations on social media platforms when posting pictures of children and whether they can be made public.
“Research by AVG, claims that the average infant now acquires a digital footprint before their first tooth.” While the internet and social media are constantly developing and growing larger it is important to highlight that digital footprints can last forever so there needs to be a better form of regulation.
It must also be mentioned that the safety of your child should be strongly considered when sharing pictures online as “nursery and workplaces can be ascertained by inspecting the background of photos shared online (using tools like Google Street View) so caution is advised on showing house numbers and tagging locations on social media”.
Identity Fraud
"Another decade of parents over-sharing personal information online" will produce 7.4 million incidents per year of identity fraud costing £667million per year by 2030, says Barclays. It raises an issue as most information posted online by parents include names, date of birth, names of pets and lots of personal information that can be used in the future to unlock bank accounts etc.
One issue that has been highlighted in America is “there have been reports of teenagers going to apply for driving licences, only to find someone has already got a licence in their name and been banned”. While it is often not considered that this could be a risk when posting cute pictures or facts about your child it is becoming a more prevalent issue. Even having access to a child’s full name and date of birth can lead to identity theft.
Celebrities
On a more niche level celebrities have taken to covering pictures of their babies or children’s faces to protect their privacy. For example, Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard regularly discuss parenting on their social media accounts, but they cover their daughters' faces with emojis. This could be applied to all parents who post pictures of their children online to protect their privacy, until they could be of an age to consent.
Family Vogging and Accounts
One popular phenomenon of the internet ‘sharenting’ sphere is the introduction of ‘mommy blogs’, where new mothers may ask for advice or post about their experiences as a mother. One of the issues here is that a digital footprint will last a lifetime and what may seem like an innocent titbit on bed wetting may lead to bullying in the future after one google search. The issue can be raised where their right to privacy may not be taken as seriously as it should for example one mother explaining “if it's just a little bit embarrassing … well, they're going to have to learn to laugh at themselves at some point." The issue arising is that children do not have control over what they can be portrayed as, as a photograph posted online can last forever, the unknowns are where the risks lie. “By the age of five the average UK child has 1,500 photos of them online according to a 2016 study by Parentzone” and while this may be considered as documenting your child’s development or sharing pictures for friends and family to see, it is taking away the child’s choice of whether they want to be online.
While many of these pages can have tremendous advantages for those seeking advice on their children there should be a level of anonymity required to protect children’s right to privacy. One of the biggest markets of sharenting is family vlogging channels on YouTube or even children having their own channels. Popular YouTube ‘kidfluencer’ Ryan Kaji has a net worth of $50 million for his popular YouTube channel reviewing children’s toys. The Centre of Information Rights have expressed concerns about the lack of protection for children in 'YouTube families'. While it may be rising in popularity YouTube families are entirely unregulated which leads to a number of concerns as to how the children are treated if they do not wish to film or if they are not given adequate breaks or privacy. Whilst the children are ‘performing’ on YouTube It is not the same as children who are actors or performers on screen as they are not legally protected i.e. having limits to the amount of hours they can work.
Conclusion
‘Sharenting’ and family vlogging is a growing industry that needs immediate regulation to protect the children behind the camera. There could be serious problems further on in their lives due to information posted about them online and presently there is not enough anonymity provided for the children that cannot give consent, especially those with pictures posted from the sonogram onwards. There needs to be regulation provided by the government as well as stricter enforcement of social media platforms.
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