Sharenting: Munchausen’s By Social Media
WE all , that means ALL, need to stop sharing so much. It can and most likely will come back…
A limp, flushed little body lying on a couch.
A swollen face framed by a hospital pillow, an IV in a pale arm.
A child being taken by stretcher into a medical facility, captioned with the horrific speculation as to the child’s injuries.
This is not the nightly news.
This is Facebook. Instagram. What is showing up on social media feeds everywhere.
These are all examples of posts made by parents, of their own children. Feverish and lethargic, hospitalized, traumatically injured.
This isn’t Munchausen’s by Proxy. Nor is it just oversharing.
It has its own name: Sharenting.
Until I saw a parent’s video of their injured child transported by stretcher (yes, a video), I never thought about researching the implications of sharing too much about one’s children on social media. I only considered how I felt about it. These images tugged at my heart but not at my fingers. Of course I felt bad for these kids that were sick or hurt. But I couldn’t bring myself to comment or “emoji” on the posts. Because if I did, I felt I would be encouraging people to use their children’s illnesses and injuries in order to receive a tidal wave of words, “hearts” and sad emojis.
Were these children asked whether they wanted their pale, feverish faces permanently recorded on the internet? Likely, no. How about the child, wrapped up and carried away on a stretcher? Definitely not…the kid was scared, upset and in pain. This video crossed the line. So I started Googling. And that’s when I learned about “Sharenting.” And the professional opinions and research that surround this 21-century issue.
Sharenting refers to the blasts parents post on social media regarding their children: accidents and infections, even their achievements and talents. The discussion and research that surrounds sharenting focus on why parents engage in this form of oversharing, how it impacts children, and what families can do to ensure our offsprings’ privacy and ability to forge their own digital legacy. As Stacey Steinberg, a researcher and law professor at the University of Florida, explains:
“A big part of my research really focuses on a child’s privacy and a child being able to enter adulthood free to create their own digital footprint, or at least being able to feel comfortable with the digital footprint that’s been left in their childhood wake.”
One of the first things on which we as parents coach our children when we hand over the digital devices is how to be responsible with what content they post and share. It is an ongoing conversation because we can’t emphasize enough how once “send” is pressed, the comments, photos and videos are out there forever. Permanently. And the information can come back to haunt you when applying for a job, applying for college admission, and as we’ve seen often, running for political office.
But what parents are missing, according to the research, is that what they themselves post about their children on social media can also be harmful. Not that parents mean any harm; we don’t set out to humiliate or degrade our children when we post. Often, we regard our posts as means by which we connect quickly and easily with family and friends. Or to feel a sense of community when we struggle with, for example, tantrums, or feel helpless when our child is ill. However some, like parenting specialist Dr. Kristy Goodwin, feel more cynical about parental motives:
“A lot of parenting isn’t instantly awarding, you don’t get the accolades or the phrase (sic) you get from your work, for example…It’s delayed, usually when your children turn out alright. But social media gives parents that instant gratification. By posting a photo of a sick child, they instantly get likes and comments asking if everything is alright. And that can be addictive.”
But those seemingly benign desires for connection and empathy can also be fodder for bullying and child predators. As parents are often friends and followers/being followed by our children’s peers, what we post lands right on the screens of other kids. And that photo of your sweet diapered toddler from a Facebook memory can be all over school in no time-flat. And speaking of diapers, Steinberg, in an essay on sharenting, gives an example of a blogger mom’s post on her twins’ toilet training. A photo of her twins was later discovered, altered, and posted a website commonly perused by pedophiles. This is an extreme example, but it raises an important point: photos of our child’s broken nose or nasty rash could be humiliating to them (as of course, any image of them not fully clothed…), and any photo of our children can travel fast and into the wrong hands.
Ask kids themselves and they will tell you they don’t want family members posting about them on social media. A team of researchers from the Universities of Washington and Michigan studied 249 parent/child pairs in 40 states and found that kids (a combination of tweens and teens) were worried about their parents’ sharing of their lives on social media. In fact, three times as many kids as parents felt there should be guidelines and limits on what parents reveal about their children online.
Kids don’t want stories of school struggles and chore fights posted online. And they may not want their talents shown-off, either. As one 15-year-old relates on well.blogs.nytimes.com:
“I definitely know people who have parents who post things they wish weren’t out there. There was a girl in my eighth grade class whose mom opened a YouTube account for her in the fourth grade to show off her singing,”…“Finally, on one of the last months of middle school, a peer played the song in class and almost the entire class laughed hysterically over it.”
It seems one rule parents don’t discuss with their kids regarding cell phone/social media use is:
Ask permission before posting anything about me.
I don’t post my kids’ faces on my blog, but I do post freely on my private Facebook account because I choose who I am friends with. And I’ve ignored my kids’ concerns about my posting about them because of this false security. And at the same time my husband and I tell our kids to never, ever, post anything that could come back to haunt them. What a disconnect. I know I didn’t see my double standard until my research showed it to me in plain black-and-white.
Up until now, I’ve only asked my kids once whether I could post online about them, and that was after my daughter had a cyst removed from her nose and handled it like a champ (she consented to the photo). But I didn’t ask my son before posting about his being assaulted at school. And I’ve never asked my intensely private older son whether I could post photos of him, either.
So what should parents do to respect and ensure our children’s privacy and ability to, as Stacey Steinberg said, “enter adulthood free to create their own digital footprint”? First of all,
- Ask permission from your children before posting anything about them on social media, whether it be a photo, a struggle or a success.
- Don’t reveal your child’s location on social media.
- If you do post, be sure to set your privacy settings to include only the people you wish to see the information.
- Set up an alert to notify you if your child’s name is used in a Google search. For additional info, read this article from zdnet.com.
We are proud of our kids. We also feel their struggles and know there are parents out there we can lean on for support and advice. But there can be a real cost to our sons and daughters when we share on social media. And our sharenting can also cost us their trust. Thoughtful consideration before we parents post is the new order in an over-connected world.
Want to read more? Here are my sources for this article:
https://www.cnn.com/2016/10/21/health/posting-about-kids-on-social-media/index.html
https://www.mirror.co.uk/lifestyle/family/doctor-says-parents-posting-photos-12163389
https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/03/08/dont-post-about-me-on-social-media-kids-say/
WE all , that means ALL, need to stop sharing so much. It can and most likely will come back to haunt you or someone you love. Please think twice. There are so many “sick” people out there and sometimes, they don’t live that far away. PLEASE BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU POST!!