![\"Illustration](\"https:\/\/cdn.theatlantic.com\/thumbor\/nMaJkJwdwtvJ10qXhwRXGJzO8oE=\/0x0:2880x1620\/960x540\/media\/img\/mt\/2023\/05\/Parents_Social_Media\/original.jpg\")
My baby pictures and videos are the standard compendium of embarrassment. I was photographed waddling in nothing but a diaper, filmed smearing food all over my face instead of eating it. But I\u2019m old enough that the kompromat is safe in the confines of physical photo albums and VHS tapes in my parents\u2019 attic. Even my earliest digital activity\u2014posting emotional MySpace photo captions and homemade music videos\u2014took place in the new and unsophisticated internet of the early 2000s, and has, blissfully, been lost to time. I feel relief whenever I\u2019m reminded of those vanished artifacts, and even more so when I see pictures and videos of children on the internet today, who won\u2019t be so lucky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In December, I watched a TikTok of two young sisters named Olivia and Millie opening Christmas presents. When the large boxes in front of them turned out to contain two suitcases, Millie, who appeared to be about 4 years old, burst into tears. (Luggage, unsurprisingly, was not what she wanted from Santa.) Her parents scrambled to explain that the real<\/em> presents\u2014tickets to a four-day Disney cruise\u2014were actually inside<\/em> the suitcases, but Millie was too far gone. She couldn\u2019t stop screaming and crying. Nine million strangers watched her breakdown, and thousands of them commented on it. \u201cThis is a great ad for birth control,\u201d one wrote. (The TikTok has since been deleted.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two decades ago, this tantrum would have been just another bit of family lore, or at worst, a home video trotted out for relatives every Christmas Eve. But now, thoughtless choices made years ago\u2014a keg stand photographed, a grocery-store argument taped\u2014can define our digital footprints, and a generation of parents like Millie\u2019s are knowingly burdening their children with an even bigger online dossier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The children of the Facebook era\u2014which truly began in 2006, when the platform opened to everyone\u2014are growing up, preparing to enter the workforce, and facing the consequences of their parents\u2019 social-media use. Many are filling the shoes of a digital persona that\u2019s already been created, and that they have no power to erase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Caymi Barrett, now 24, grew up with a mom who posted Barrett\u2019s personal moments\u2014bath photos, her MRSA diagnosis, the fact that she was adopted, the time a drunk driver hit the car she was riding in\u2014publicly on Facebook. (Barrett\u2019s mother did not respond to requests for comment.) The distress this caused eventually motivated Barrett to become a vocal advocate for children\u2019s internet privacy, including testifying<\/a> in front of the Washington State House earlier this year. But before that, when Barrett was a teen and had just signed up for her first Twitter account, she followed her mom\u2019s example, complaining about her siblings and talking candidly about her medical issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Barrett\u2019s audience of younger users are the ones who pointed out the problem, she told me. Her internet friends started \u201creaching out to me, being like, \u2018Hey, maybe you should take this down,\u2019\u201d she said. Today\u2019s teens are similarly wary of oversharing. They joke on TikTok<\/a> about the terror of their peers finding their parents\u2019 Facebooks. Stephen Balkam, the CEO of the nonprofit Family Online Safety Institute, says that even younger children might experience a \u201cdigital coming-of-age\u201d and the discomfort that comes with it. \u201cWhat we\u2019ve seen is very mature 10-, 11-, 12-year-olds sitting down with their parents, going, \u2018Mom, what were you thinking?\u2019\u201d he told me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the United States, parental authority supersedes a child\u2019s right to privacy, and socially, we\u2019ve normalized sharing information about and images of children that we never would of adults. Parents regularly divulge diaper-changing mishaps, potty-training successes, and details about a child\u2019s first menstrual period to an audience of hundreds or thousands of people. There are no real rules against it. Social-media platforms have guidelines for combatting truly inappropriate content\u2014physical abuse of minors, child nudity, neglect, endangerment, and the like. But uploading non-abusive content can be damaging, too, according to kids whose lives have been painstakingly documented online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read: When kids realize their whole life is already online<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n For parents, posting can be hard to quit. Views, likes, and comments offer a form of positive reinforcement to parents, whose work is largely invisible and often thankless. \u201cThe most tangible proof of our work is children themselves,\u201d Sara Petersen, the author of the book Momfluenced: Inside the Maddening, Picture-Perfect World of Mommy Influencer Culture<\/em><\/a>, told me. \u201cAnd sometimes it\u2019s really just nice to post a cute photo and have 10 or 12 people say, \u2018So cute.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The likes and comments are one thing. Money is another. Families who document their lives intimately on YouTube or TikTok can amass large audiences, sponsorships, and ad revenue. Currently, no state or federal laws entitle the children of these family vloggers to any of the money earned, although, as The Washington Post<\/em> recently reported<\/a>, such legislation has been introduced in states including Washington<\/a> and Illinois<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some new parents feel there\u2019s no excuse for subjecting children to invasive public scrutiny. Kristina, a 34-year-old mother from Los Angeles who asked to be identified by only her first name for privacy reasons, has posted just a handful of photos of her daughter, and covers her face in all of them. \u201cWe didn\u2019t really want to share her image publicly, because she can\u2019t consent to that,\u201d she told me. Many other adults don\u2019t respect Kristina\u2019s decision. \u201cI had someone basically insinuate, was there something wrong with my daughter? Because I wasn\u2019t sharing her,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read: The bargain at the heart of the kid internet<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Even if parents have decided to keep their children off social media, they\u2019re not the only ones with phones. Kristina says she\u2019s had to ask friends and family to take down photos they\u2019ve posted of her daughter online. Every person on the street, every parent at a birthday party, has their own camera in their pocket, and the potential to knowingly or unknowingly violate her family\u2019s boundary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Barrett says she\u2019s still feeling the effects of her mother\u2019s decade of oversharing. When Barrett was 12, she says she was once followed home by a man who she believes recognized her from the internet. She was later bullied by classmates who latched on to all the intimate details of her life that her mother had posted online, and she ultimately dropped out of high school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She and her mom have no relationship now, in large part because of the wedge her mother\u2019s social-media habits put between them. Even with other people, Barrett says, she\u2019s extremely private and can be paranoid about interacting. \u201cI get afraid to even tell my friends or my fianc\u00e9 something, because in the back of my mind I\u2019m constantly like, Is this gonna be weaponized against me on the internet?<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kate Lindsay<\/a> is a former newsletter engagement editor at The Atlantic<\/em>. She writes the internet culture newsletter Embedded<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How would you feel if millions of people watched your childhood tantrums? By\u00a0Kate Lindsay, May 23, 2023 This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from\u00a0The Atlantic, Monday through Friday.\u00a0Sign up for it here. My baby pictures and videos are the standard compendium […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14626"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14626"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14627,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14626\/revisions\/14627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}