Kate Hawkesby: It's good to take stock of how much we're sharing about our kids online

I was reading about ‘sharenting’ the other day and how in France it’s now a crime. The Government there have introduced laws that ban parents from over sharing their children online. The idea is to protect children and their image and their rights to their own images, which in principal is not a bad idea, especially when you consider stats that show there are “on average 1300 photos of a child online before the age of 13.”   Alarmingly, sharing your images of your kids can be a risk to their security. It’s been reported that, “Half of the pictures shared by child sexual abusers were initially posted by parents on social media, according to reports by the US National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children.” Sobering stuff. It got me thinking about how much we share here – or over share – of our kids, and how much thought we actually give it. Because when they’re all cute, fluffy little babies and then cute and crazy toddlers doing hilarious things, it’s amusing to post that stuff. It’s part of what you’re doing if you’re a young Mum or a fulltime parent, or really anyone who just revels in their kids. And there’s been commentary around the fact that this becomes in many cases an extension of the parent’s identity online – they are a Mum – therefore they want to share that aspect of their life online too. Some even monetise it as we know. As they get older though, children often become uncomfortable with how much exposure they’re getting online via their parents. They may get embarrassed, or teased about it, they may as they get older want to curate their online life via their own page without Mum or Dad’s input on what they think is cute. I did a parenting column in a women’s magazine for many years, and when the kids were little it was easy to tell stories about them or talk about things that happened to us, but as they got older, not so much. So increasingly, I tried to write generically about kids and not specifically about my own. But eventually it all became too hard. Because they have lives of their own, and they don’t need Mum’s hot take on it published for all to see thanks very much. I follow lots of Mums online, some who never post their kids, some who post them all the time, some who post them anonymously with their faces blocked out or their identity obscured.  It’s up to the individual of course – but I often look at heavily exposed kids on social media and wonder how long the parents will get away with it for. Because as the child gets older, they usually want less and less of themselves exposed online via Mum or Dad. And they let you know, either by refusing photos to be taken at all, or making you take them down, or the demands kick in – like ‘you’re not allowed to post anything of me without my permission first’. So it's good to take stock of just how much we’re sharing of our children, whether they’re comfortable with it, or whether they would be as they get older. And with the advancement of AI, we need to remember that privacy risks may only increase with the more we put out there. Which is all food for thought next time we think about posting our kids doing something random which we think is hilarious, but in a few years’ time, they may not.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.