-Amrita Randhawa
Since I became a parent, I have been thinking a lot about the digital rights of infants and young children. As parents, we know that our child is a distinct and separate individual but being responsible for bathing, feeding, changing and rocking another person endlessly blurs the line between the self and other. It’s easy to forget that pre-verbal children have some ideas and preferences of their own.
In a social media-obsessed world where all family, work and even mundane moments are photographed, recorded and shared, parents are confused about the do’s and don’ts of sharing children’s photos online. Unlike most child-rearing issues, there’s not much of a reference point for this digital age phenomenon. Our childhood pictures — incriminating or not — are contained in physical photo albums. They will never see the light of day unless we or our parents decide to post them on social media. As children, some of our most embarrassing moments were when albums were pulled out to show friends and relatives evidence of our most recent feats. However, these were put away at the end of the evening.
On the other hand, today images can be transmitted from ubiquitous smart phones to social networking sites with a single click. Pictures and videos of children being frustrated, learning new things, or struggling with a new skill are recorded (usually without their permission) and shared with people who have tenuous connections with them. Sometimes, pictures of babies become memes, splashed on Facebook and other sites.
Most parents and adults don’t have any problem sharing their and other children’s photos. But would you share a picture of your partner on the potty or in the shower? Would you share pictures of your parent learning to walk again after a traumatic accident? Would you do it without their permission? Would you feel comfortable about this kind of evidence being shared with people remotely connected to them? Most probably not.
Soon after my son was born, I sent out a message to my family members requesting them to restrict sharing of my newborn’s photo with family groups. My cousin joked that it was data protection starting early. But, data protection was only half the problem. The second half was thinking about who my son will become. Will he be a retiring child mortified by embarrassing pictures who doesn’t want people to know more about him than he believes necessary?
Beyond obvious child safety issues, it’s an uncomfortable thought that people might have pictures or videos of my son that neither I nor his father know anything about. Even worse is the thought that these photos might be shared without our permission. And parents’ permission, in this instance, is just a proxy for our child’s permission. It’s an approximation of risk: how much to share with far-flung family and friends to stay connected without infringing on a child’s privacy or creating a data trail.
As children become older, it is easier to ask for their permission to take their picture and to share it with specified people. However, for pre-verbal children, parents are the decision-makers and need to assess the risk-benefits of sharing photographs online. Is sharing a photo likely to benefit the child in any way? Would you and the child’s parents agree on what you perceive to be the benefit? If the answer to both questions is negative, the friend or family member can probably wait to see the pictures on your own device.
Children are quite likely to make questionable choices when they begin to create their digital identity, and post enough embarrassing photographic evidence on various platforms of their own volition. There’s no need for parents to prematurely start posting children’s photos before they have registered a digital presence. And most important, it’s the duty of parents to respect the digital rights of infants, and refrain from sharing photos of them mindlessly, and with people who might embarrass them in adulthood.
Picture source: Humanium
An alumna of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Amrita Randhawa is an early childhood educator.