Recently, a video surfaced on Youtube about a little girl playing with a dead squirrel, which quickly went viral. Aside from the less-than-trivial point of why anyone would let their child play with a potentially disease-invested dead animal, it raises a much larger issue at hand. Why did the parents film the girl playing with the animal and then post it on Youtube for the entire world to see?
Commonsense should tell you that this isn’t the best idea. But, these videos get posted all the time. Parents or caregivers keep posting videos of their small kids- albeit cute- all over Youtube for the entire world to see. Who could forget the Candy Challenge or the little girl, who doesn’t want to marry anyone until she gets a job?
As technology and social media sites become more engrained in our day to day lives, this is happening more and more. We share photos, news and videos about our loved ones- be it our parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents and yes, even kids. Many of them are active online and are okay with these things being shared, but many may not be active online or in some cases aren’t even old enough to talk in complete sentences let alone post a video.
It begs the question. How much should we share about our families online?
While I don’t personally have any kids, I see firsthand what my friends and some family members post about their kids on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Flickr, etc.
According to this Mashable article, by the age of 2, 92% of kids have an online identity.
That includes everything from photos shared on Flickr and Facebook to even websites and social media accounts where parents chronicle the lives of their toddlers. I don’t care how many privacy settings you have up, that information isn’t exactly as private as you think it is. This chronic over-sharing can lead to everything from minor embarrassment as the kid grows up to potentially more serious ramifications.
What happens when the little girl playing with the dead squirrel grows up and attends high school or wants to get her first job? While potential high school taunting will go away, that video of her as a little girl playing with a dead squirrel will be part of her personal online brand forever.
Or, what about all those photos that moms and dads take off their kids in the bathtub? Or, the embarrassing photos of their baby covered in spaghetti sauce? Now, I know my mom admittedly has tons of those embarrassing photos of me, my brothers and sister, but thankfully they are locked away in a family photo album far away from Facebook. However for kids born today, those embarrassing photos live all over Facebook
- What are the physical and psychological ramifications for having an online presence before you are even old enough to talk in complete sentences?
- Are we putting our families potentially at risk? (online predators, identity theft, etc.)
- How will kids feel about this as teens, young adults and beyond?
The effects are largely unknown.
What’s your take? How much information is too much? Are parents crossing the line posting way too much information about their kids online? Please share your comments below.
