SAN FRANCISCO – More than two-thirds of parents worry about their children’s privacy online and/or that photos of their children might be reshared on the wider Web, according to a survey conducted by C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital.
Those fears are not baseless, and they need to be considered more often by parents themselves in posting about their children online, presenters agreed at a symposium on the media at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
“The first children of social media are just now entering adulthood, entering the job market,” said Stacey Steinberg, JD, a legal skills professor at the University of Florida Levin College of Law, Gainesville. She is also with the law school’s center on children and families.
She and Bahareh Keith, DO, a pediatrician at the University of Florida, discussed the challenges and risks of “sharenting” – parents’ sharing information and photos of their children online – and pediatricians’ role in advising parents and looking out for children’s best interests.
“The dearth of discussion on this topic leaves even the most well-intentioned parents without enough information to thoroughly analyze this,” Ms. Steinberg said. “We’re not sitting here saying we know what the answers are. But we’re saying this is an important issue that affects families, and these children require a voice in this discussion.”
The way social media and blogging have changed the landscape for children coming of age today means that they often have a digital footprint shaped by their parents long before they create their own first account. This reality means it’s necessary to consider how to balance children’s right to privacy with parents’ right to free speech and expression.
The 2015 C.S. Mott survey asked 569 parents of children aged 4 years and younger about how they use social media as parents, and reported that more than half of mothers (56%) and a third of fathers (34%) discuss parenting and child health topics on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, online forums, and other online platforms.
The risks of this sharenting can range from embarrassment of the child to significantly more sinister repercussions. Just over half of the parents (52%) in the Mott survey reported that they are concerned their child might feel embarrassed when they grow older and discover what their parents shared online. But that embarrassment also can lead to bullying or determent of psychosocial development, Ms. Steinberg and Dr. Keith explained.
More serious, if less common, risks include the possibility that data brokers could access and use information about the children or that online child pornographers could repurpose the photos inappropriately. One worst case scenario of the former is digital kidnapping, a disturbing practice in which a stranger uses baby photos and information that is not their own to pass off the child as their own or to invite others to “invent” identities for the child. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule of the Federal Trade Commission addresses only online use by those under age 13 years, not others’ use of those images.
Regarding the latter, Ms. Steinberg and Dr. Keith showed an example of a bare-bottomed baby standing in front of a bathtub that had been reshared hundreds of times, but other images that have been shared on child pornography sites depict children in everyday situations such as playing on a playground, running at the beach, or doing gymnastics.
“These are images that many of us would think are innocent, but pornographers would categorize these into folders,” Dr. Keith said. “It’s not even naked or half-naked pictures.”
A study conducted by an e-safety commission in Australia, for example, found that half of the thousands of photos shared on a sample of child pornography sites had originated from parental sharing.
But Ms. Steinberg and Dr. Keith pointed out that benefits of parents’ online sharing exist as well, as the Mott survey found. In that survey, 72% of parents who discuss parenting and/or their children on social media reported that doing so helps them feel less alone. Similarly, 70% said they learn what not to do through those experiences, 67% said they receive advice from more experienced parents, and 62% said they consequently worry less. Common topics they discussed included sleep, nutrition, discipline, day care, and behavior management.
Other benefits, Ms. Steinberg pointed out, are that families geographically spread apart can stay connected, and communities can grow stronger with shared communal experiences of parents meeting others online.
“For some parents, it gives them an opportunity for advocacy work and raises awareness for important social issues,” Ms. Steinberg said, although she added, “If you’re going to share your children’s behavioral problems, consider sharing anonymously.”
Neither Ms. Steinberg and Dr. Keith said they had simple solutions to these challenges. Rather, they recommended using the public health model of raising awareness and encouraging open dialogue among pediatricians, parents, and their children to look for ways to balance competing interests.
“Social media offers many positive benefits, and we don’t want to silence the many voices of parents who take part in online sharing,” Ms. Steinberg explained. But she and Ms. Keith said it’s also worth considering children’s potential interest in controlling what their digital footprint is as they become adults.
For example, one study they cited found that, among 249 pairs of parents and their children, three times more children than parents wanted the parents to have and follow rules regarding what they could share on social media about their children.
Although guidance for parents on monitoring children’s social media use is a part of the AAP policy statement on media, only one recommendation obliquely addresses how parents should or shouldn’t use social media by advising them to model appropriate use for their children.
“It’s just like any medical decision: What is the benefit, and what is the risk, and does the benefit outweigh the risk?” said Wendy Sue Swanson, MD, executive director of digital health at Seattle Children’s Hospital. She recommended that parents ask their child for permission before posting a story or photo if their kids are aged 6 or older.
Ms. Steinberg and Dr. Keith recommended that pediatricians broach this subject with parents to help them think about risks they simply might not have considered before.
“When we looked at what sorts of best practices could be encouraged or doctors could talk to parents about – the tangible harms, such as whether data brokers or people interested in child pornography could access the information – we didn’t want to create any unnecessary panic,” Ms. Steinberg said. “But we did find some concerns that were troublesome, and we thought that parents or at least physicians [should] be aware of those potential risks.”
Ms. Steinberg and Dr. Keith reported that they had no relevant financial disclosures.