Sharenting: What It Is and How to Do It Safely

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Are you someone who can’t help but share everything about your child on social media? Then, you aren’t much different from most modern-day parents.

With smartphones, sharing photos and videos on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp is easier than ever. Parents can digitally record every moment of their child’s life and share it online without a second thought. This became so common that the term sharenting (a combination of "sharing" and "parenting") was coined in 2010.

Now the question is, is sharenting safe? This guide discusses sharenting in detail, including examples and statistics. It also shares the potential risks of sharenting and how parents can practice safe sharenting.

Part 1. What is Sharenting?

Sharenting is a practice where parents talk about their children outside their family group. It can be a post, photo, or video on Facebook, Instagram, and messaging platforms like WhatsApp, or a blog post about their child. The motive here is for parents to share their kids’ achievements with the world, that is, first steps, zoo trips, school performances, and others.

Part 2. Sharenting Examples<

As mentioned above, sharenting refers to oversharing information about your children or their photos and videos on social media. Some common sharenting examples include:

Part 3. Why is Sharenting Bad?

While posting on social media may seem innocuous, parents don’t know what others do with the photo. It can present multiple complications such as identity theft, financial fraud, or loss of privacy. The following are some dangers of sharenting that parents must be mindful of:

Losing Control of Photos:

Once you upload a photo on social media, you have no control over what happens with it. Even if you have turned on the privacy settings, the photos can be altered or misused by malicious actors. Not only that, whenever you post a picture or video on social media, you share its ownership with the platform.

Risk of Identity Theft:

Many parents don’t realize that their sharing habits reveal a lot about their child on social media. Cybercriminals can parse the shared photos and accompanying captions to figure out your child’s name, date of birth, and even location. They can then combine these with other information to steal your child’s identity through nefarious means.

Predation:

Another potential danger of sharenting is that you might unknowingly expose your child to predators. They can use the images you share on social media to track your child. For example, images might show your child’s school uniform, street name, or geotags. Not only does it risk identity theft, but predators can also find and abduct your child.

Misuse:

Artificial Intelligence has made it easier to misuse your child’s photos. The cybercriminals can take your uploaded image and use AI image generators to create inappropriate content that features your child.

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Part 4. Some Common Sharenting Statistics

Most parents these days share pictures and videos of their children or write blogs about them on social media. The reasons can be many, and all of them come with potential risks. Here are some sharenting statistics to help you understand better:

1. Sharenting is very common amongst modern parents: Security.org conducted a survey amongst 1000 parents to understand how prevalent sharenting is. To it, 77% of parents mentioned that they have shared stories, pictures, or videos of their children on social media.
2. WhatsApp is the preferred platform for sharenting: A study by NCBI reveals that WhatsApp (63.3%) is the most-used platform for sharing content about their children. It’s followed by Facebook (46%) and Instagram (44.6%).
3. Parents mostly post videos of their child: NCBI’s sharenting study further reveals that parents mostly post videos of their child (74.4%). Other types of content include photos with the body and face obscured (24%) and sharing feelings in 17% of the cases.
4. Parents don’t always take consent from their children before posting anything: In the Security.org survey mentioned above, 29% of parents said they never ask their child’s permission, while 24% do it every time. The rest of the parents (47%) said that they sometimes ask for consent. The survey also involved teens, who were asked if parents post the photos even if they don’t provide consent. To it, 32% responded by Yes, while 53% said No.
5. Parents post photos and videos for two primary reasons: In an NCBI study, parents were divided when asked why they engage in sharenting. 40% said that they do so as a manifestation of pride, while 41% just wanted to share their everyday lives.

Consequences of Sharenting

As mentioned earlier, identity theft and cyberbullying are the major consequences a child might face due to sharenting. Here are the stats that represent that:

1. Identity Theft is common in children: As per the LSEG Risk Intelligence report, there has been a 13% increase in identity fraudsters globally year-on-year. And one in fifty children falls victim to identity theft every year.
2. Cyberbullying of children is on the rise: According to Statista, 77.5% of school students in the United States reported being subjected to negative or hurtful online posts about themselves. Meanwhile, 70.4% said that someone spread rumors about them online. As a result, 10% of them missed school at least once, and 60% mentioned it affected their ability to learn and feel safe at school.

Part 5. How to Practice Responsible Sharenting

Considering the dangers of sharenting, parents might wonder whether they should stop posting pictures altogether. The answer is no, and here are the ways to improve the security and prevent predators from parsing the photos:

• Check Privacy Settings: Provide viewing access to the pictures only to your family and close friends. Allowing strangers to see your children’s photos can pose significant risks.
• Post with Care: Always ask for consent from your child and consider both short-term and long-term consequences of the post. Also, ensure the post doesn’t reveal any personal information about the child, such as name, school name, location, etc.
• Talk about Responsible Social Media Behavior with Your Kid: With you posting your kid’s photos and updates, it’s possible that they might just start posting their own lives without your knowledge. Discuss safe social media behaviors with your kid. You can also use a parental control tool like KidGuard Pro to ensure your kid is safe online.
• Avoid Naked Pictures: It’s recommended not to post pictures of your children where they appear naked, including newborns.
• Turn off Location Sharing: Do not share your child’s location on social media. Be sure to disable the location and geolocation features when sharing pictures. This way, predators won’t have a clue about the places your child visits frequently.
• Use Secure Platforms: Unlike Facebook, where the post is shared with the public, share photos or videos with your friends and family on secure platforms like WhatsApp. Its end-to-end encryption ensures that another person cannot view the media. Or, you can use the option to send photos that can only be opened once.
• Avoid Showing Child’s Face: To avoid oversharenting, some parents hide their kids’ faces with stickers on social media or blurring tools before posting the pictures. You can do the same to keep your kids’ identities anonymous.

Conclusion

Sharenting is an instinct of a parent to capture beautiful moments of their child’s life and share them with others. The practice has its advantages, such as helping create a community and bonding with others, and allowing parents to create a digital archive of their child. However, the dangers are many and might supersede the benefits. So, parents must be careful and take necessary measures to ensure they do not compromise any personal or sensitive data of their kids. Also, if your kid is posting photos/updates online without your knowledge and you want to ensure their safety, try out KidsGuard Pro to keep them out of trouble!

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