For five years now, the Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD)warns about the dangers of “sharenting”, the practice of documenting the lives of our children and publish it on social networks… with economic objectives.
Now, a study of 10 British influencers and mothers who often deliberately share photos of their children on Instagram. With the rise of social media influencers, the popularity of many sharing images of their children has raised concerns about whether such actions compromise children’s privacy rights. He Sharenting has been linked to a number of potential harms for children, such as future psychological impacts, bullying, and access to personal information to pedophiles.
However, little is known about the extent to which sharenting occurs, and most studies on parenting influencers have relied on surveys of their posting habits without examining actual posting practices. To address that gap, Katherine Baxter and Barbarba Czarnecka surveyed 10 British motherhood influencers, each with more than 10,000 followers on Instagram, and analyzed 5,253 of their publications made between August 2020 and July 2021.
The results showed that More than 75% of posts featured children and, of those, 46.4% included sponsorships and advertisements of products, suggesting that images of children are often used for financial gain. Posts featuring children with images or text containing embarrassing, intimate or revealing information were relatively rare: 11.5%. In particular, whether a post featured children or not was not related to the number of likes it received.
Previous research has suggested the existence of a “privacy paradox,” in which people’s stated concerns about online privacy do not align with their posting behavior. In this study, participants tended to express high confidence in the security of posting on Instagram and expressed that they were indifferent or willing to participate in sharentingsuggesting that they may deliberately post photos of their children. This apparent lack of concern does not support the privacy paradox.
The authors note that larger studies will be needed to confirm their findings and deepen understanding. Meanwhile, they are calling for new legislation to protect children online, such as banning sharenting or automatically blocking images of children on social networks.
“Maternity influencers shared images of their children in more than 75% of the 5,253 publications analyzed, and only 11.5% contained embarrassing, intimate or revealing content – conclude the authors of the study -. “These influencers expressed great confidence in online safety on Instagram and showed indifference or willingness toward sharenting, indicating that sharing images of their children may be a deliberate strategy rather than an accidental act.”