Jean-Eude playing in the pool, Marie-Cystitis devouring her birthday cake… Children’s life stories are often exposed on social networks by their parents, who see nothing wrong with it. Yet the dangers of these practices are very real.
“Sharenting”, the new plague 2.0.
“Sharenting”, contraction of the words “share” and “parenting”, is a term that designates the fact of he regularly shares photos of his offspring and other funny anecdotes on social networks. Seemingly harmless, this act can wreak havoc on multiple counts.
A few days ago, the association for the fight against child abuse, the Bambino Blu, launched a vast awareness campaign to fight sharing:
50% of photos posted on child pornography forums are snapshots taken by parents and shared publicly on their social networks.
Laura Morin, national director of the Blue Child, for Le Parisien
A chilling number. Last year, we told you about this TikTok video by user @hashtagfacts, which showed, in numbers, the number of registrations made under videos of a 4-year-old girl whose life was exposed by her mother, online, based on what he was doing there. Does the child play with tickets? Hop, 10,000 records have been made. Is he eating a hot dog? Boom, 375,000 records. The pedophiles that abound on TikTok and Instagram are not legends, they exist and feed on content with young children shared by their parents.
Those who share these moments of life do not suspect, for the most part, that the photos and videos of their children can feed the networks of pedophile criminals. For them the sharing it’s also a great way to feel connected to others, especially for parents who live away from loved ones.
Sharing photos, videos, or insights into your child’s life can also be one way talk to other parents and reassure each other. However, in addition to the dangers this poses, parents also often forget a significant point about these shares: your child’s consent be exposed in this way.
Artificial Intelligence in the fight against sharing
A few weeks ago, Deutsche Telekom, one of the largest telecommunications companies in Europe, released a shocking announcement, which makes us feel like we are in an episode of the Black Mirror series.
The video begins by giving strong numbers: 75% of parents share their children’s content on social networks and 8 out of 10 parents have followers they don’t know. The commercial continues, starring a 9-year-old girl whose face has been aged thanks to Artificial Intelligence, and who speaks directly to her parents. She explains to them that sharing her life, her childhood, online and without her consent can have dramatic effects on her future life, and that they are responsible for it. Child crime, identity theft, school bullying…
The AI has managed to create the face it could have had as an adolescent, simply by taking the photos and videos available for free access on the networks, and making it speak. Is fantastic.
Particularly noteworthy is a sentence, said by the fictitious girl when addressing her parents: ” what you share about me online is like a fingerprint that will follow me for the rest of my life ». Remember: what’s shared on the internet is there all the time.
Let’s be clear, this video is a source of guilt for all parents, for those who innocently post pictures of their children on the internet. It indirectly makes them responsible for the deviance and crimes of other users. This video is not pleasant to watch, it is not pleasant and may be blamed for putting the cursor on the wrong people, namely parents, rather than criminals. You can even see a shape of blame the victim.
But it’s also the responsibility of parents to protect their offspring and not participate in feeding the dark side of the net. We’re not talking about consenting adults who expose themselves on social media, we’re talking about children, it’s not the same thing.
A law to regulate these publications
Bruno Studer, deputy at the origin of a bill to regulate the visibility of minors on the Internet and to punish abusive parents, but also at the origin of the law on the protection of child influencers and on the supervision of their activity, had declared on BMF-TV last January:
[l faut] introduce the notion of privacy in the definition of parental authority [et envisager] a forced delegation of parental authority in situations where the interests of the parents conflict with the interests of the minor in exercising the latter’s image rights.
Children, like all individuals, have a right to privacy. However, due to their age, they are unable to consent to these publications and even less to measure their consequences.
In a world that struggles to draw a clear line between reality and virtual, between life on social networks and real life, and to clearly identify all the dangers that exist online, it is essential, indeed vital, to give children real digital protection.
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Source: Madmoizelle
Mary Crossley is an author at “The Fashion Vibes”. She is a seasoned journalist who is dedicated to delivering the latest news to her readers. With a keen sense of what’s important, Mary covers a wide range of topics, from politics to lifestyle and everything in between.
