I did an excited singalong to Mariah’s All I Want for Christmas Is You the first time I heard it last year. Not just because it meant the Christmas countdown was truly on, but that my due date was rapidly approaching.
In 2023, this won’t just mean introducing him to loving grandparents and eager aunties. Parents today face the pressure of whether or not to share their child across their social media profiles too. Because once you press post on that image of your precious, scrunched-up newborn ready to go home in the car seat, in seconds all of your old co-workers, schoolmates, exes – and if you have a public profile – literally anyone, will be introduced to your baby.
Now, I’m nowhere near having millions of eyes on me; I’m a casual micro-blogger who mostly posts content about her own life. However, as a debut author I’m already seeing my small platform grow alongside the publication of my first novel and am having to adapt to my profile becoming more public facing. So, while my followers are mainly people I interact with IRL, I recognise what a connective tool social media can be for me as a writer, meaning increasingly there are people following me that I’ve never met. As publication and my due date drew nearer, I contemplated how much of my baby I want to show online.
Do I want to digitally share his milestones with those closest to me and the people I’ve built connections with online over the years? Yes, of course. But as the recent Wren Eleanor controversy in the US shows us, this isn’t without its downsides.
If you haven’t been following the case, Wren Eleanor is a toddler from Nebraska with her own TikTok account. On the account – which has 17.3million followers – Wren’s mother Jacquelyn shares videos of the toddler eating snacks and wearing cute clothes, including ones that have been gifted to her by clothing brands. Jacquelyn defends her decision to share her daughter’s life on line by saying she uses it as a ‘digital scrapbook’.
But while I agree that social media allows us to document the beautiful mundanity of our children’s lives, I also feel that a line is crossed when a toddler is being made to advertise clothes as part of a brand collaboration, much like in Wren’s case, where the mother/daughter duo partnered with fast fashion brand, Shein.
Exposing our children in this way is especially dangerous because, as Wren’s mother, Jacquelyn, was made painfully aware of by concerned viewers, the internet isn’t just a place of innocent onlookers; it is full of dark and scary corners. Numerous users of the app flagged inappropriate comments left on a video of Jacquelyn demonstrating her daughter’s haircare routine for a shampoo brand collaboration that showed Wren wearing a swimsuit in the bath.
Fans were quick to recognise the disproportionate number of saves on this video (61.7k) compared to other clips where Wren was just playing with her toys (averaging around 3k). I wish I didn’t think these stats had sinister connotations, but its imperative parents are realistic and vigilant in observing who is watching their content.
It’s no wonder that with the anonymous interactivity that apps such as TikTok invite, US Homeland Security reported predatory behaviour originating on the platform had increased by over 600 percent between 2019 and 2021. These revelations sparked a discourse across the app where other mothers urged Jacquelyn to stop exploiting her daughter for #content and to instead protect her privacy.
So, I’ll rephrase the question, do I really want my baby’s face uploaded to social media platforms crawling with trolls, bullies, and potential predators? No, I don’t. However, I do know these 21st century baddies are in the minority and I’m aware the internet isn’t all bad.
Sometimes it pains me to say it but I’m a millennial, and being born in 1996, I’m right on the cusp of Gen Z too. I’ve grown up with the internet: I’m two years older than Google, and I was nine when YouTube was first launched and I started to explore this new website from my first humming, heavyset computer. As an introverted teen, I found solace in fan communities who subscribed to emerging internet celebrities like Louise Pentland and Zoe Sugg. I grew up with a whole subscription box full of virtual big sisters that gave me my first glimpse at all the drama, body talk and makeup tips of being a modern, millennial woman. As I grew, I watched them fall in love, decorate their dream houses, and go on to have babies.
It was seeing one of these next generation YouTubers, a little girl as young as three, addressing the camera with the obligatory, ‘Hey guys,’ that first planted the seed for my young adult novel, Influential, in my mind. I wondered whether at that age, the girl could even conceive of the audience of hundreds of thousands of people she was talking to. Did she think they were tiny people living inside the camera? What would she think, looking back as a teenager, at the invasive content she had featured so heavily in without being able to give her permission? Would she be embarrassed? Would she be teased at school?
I delved deeper into the realm of ‘family vloggers’ and witnessed people making their children their whole careers, in what I believe to be pure, unadulterated exploitation. I wanted to tell that story, of what it might be like to grow up with your whole life online, being raised as a walking, talking advertisement.
I don’t want to shame these people or come across like I would’ve known better had I been in their position; the phenomenon of social media is still so new and raw. There are no parenting manuals or studies to refer to on the way we introduce our children to the internet because we’re living through the technological advancements, adapting and learning to balance our fear and wonderment with each upgrade.
Slowly we’re establishing internet etiquette that allows us to share our authentic selves and lives with our followers, while still protecting our children. In recent years, I’ve noticed more influential parents editing a cute emoji over their baby’s faces when sharing photos of them together, or only choosing to show the back of their baby’s head. That way these creators get to protect their child’s privacy and create a safe digital scrapbook their child can look back on and feel a part of but not defined by later in life.
Although I may feel totally different when I’ve had my own baby (in which case, please don’t @ me in raging, all-caps comments screaming, ‘Hypocrite!!!’ – people are allowed to change their minds) I hope to adopt a similar style across my own socials. While my son’s still looking like the dictionary definition of a baby – cute, pudgy faced, probably asleep – and nobody will be able to identify him as the person he becomes in five, ten, or twenty-years’ time, the odd photo may make an appearance on my grid or more likely my stories, where the Close Friends feature allows you to only show a select group of people a particular post. But as his personality starts to shine through and his features take on a uniqueness, I intend to protect my child’s identity by not showing his face on social media. Right now, I’m getting sun emoji vibes from him.
Amara Sage’s debut novel Influential comes out 5th January 2023, published by Faber