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When the first social media platforms launched nearly two decades ago, nobody knew what impact they would have on young kids and teens. What impact, for example, would Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube have on the type of content they consumed? How would it impact their social relationships? And, perhaps most importantly, what impact would it have on their emotional and social development?
As it turns out, a lot. And, in a plot twist that nobody saw coming, social media has arguably had its biggest impact on the relationships between parents and their children. Parents saw social media as a fun new way to share information about their kids, and some parents took it to extremes. They shared so much personal information, that an entirely new word – “sharenting” – was created to describe this phenomenon. The term combines “parenting” with “sharing,” and it connotes a special type of parent – the parent who shares everything about their kids.
Parents and over-sharing
And when I say share everything, I mean everything. Some parents were sharing photos of their kids from the day they were born. And it accelerated from there. They shared medical diagnoses, strange or unexpected behaviors, compromising photos and videos, and detailed information about school performance. In some cases, the type of information they shared went entirely too far – such as announcing to the world that their kid had been adopted.
No surprise here, but this over-sharing has often had a traumatic impact on young kids. It has led to them being bullied in school. It has led to them being laughed at by their friends. And it has led to embarrassment and shame when the most intimate details of one’s physical and mental health were shared online. Once you’ve posted something on social media, it’s there forever, so good luck ever removing this content from the internet.
But there’s one type of parental sharing behavior that has had a particularly big impact, and that’s parents attempting to monetize their kids. That’s a perhaps harsh assessment, but it refers to the willingness to post extremely personal information or details, just for the clicks and the engagement. In some cases, kids felt like they were trapped inside a strange reality TV show, in which there was no downtime from the cameras. Meanwhile, parents were collecting money from the big social media platforms for all this fantastic new content.
Pushback from kids
Given all this, it’s perhaps not surprising that kids are now looking for some form of compensation after a long, traumatic childhood. If they were unwilling reality TV stars, they want compensation for all that content. If they were traumatized by personal information or photos being released online, they want the right to self-delete all that content.
That’s easier said than done, of course, so a few of the boldest voices among the youngest generation are now working with lawmakers to introduce new legislation. They want laws to protect minors from their own parents. And they want autonomy over their own digital footprint.
Is social media really to blame?
Fair enough. But one can’t help but wonder if there’s a deeper problem at work here. It’s easy to blame social media for all the ills in the world, but are the social media platforms really to blame for parents monetizing their kids? Sorry to say this, but it sounds like a lot of bad parenting has been going on. Even if social media had never been created two decades ago, these kids would likely have ended up an emotional mess.
The good news is that new laws are coming. Illinois will become the first state in the nation with a law specifically designed to compensate young kids for having been reality TV stars on social media. The bad news, though, is that kids are going to have to fight their parents to get access to this money. And that could be a long, painful fight with an uncertain outcome.
