The ‘Sharent’ Trap: Parenting in the Digital Age and a Child’s Right to Privacy

Abstract

In the age of ‘sharenting’ (i.e. parents sharing content about their children on social media), it is timely to consider how parents conceive of a child’s right to privacy and the consequences of their sharing practices for their children, for the digitisation of childhood and for childhood itself.

This chapter draws on 600 responses to a national survey investigating how Australian parents viewed the practice of sharing content of their children on Facebook and Instagram. Early findings from the study suggest that the majority of parents surveyed regularly shared content such as photos and videos of their young children online and did not appear to prioritise their children’s right to privacy in these digital activities. Indeed, a third did not believe their children had any right to privacy at all.

Parental attitudes to children as the subject of an audience’s social media gaze contrast sharply with the societal understanding that children constitute a special audience of media, and one whose immaturity and vulnerability render them deserving of our protection. Clearly children as an audience are treated entirely differently from children as the subject of an assumed audience’s gaze, an emerging disconnect which deserves greater investigation.