Overshare? What You Need To Know About Parent Sharenting and Child Privacy

00:00:12 – Introductions by Executive Director of Children and Screens Kris Perry.

00:01:11 – Moderator Fortesa Latifi on what sharenting is and how it has evolved over the last several years

00:08:44 – Liselot Hudders on sharenting concerns, influencers, and tips for safe sharenting practices.

00:24:17 – Moderator follow-up: Are practical strategies (e.g., facing a child away from the camera, using emojis) meaningful ways of reducing risk when sharing online?

00:26:21 – Ryan Allen on the impact of sharenting on children’s mental health and family dynamics.

00:44:51 – Stacey Steinberg on protecting children’s rights and privacy online.

00:58:38 – The panel addresses questions from the audience.

00:58:56 – Q&A: How can parents help others understand why they might not want to share their child online? *Note: Liselot Hudders’ response to this question was re-recorded at a later time.

01:00:54 – Q&A: How does a child’s age influence what “oversharing” online might look like?

01:03:07 – Q&A: How can children consent to being shared online throughout different stages in their development?

01:04:19 -Q&A: How do risks differ between sharing publicly and privately online?

01:07:13 – Q&A: Do children ever feel sad if their parents don’t share them online?

01:09:09 – Q&A: With sharing online being so “second nature” how do parents and children navigate around this?

01:09:52 – Q&A: How can parents navigate schools posting their children online?

01:12:00 – Q&A: How can kids set boundaries with others when it comes to sharing online?

01:14:55 – Q&A: How can parents speak to family and friends about sharing their child online?

01:16:19 – Q&A: Is there a way to protect photos online so people can’t download and copy them?

01:18:11 – Q&A: What can parents do if they have already shared a lot of their child online?

01:19:52 – Q&A: How can parents share their cultures and traditions online while protecting their child’s privacy?

01:24:24 – Wrap-up with Children and Screens’ Executive Director Kris Perry

[Kris Perry]: Hello, and welcome to “Overshare? What You Need to Know About Parent Sharenting and Child Privacy.” I’m Kris Perry, Executive Director of Children and Screens. Today’s session is about sharenting, when parents share children’s photos and videos online. From everyday family posts to influencer channels, we’ll explore with this public record of childhood means for privacy, safety, and psychological development, and what to consider before you click “share.” Now let’s get started. I would like to introduce you to today’s moderator Fortesa Latifi. Fortesa is a journalist with bylines in the New York Times, The Washington Post, Rolling Stone, and more. She covers stories related to child influencers, family vloggers, and what it’s like to live a life online. Her book, Like, Follow, Subscribe, is forthcoming from Simon and Schuster in 2026. Welcome Fortesa. 

[Fortesa Latifi]: Hi, thank you for having me. I’m so excited to be here today. I mean, there is just so much to talk about on this subject. I get into all of this in my book and thank you for that wonderful introduction, Kris. But I think we are really in this very fascinating time of sharing online. So when I look back at sharing online, I think of those first mommy bloggers who were starting in the early aughts and who were penning these, like, incredibly long, detailed, really literary missives about motherhood, and what it was like to become a mother, and be pregnant, and give birth and, you know, struggled through early motherhood. And that really started something. And in my book, I call it a, I of course, I just forgot, I call it a revolution because it really was. We didn’t talk about motherhood in that way online before. And then these mommy bloggers came and they transformed everything. And I really traced that influencer world and mom influencers and family bloggers to those first mom bloggers. But what’s really interesting, I think, is that we’re in this moment in culture where the culture is changing. It used to be that parents shared everything online, and there was really not like a second thought about that. Like, I think, I’m a millennial, and I think back to a few years ago when my peers started having children, and they would post, you know, an announcement of their pregnancy and it would be, you know, “I’m this many weeks,” “we’re due on this date,” and then they would track every single moment of their pregnancy online. And this would be for anyone to watch and read, right?  And then when the baby was born,  the baby would be announced with a really detailed announcement. So it would be, you know, “John Smith was born on October 8th and he was 6 pounds and ten ounces,” or whatever it was. And every single month of that child’s life we would get updates on the child. Right? Okay. “This month they learned how to do this.” “This month they learned how to do this.”  And eventually it bled into when the child was older and parents would be posting about potty training, or about difficulties that the children were having in school, or medical diagnoses. And what I find really interesting is that the culture is kind of coming back around. So I see it as a pendulum. Right? And we swung really, really far in one direction where people were sharing everything about their children. And now you kind of see the pendulum swinging back. And so you see people starting to wonder, “is this the right thing to be doing? Should I be making this choice for my children?” And it’s really interesting as a journalist, because I’ve observed these trends and written about them for places like The Washington Post. Like a few years ago, I wrote a story about how more and more parents are taking their kids offline. And what’s really fascinating to me about this is that it’s both influencer parents and, quote, “regular parents.” And so you kind of see the culture trickled down from influencer parents to more regular parents like myself. But more and more parents are choosing to either not show their children online, or to only show them from the back, or cover their faces with emojis, or only show them on like close friends stories, so you’re not showing them to a thousand kind of random people that follow you on Instagram, but instead like a curated list. And I find this really fascinating because it really is showing a change in the culture. And I think that that comes around questions of consent. So there are questions about can children consent to being online? And this is something that I’ll ask our panelists about, which I’m so excited to talk to them. But there is this question of at what age can children consent to being online? And so that is a question that modern parents have to figure out. And it’s not a question that parents had to figure out before we do. And, I find it really interesting. So there’s questions of consent. There’s questions of a digital footprint. So what does it mean to give our children a digital footprint that maybe they can’t consent to, even if we later change it? So we’ll talk about this. But some of the laws around influencer kids now revolve around taking that content offline once it’s been online. But like again, I’m a millennial, I’m 32 and my parents always told me, like, “once you put something online, it’s online forever. You can’t take it off.” So is there – is the question of like, can you meaningfully delete something? And there’s also in my interviews with people who don’t show their kids online or who have changed their path this way, there’s kind of this underlying sense of just unease, like they can’t really explain why they don’t want to show their kids online, but they just know that it doesn’t feel right to them. And it’s interesting because a few years ago, it would have been absolutely no question for either a regular parent or an influencer parent. If you had a child, you were 100%, in most cases, showing them online. And now, when influencer parents and regular parents have kids, there is the question of which camp are they going to go in, right? Are they going to be the parents who share their kids online, or are they not going to be the parents who share their kids online? And I’ve had a really fascinating time reporting on this for the last few years, and it’s even influenced how I parent myself. So I became a mother, a little less than a year and a half ago, and I’ve never posted my daughter’s face online. I’ve never said her name online. I try to if I write about motherhood, I try to kind of write about my experience versus her experience. But I think that there are some really fascinating questions in this space. And when you see this kind of trend coming where parents are sharing less online, I do think that’s important to pay attention to, because you even see influencer parents who have created platforms of millions of subscribers and followers. Some of them, excuse me, deciding to take their kids offline. And what does that mean and why? Why are we doing that? And so I think there are so many questions. I’m so excited to get into our panelists, and I’m just going to look at my notes real quick so I know who we are talking to first. So, we are fortunate enough to be listening to Dr. Liselot Hudders,  who is a full professor of Persuasive Communication and Marketing Ethics at Ghent University in Belgium and the Director of the Center for Persuasive Communication. So her research examines the impact of digital media on children’s lives and the importance of digital empowerment, with a focus on influencer marketing and kidfluencing. So obviously, that’s of a lot of interest to me, and I know that’s of interest to you if you’re here. Dr. Hudders is extremely accomplished. She has earned several awards for her research and valorization initiatives, and she is a board member of the European Advertising Academy. So, we are so excited and really lucky to be able to listen to her talk today. So I’m going to mute myself and go off camera and I’ll be back in a few minutes.

[Dr. Liselot Hudders]:  So, thank you for the introduction. Fortesa already gave an excellent introduction. I’m a bit older than she is. I’m 42 and I have three children, and of course I show them on my social media. We are parents. Most of us here are parents, I believe. If you think back at the moment you first held your child, I’m sure the mix of emotions you felt then come back to your mind. Joy, love,  but maybe also a bit of fear and a deep sense of responsibility. And from that moment on, everything shifts. Your routine shifts, your priorities change, and the child becomes the center of the world. And for me, it was twins. So everything was really chaos for me. So the transformation didn’t only happen online, but it also happens online on social media. Children become the stars of our feeds. We post their first steps, the birthday cakes, funny faces, but also the first day at school. Not just to remember, but also to share, because we care about our children and we are really proud of them and we want to share it with the others. So the posts that we are sharing with the children, or to others, are a way to build a digital photo album. So we built lasting memories with our children. We collect all these small, beautiful pictures, videos, and we can also share them with our friends and families, the important milestones of the child. And it even helps to shape our identity as a parent, because as the child is doing great, it also means that we are doing great as a parent. But in doing so, parenting becomes highly public and visible. Now, sharenting  might feel as a new phenomenon, but it’s already existed for a long time. It has deep roots. For centuries, families were documenting their lives first through art, where idolized portraits captured family pride and values. And later artists began portraying everyday scenes. So, playful children, real moments in children’s lives. And with the arrival of photography, capturing family life became much more accessible. And smartphones made it instant, with social media offering the opportunity to share this picture far beyond our inner circle. So what started as really private memory making with close friends, families, and within the family has now become a public performance. And that’s where sharenting takes on new media – a new meaning,  because social media helps parents, it becomes a lifeline, because you have many struggles, many questions when you become a parent, and support groups, for instance, on Facebook, they can offer advice on sleep, eating, tantrums, so you don’t have the feeling as a parent you struggle with all these problems alone. And sharenting isn’t just about sharing cute pictures. It also includes the personal stories you experience with your child about the health of your child, their emotions, and development. And for some people, the sharing even grew into something bigger. They were able to build audiences, gain followers, and really start monetizing their family life. And that’s influencer sharenting, where everyday moments become content, and children become part of that brand. Now this influencer sharenting can take many forms, so we distinguish three types. You have the mom- and dad-fluencers who are sharing their own parenting journey, blending advice, lifestyle, personal stories. And then you have the family vloggers who are complete families who document their daily lives from birthdays to bedtime routines. And then there are the kidfluencers, with the children who are really the stars of the account, often also portraying their parents. And they are reviewing toys, doing challenges, mainly targeting other children with their content. Now, while most kidfluencers are the stars of the account, these are mostly managed by their parents. Now, if we compare this influencer sharenting with regular sharenting, we see three important differences and three common characteristics of all these three types of influencers. So they share a lot of intimate information. So not only photos, but also emotional moments, health updates, and even private conversations. The second thing is that they are sharing this information not only with their friends and families, but with a very large and often unknown audience. They don’t know who their followers are, especially not when they are really the big stars. And then the third thing is the monetization. So they are very popular. They have a large audience and brands notice this and they start to close deals with them. So advertisements, sponsorships, brand deals, make it possible for parents to really earn money with their family life. Now this offers a lot of opportunities, especially for mothers, because the work that they did in their family was often unpaid and invisible, and now they can get money with it. But it also raises important questions about privacy, consent, and the long term impact on children, and what Fortesa also referred to already. Now, what are the numbers we’re talking about? We did a survey a couple of years ago, in Belgium and in the Netherlands, and 89 momfluencers participated in this study. And 83% of these influencers indicated that they featured their children and their posts on a weekly or daily basis. So they are talking about their parenting experiences, but they are also posting pictures, videos of their children to illustrate their parenting experiences. And this sponsored content is also very frequent. 46% indicated that they do commercial collaborations on a monthly basis, and 1 in 4 do so weekly. And a striking detail–children really spend a substantial amount of time on these sponsored posts, so they indicated, on average, that it takes 36 minutes per commercial post for a child. So sharenting isn’t just casual sharing, taking pictures while you are in your living room, while the child is playing, especially when it’s concerning sponsored posts, it also requires a bit of work from the children. And this has raised a lot of societal concerns, and therefore we did some expert interviews to see what are now the risks related to this influencer sharenting on the short term and long term. And the expert interviews revealed four main types of risks, and three of them are also present for regular sharenting, and the fourth one, the child labor, is more specifically for influencer sharenting. So when we look at the first one, so sharenting can hinder identity development because you as a parent create an identity of your child. Sometimes the child is not aware, has not much to say in this, but when the child grows up, it is confronted with a large amount of pictures and information with the whole identity. And it is unclear how this can hinder their own identity development, and how they can define themselves beyond that digital image that is created by their parents. Second, there is a concern about well-being, because the information you post online, especially if it’s about the struggles your child has, difficulties eating, medical issues…that this information can be used, for instance, by other children to bully them on the school playground or online because people are very harsh online. So children can also read this content. It can also stress and embarrassment for them. And then the third thing is privacy violation, because you will feel and disclose a lot of private, intimate details of the child exposing this information to a large audience. And for a child, it’s not clear what others know from them. They can walk on the street and others might recognize them, know everything about them, while the child doesn’t know that person. And that can feel very… that can be hard for the children. And then the fourth risk that was identified is commercial exploitation, child labor, because children have to work, especially if it’s monetized content. Advertisers have now much higher standards than in the beginning of influencer marketing. Such a deal now comes with an extensive briefing, they want to approve the post, and often ask for a revision of the content, if they don’t think it’s really in line with their brand values, for instance. So it requires work from other children. And what happens with the money that is earned from this work, because children cannot close commercial deals? It’s the parent who signs the contract and receives the money. So what happens there? Does the child have free time or is it really hard work? And research by Clark and, you know, Charles investigated the kidfluencing profile. Specifically, they did a content analysis to see if it violates children’s rights, and they identified a violation of five different rights: right to consent, right to privacy, freedom from economic exploitation, freedom from harm, and freedom of expression. Now, therefore, we wanted to raise awareness because we noticed that sharenting is really very normalized, in our society and especially in our country. So we wanted to raise awareness about potential risks and to make sure that parents reflect before they put something online. So we made a short trailer. I will show it to you:

[Voice in Trailer, “Germaine_52”]: Hello everyone! It’s me, Germaine_52. Time for a weekly update on my son Dirk. Monday was bath day. Rub-a-dub! Tried out some great new products too. On Wednesday he ate a whole plate of spaghetti! And made a mess as usual, the little piglet! Hey, a text from Dirk. Uh oh! Oopsie! 

[Voice in trailer, “Dirk”]: Don’t you think it’s a bit too much what my mum is doing? And she’s not alone. Lots of parents post pictures of their kids on social media. It’s high time for a rethink! Visit: magditonline.be.

[Dr. Liselot Hudders]: So what can you do? How can you make sure that you protect the child’s privacy? The interviews and then the discussions with influencers revealed a few strategies. And these can be put into two different strands. So on the one hand, a parent can take protective measures to protect the child’s privacy. So really by reflecting when you want to post something. So ask yourself, “would I show this picture or this video to a stranger on the street? What would be potential long term consequences? What if my child comes to secondary school and the picture is circulating there? Can it be used by other children to bully my child?” And it’s important to be very transparent and careful with what you share. On the other hand, it’s also important to really actively involve your child. So that’s the second range of strategies so you can discuss your sharenting practices with the children, ask for their permission, because even young children can already express how they feel, what they think about the picture. And it’s important as a parent to help your children be more critical about media. So build media literacy. These discussions can also help building these media literacy. It’s important to note, even if a young child is okay with a particular picture, that this can change over time because children’s privacy awareness changes over time. So if they are okay with the picture when they’re six years old, this can change when they are 12 years old. So it’s important to browse through your profile at regular times together with the child to ask if they are okay with the pictures and delete some if children feel embarrassed or not okay. Like Fortesa already told, it’s not easy to delete these things because once online it stays online, especially as an influencer. Everything is already shared by the followers, so it’s very difficult to remove. So therefore reflection is very important. And be a good role model as a parent. Children learn how we use technology and media, they look at what we do as a parent, and thoughtful sharenting teaches them to be thoughtful too. Here you can see a few examples, especially related to protecting the privacy of the children while still showing the child on your social media, so you can use some tactics to hide the child’s identity by covering the face using emojis, for instance. This is also a practice that is now often used by influencers. Now, to conclude my presentation, I also want to emphasize that the sharenting debate often blames parents and ignores the bigger picture. And my colleagues did some research and they identified five issues and how we talk nowadays about sharenting because we overemphasize parental responsibility, and it seems like parents are responsible to manage all risks. But platforms, for instance, also have a huge responsibility and can develop mechanisms to better safeguard children’s rights. Second, privacy is often treated as a only concern, but sharenting also has a positive aspect –you can build a close connection with your child to show that you are really proud of them, so it also has emotional and relational value which should not be ignored. And then in the debate, there is often a focus on visual content, but sensitive details can be much more harmful. For instance, all this sharing of medical information. And children’s voices are often ignored in the debate. What do they think? What do they want? It’s important to also consider their voice. And to close, it’s not an individual issue–privacy–it’s really a collective responsibility involving not only parents, children, but also platforms, advertisers, advertisers, regulators, and society as a whole. So we do not want to point fingers and let’s support parents in making mindful choices and work together to create a safer, more respectful, digital space for children. So this was my short presentation. Thank you.

[Fortesa Latifi]: Thank you. That was so informative. And I wonder, Dr. Hudders, if there – What you think of those practical strategies for reducing risk and sharing–so facing the child away from the camera, covering their face with emojis–are those meaningful strategies or what do you make of those?

[Dr. Liselot Hudders]: Well, mostly it’s only one piece of the puzzle. But if you take all those pictures together, I don’t think it’s a very effective strategy because you still reveal a lot of details of your child. And I don’t think the focus should be on the visual aspects, because the textual information– the information you reveal from your child, for instance, with regards to the medical information–can be much more harmful. So I would really be also very mindful about all this kind of information that is being shared. For instance, also the habits of children, might indicate where they do their hobbies, and that can also be used to locate them. So I think these visual strategies alone are certainly not sufficient. 

[Fortesa Latifi]:  Yeah. Well, thank you so much. And for more on this from Dr. Hudders and other experts, I encourage everyone to check out Sharenting Practices, Consequences, and Protective Measures. It is an incredible book and we will be moving on to our next speaker. So let me just…okay. Yes. All right. So next we have Ryan Allen, who is a licensed child therapist and author specializing in early childhood mental health. He is based in Atlanta and has dedicated his practice to helping young children and families navigate developmental and mental health challenges. Ryan is the author of Friends Are Not for Biting and Brothers Are Not for Hitting, two very good lessons, and reaches thousands of parents through his preschool therapy platform, where he provides evidence-based guidance on child development, family wellness, and mental health. So I am so thrilled to pass the mic to Ryan, and I’ll be back soon. 

[Ryan Allen]: Thanks so much. Hello, everybody. As I do this – so, thank you so much for the introduction. I get to talk about this from the perspective of a mental health therapist, but also as someone who makes content and has made content both critiquing people who are sharing this stuff about their kids, but also having made deals, with, you know, people who want me to talk about products, and wrestling with, how do I do that  and protect my children’s privacy. So, let’s see here. I’m going to… probably change a little bit of the conversation a little bit. But, we’re still going to be talking a lot about sharenting here. And there’ll probably be a lot of overlap with Dr. Hudders because all of her content was amazing. Okay. So, the first thing that I would probably do here, if I get this thing to switch my screen here. There we go. What I would love to do is have you – just invite you to use your imagination for a minute, because I think there are, like, 144 people here. And being that I am on TikTok and I have about 967,000 followers, imagine for a moment if we were in a room and I turned around and I said, “Okay, we have to do the obligatory picture and I’m going to get everybody to smile. You know, it doesn’t matter how you’re looking, I just need you, you know, how you’re feeling. Just get over here and take that picture so we can get that on my account so that all of my followers can see what we did here.” And I want you to picture what that might feel like. The interruption, the, “I’m not ready for this. I don’t really feel like it.”  And it’s almost like the ice breakers that we – many of us – hate to do. So, if I had it where we had our cameras, I would have had you run through that. But I just need you to imagine it. All right. So, when we talk about sharenting, and a lot of what Dr. Hudders said, we think about a lot of the parent influencer. Right. But by now, you know, many of us have heard of the risks, you know, of giving access to child predators, giving emanation – oops – giving ammunition to cyber bullies. And then the newest threat, which is the AI manipulation, where one picture could become hundreds of new and different pictures that never existed. And then I think we know a lot of the broader themes, too. Just as we just talked about, around identity and privacy and self-image. But I want to shift the conversation a little bit to something that’s a little less discussed and not focusing necessarily on the posting it, but I want to focus on the capturing of it–the moment before the picture is actually taken. And I want to talk about what happens behind the lens. So it’s the interruption of a moment and it creates this pressure to perform – there’s a staging of joy and all packaged for an invisible audience. So what we see here is, this kid, is, you know, having a good moment with the drums and then they’re not so much. Now, sometimes the audience is thousands of followers or millions. Sometimes it’s a tightly curated circle. If you kind of create those frames around who can see your content. And sometimes it’s no audience at all. It’s just your own personal photo, for your own memory or just albums that you have. But there is a real psychological effect on children and us as parents. And I want to start with an example. I’m sorry I talk a little bit fast because I always over plan content and…and then I know I have so limited time here. So, I want you to imagine that you’re at the zoo and you’re there with your four year old, and you’re seeing all the animals, you’re smelling all those wonderfully disgusting smells, and you’re eating the overpriced, very unhealthy food. And then you get to the enclosure. And now I’m originally from Cincinnati. So for us, it’s about Fiona. If you don’t know, she is a hippo. I mean, she’s not just a hippo. She is, like, “the” hippo. And in this moment, it’s less crowded than usual, and your kid is kind of pressed up against the glass, amazed by this hippopotamus. And Fiona loves to do a photobomb. So she’s getting ready to do one of her signature photo bombs, and you’re so excited. So you pull out your phone, you’re like, “Turn around! Hurry, hurry, hurry, smile. Give me that smile!” And all that pressure kind of goes on to the kids, but all they want to do is see and watch this hippo. And all you really want to do is preserve this moment. And neither one is really wrong. But in an instant, that beautiful moment can become a battle over the performance of it, over the child’s independence. and almost always, someone’s going to leave feeling less than. And usually it’s both of us. But the ultimate victim is the relationship. So, let’s talk a little bit about what’s happening here. Starting with the parents, there is performance anxiety, because in our culture, documentation has become the evidence that we’re doing it right. And kind of that mentality of “if I don’t capture it, does it really happen?” And then there’s also that feedback loop where the likes and the comments can become validation for my parenting choices and my parenting value. And we often trade that current joy for that possibility of like, future nostalgia, and then those power struggles that can come up. And now the kids, they can start to learn how to just try to produce emotions rather than feel and express them naturally – so smiles, and excitement, and affection, and even grief – has sometimes been used to make content. I’ve made a lot of content on people who use pranks – and like throwing the cheese on your baby’s face and stuff like that–just to get the emotions out of kids. Or the ones where they pretend to bank their head on a wall, like they smack it with their hand, the wall, to make it sound like a hit. And they act like the kids should be crying – to make them cry, to get all of that content. So their emotions start to become the thing that we use to make the content, and, I mean, emotions are exhausting, and having to start performing them can be also exhausting. And again, the fun can be really interrupted. They start to learn that it can be interrupted at any moment. Just to get that picture. And the relationship starts to shift. So at this moment, you know, with my zoo example, we’re not really experiencing the zoo anymore. It kind of shifts to, “I’m the director and you’re the subject.” So we start to say, you know, “stand there, look here, smile. Now stand like this, act like that.” And kids can start to one, resent that, but also they start to learn that connection. It kind of becomes conditional on my compliance to getting these pictures for you. And that starts to kind of lead us to a conversation around consent. So the question becomes, when does a child learn that their face, their image, and their stories are theirs, as opposed to them just being the product? And if we, you know, document without permission, or we are documenting over their protests, or creating shame around it, then it can really start to make kids have struggles around consent and bodily autonomy. So whether the audience is a thousand strangers, whether it is family and friends, or it’s just future us kind of flipping through the photo album or looking through our phones, the invisible audience starts to feel like it matters more than a child’s consent, or their feelings, or their relationship. So the impact. So like I said, these pressures can have real psychological effects. For children, they can start to experience a lot of performance anxiety, learning that you know, that spontaneous self that they have that they like to be, isn’t really good enough. They have to either recreate emotions or they have to put on an emotion to get that picture. And it starts to create real confusion around authentic emotion. Like, what did I feel versus what did I perform? And the emotions, they start to create this real, like, disconnect. And the best example that I can have, because what I really want to talk about is attunement, is when we start focusing so much on the picture and the memory, instead of being in that moment, it can really feel like there’s that disconnect. I talk so much with my hands. I’m trying not to hit my microphone here. And what tends to happen is, I want you to think about it, you are – say you’re feeling really angry. Many, many adults can have this experience. You’re feeling really angry about something, but the person you’re talking to you about it is super calm. And imagine how usually that makes you feel even more angry. Or imagine a moment where you’ve done something that you were really excited for, but the person that you’re there with is maybe having a grumpy day or they’re feeling really bored, and just imagine how that feels. And trying to put that perspective on a child who is amazed at, in this moment, the hippo. But now they are having to, you know, change that in order to meet this, this performance. Now for us parents, there’s the validation seeking. So, “I need other people to kind of say and see how well I’m doing,” which creates that comparison. And, as a result, we kind of have a moment like this where we have difficulty being present because either we’re taking the picture or we’re trying to watch for the comments. But either way, usually there’s going to be guilt, because either we feel guilt because we don’t document enough, or we feel guilt because we over-document and we miss moments, or because the power struggle happens, and now, we feel guilt about pushing them for the picture. But all of that can really lead to reduced attunement and connection, and then the trust can start to erode. And I also want to kind of point out, you know, sharenting isn’t only pictures. It’s also the stories we tell. It can be the stories we tell on social media where we say “this is what happened,” or it can be the things you say at your dinner party, or on your group chats or, you know, anywhere. And anytime we’re sharing these stories, whether they be sweet or embarrassing moments, you know, they’re – we’re basically writing their narrative. And I had, honestly, I had a couple really great moments where I was going to talk about – as I was deciding this – I was going to talk about two moments with my own son, and then I was like, I’m making a video on sharenting, but then here I am going to share a story specifically about him. So then I was like, I don’t even like – I probably shouldn’t say it. But, I decided to paraphrase it instead. But it was about a hiking moment. And basically a really cool thing happened when we were on a hike, and later on that day, I was so proud of it that I wanted to tell my wife about it. And I was like, okay, but then he’s in the room and it can feel weird to be talked about. So I was like, “Hey buddy, is it okay if I tell your mom about this really cool story that you did while we were on the hike?” And thankfully they said yes, but if they had said no, I would have honored that. And then I was able to kind of share it. But there’s also been many moments where kids have said, or my own sons have said, “I don’t, I don’t want you to tell mom.” And as long as it’s a safe, you know, safety thing – it’s not really important information – then, usually I try to honor that for them. That’s another clip about that moment. So, those small acts of agency, they can really add up to a felt sense that his story belongs to him. And it really – that small little thing of asking permission or honoring their request really creates and teaches about consent. Okay. So we’ve talked about the pressures, and I really want you – don’t want you to leave here thinking, “okay, never take pictures and never talk about my kid again.” But I do want to talk about what we can do here. So I want you to really think about it on a spectrum of things that we’re doing that are most intrusive, which is like, a kid has – examples I’ve seen – a kid has, you know, their pet dies, and the parent pulls out the camera and says, “okay, everything you just cried about. I need you to do that again so I can get the video,” versus something that is, you know, most connected, which is maybe you put the phone away and I’m just present in the moment, and there’s a lot of things we can do in the middle here. But one of the biggest things I think we can do is focus on reducing that interruption. And one of the things I like to talk about is creating like a one photo or a one ask rule where you, you know, you say, “okay, I’m either going to ask one time and if they say no, okay, I’m just going to leave it, or I am going to try and take one picture and if it’s great or if it’s not, we’re just going to move on,” instead of that moment where it’s like, “okay, now I need to really smile for this one, right?” And honestly, what I think are the better pictures is you can just get candid. Get those moments where the kids are just, like, amazed, and you just take the picture without having to focus on that framing of it. You can also work on transforming the dynamic of it. So making a picture is a relationship moment, you know, taking a selfie as you both roar at the lions, or you both make a hippo face, or something like that. Because now you’ve turned it into play. And play is honestly one of the pillars to children’s mental health. And also sometimes give your kids the camera and let them take pictures of you. Trying to be aware of time here. Try and create boundaries and bring your kids into those boundaries. So if you are a big picture taker, it might be that you’re going to the zoo and you’re like, “okay, all right, buddy, how many pictures do I get? Because, you know, I like to take the pictures. How many do I get?” And they might say, “okay, five.” And I’ll say, “okay, fair 5, 5 pictures.” And then you just honor that. In order to try and avoid that feedback loop of likes and comments, and we can really snowball into getting more and more, kind of exploitive content, delaying your posting or turning off likes to try and get rid of that dopamine spike that gets you to post more. And also, you know, ask yourself before you reach for the camera, “Is it an emergency? Like, do I have to take this right now, or can I savor a moment with them first?” Because I always like to –  like one of my things is, always try and lead with connection. And now the reason of this picture is, I want you to take, you know, honor yourself, protect yourself, because you’re not gonna get it perfect. It’s okay to reach for the phone. Sometimes it’s okay to misread a moment and need to repair. What matters is that we know this and that we learn. And that’s why that feedback loop is so important. Because what tends to happen and what I’ve seen a lot of, influencers I think, what the trap they fall into is, they get that share, you know, they share the picture, and then they get all those likes in those comments. So again, like they throw a piece of cheese in their baby’s face, and then everybody’s like commenting on it and they’re like, whoa, my TikTok is blowing up. So then that feels really good. And when things start to feel good, our brain starts to justify it so that we can get that good feeling again. And it starts to find reasons that it’s not as bad as what it is. So it can really start to pull us into making more and more exploitative content, which is where a lot of – there’s a lot of content creators out there that have made a following just on pranking their kids. So, what do we leave you with as we, as I start to wind down here is, you know, one interruption at the zoo is not going to scar any – the occasional picture power struggle isn’t going to destroy your relationship. These micro moments themselves aren’t really the danger, but they can compound. And that pattern is what can really start to impact children’s – and our own – mental health. But I also want you to remember that micro-repairs, they compound too. So, the most important thing I want you to think about is connection, attunement, and play. Because these are the most important things for human mental health, let alone children. And those are the things that last so long after the photo is forgotten, long after the likes stop–what remains is us in that relationship. So every time we choose connection over content, we invest in that. And we’re investing in our children’s mental health. So back to that four year old at the hippo window. What if instead of you pulling out that camera and taking that picture, if instead we stood beside them and we wondered with them too, and just enjoyed that moment, and let that moment be what it is without needing to be content, and not proof, and just connection.

[Fortesa Latifi]: Thank you Ryan. That was so, so informative. And we are a little bit over on time. So we will just follow up with you in the general Q&A. But next we have Stacey Steinberg, who is the supervising attorney for the Gator TeamChild Juvenile Law Clinic and Director for the Program on Children and Families. Professor Steinberg’s research explores the intersection of a parent’s right to share a mind and a child’s interest in privacy. Her work has been cited by countless news and research organizations, including NPR, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and more. She is the author of Growing Up Shared: How Parents Can Share Smarter on Social Media and What You Can Do to Keep Your Family Safe in a No Privacy World. So I will hand the mic over to Dr. Steinberg.

[Stacey Steinberg]: Thank you so much for the introduction, Fortesa, and thank you to Children and Screens for hosting this and having me here today. It really is an honor to be with you. I have been studying children’s privacy and social media and sharenting for a long time now, over ten years, and I’ve really approached it from three different angles. First, I’m a mom. I’m a mom to three kids, and my oldest is now in college. I have one that’s in middle school and one in high school. I’ve also approached it as a photographer. My hobby is to be a photographer. I have a small photography business, and I’ve taken a lot of pictures for kids at our local hospital that are going through really difficult times. And they’ve used those pictures to share their stories, and to raise money, and to raise awareness for important issues like pediatric cancer. And I’ve also approached it as a lawyer. I’m a children’s rights lawyer. I represent children in foster care. I work at the law school in a law clinic where I teach law students also how to represent children. And so when I look at this and when I was thinking about how to start my conversation with you today, I thought it might be helpful to start looking at, kind of, the legal framework that exists and really that doesn’t exist in the United States to regulate  online sharenting and free speech. So, when we think about online conduct, we think about trying – we think about parents’ rights to regulate their children’s online conduct. I often think about this triangle. And it’s the same triangle that I use when I talk to my law students about all issues regarding children, parents, and the state in the United States. There are laws that regulate how parents can interact with their kids, like child abuse laws. There are laws that regulate how the state can interact with parents, like giving parents rights to raise their children as they see fit. And then there are laws that regulate how the state can interact with kids. For example, whether the state can search kids, whether kids have rights to free speech, all different things like that. And so when we think about parents regulating and online conduct, we really have to think about these three different areas and recognize that there are going to be limits through the United States Constitution that will limit how much the state can infringe on parents’ rights to make decisions like when to share, what to share. There won’t be a lot of limits that children can put on parents. Children do not have a lot of rights within the family unit. They might have a right – a right to be free from harm. But they don’t really have rights to kind of control that parent-child dynamic. Parents really get to control a lot of the shots. And that’s why, for example, parents can search their children’s diaries as much as they want. They can search their rooms, they can set any restrictions on their phones. All sorts of things like that. So, you know, when we talk about children’s online privacy, we talk about sharenting. What we’re doing is we’re making a big shift from where conversations about children and technology usually centers. So instead of focusing on what our kids are doing right or wrong online, this conversation really focuses on what parents are doing right or wrong.  And a really important key, and I think we kind of heard a little bit about this from Dr. Hudders earlier today, that, you know, I think parents generally want to do what’s best for their kids. And parents are not really in a –  the whole society as a whole when it comes to sharenting has really put a lot of pressure on parents to make the right choice. So I often say that parents do not intrude upon a child’s digital identity because they are being malicious, but they do so because they simply haven’t yet considered the importance of a digital footprint. And what we’ve done here today, and what you’ve done by just showing up, is showing that you have considered the importance of your child’s digital footprint, and you’re working to find a better way to be able to share or to not share. And so just having it in the forefront of our minds I think is key, and is a really important piece to this discussion. When I started researching this about 15 years ago, people never heard –   ten to 15 years ago, people had never really thought about the word sharenting. And what I’ve really encouraged is that this needs to be a central part of child rearing discourse. This needs to be a chapter in the “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” book. And just like we talk about how we’re going to feed our kids or how we might put our kids to sleep, this is something that I think can become really central to what we talk about with our partners and with our friends and our pediatricians as we get into parenting. I wanted to focus on the policy pieces a little bit more, because I know that hasn’t been covered quite as much today. And so this, I think, is a really important thing to keep in mind as to why the state isn’t generally, are the – the laws aren’t usually trying to impose on stopping parents from sharing. What we say kind of in lawyer-speak is that courts are reluctant to restrain parental speech, so courts are not going to be likely to stop a parent from posting too much or sharing too much online, unless they can show that it serves some sort of a compelling governmental interest. And that could be the interest in keeping kids safe. It has to be shown that that would be necessary to serve that interest of keeping the child safe. And it also has to be precisely tailored to serve it and the least restrictive way to do so. So that’s a pretty high burden when we’re talking about parents posting online, even when they’re posting more than what most people on this call might consider appropriate. And what we know is that courts in the United States usually are going to defer to parents. What we can think about a lot, though, is what is going to happen as kids come of age with a digital footprint that was not of their own making. We might be asking ourselves, “Can kids sue when a parent overshares?” And then, of course, what about family YouTube channels and children of celebrities, which has certainly become a much more hot topic issue of the last couple of years than it was when I first started to look at this topic. So I want to give a quick summary of some points that I think were covered really well by the other presenters, but just because I agree with them and I talk about them a lot, I thought that I put them into kind of my words. I’ll go through these next five slides pretty quickly. Number one is, I really think it’s important to give our kids veto power. My reason why I think it’s so important to give kids veto power, and that’s the veto power over what we might be posting, is because when our kids become social media users themselves, they are going to be the ones deciding whether to post pictures of us, of their peers, of other people. And we really want them to have learned that it’s important that they give other people permission to say no before they post pictures as well. When we talk about consent, we think that – we know that this is an important topic to talk about with our young people. Consent also refers to how we talk about people online, and I think that it can be really helpful to model good consent by asking our kids and valuing their consent before we post about them. Number two, I like to say don’t mistake highlight reels for real memories. You know, we, I think that Ryan did a nice job of talking about staying in the moment. I often say stay in the moment, not in the newsfeed. You know, this was a picture of my daughter at Disney World the first time that she went. It didn’t look like this from her eyes. I want her to remember what it looked like as a young person, not the way that it looked curated and edited on my social media feed. Number three is we need to push for more research to understand the risks of oversharing. There are definitely risks, and unfortunately, there are not a lot of studies that really can demonstrate that risk and really give us kind of quantifiable data about how often say, for example, pictures are being stolen or used, or digital or fake identities are being made – deep fake images where images are stolen and created into inappropriate images of kids. We know that happens. We don’t know how often that happens. And so we really need to encourage there to be more research. And when I say we can encourage, we can encourage this for our industry, but we can also expect our lawmakers to sponsor this sort of research. Next, I really think it’s important that we think about what kind of legal remedies could be available to kids. When parents – when kids are young, parents have a really strong desire to share. And I call that their expressive interest and their desire to be able to speak freely. But as kids get older, it’s important to recognize that the parent’s interest in expressing themselves has to be minimized and made way for the child’s competing privacy interest. And you’ll see on my screen there’s a phrase called “the right to be forgotten”. This is an idea that comes from Europe. And it’s the idea that once information is no longer relevant to a person’s reputation or to their name, that that person has a right to have that information kind of deleted from the public sphere or deleted from the public memory. And so when we talk about policies that can help kids, when parents do share, you might want to think about would the right to be forgotten be a good law to have in the United States, where as kids got older and that parents expressive interest got – is minimized and the child’s privacy interest gets bigger, should the child have the right to have information that had been posted during their youth taken off of the internet? We have strong First Amendment free speech protections, and so it might be unlikely to see that come to fruition here in the United States. But we do – we have started to see some baby steps be taken in this. And you can see in some contexts of like, inappropriate, consensual adult, images that have been posted but that are perhaps – were not given to be posted online, that we see that people have a right to have those sorts of images – inappropriate images – taken offline. And then I always say that it’s really critical to see the good. I’ve done a lot of pictures for children that have been sick and that have struggled. And there – those pictures have been shared and of course, there are competing interests with the child’s interest in the privacy of the pictures. But there’s certainly good that also comes from those pictures being shared and from the family being able to raise awareness and build community and trust. I personally decided to share about my son. He had been experiencing anti-Semitism in school a few years ago, and he went to the school board to speak out about what had happened. He actually came to watch me speak out about what had happened. But in the days before we got to the school board meeting, a friend had started a petition asking the school board to take antisemitism more seriously, and it got a significant amount of signatures. And when we got to the school board that night, my son said that, you know, I wasn’t thinking about sharing, but I see how many people can support me. And I think that now I’m ready to speak. And so instead of needing my voice, he had found his own. And I just thought it was a really beautiful moment to show how good social media sharing can be, even when we talk about vulnerable things that can be hurtful or could be – could cause pain. So the law might be able to regulate sharenting at the margins. But most likely, instead of looking at trying to limit parents from oversharing and the vast majority of cases, it’s important that we change public discourse. And we can do this by thinking about how what we share is shaping our children’s view of online privacy, and also thinking about the importance of consent.  When sharenting goes too far, and we’ve seen a lot of this in the last few years, situations like, parents who have abused their kids to try to have their kids on screen, more like the Ruby Frankie abuse case in Utah. Children of influencers who are growing up and saying that they regret what had been shared. Even moms and dads who are sharing information, pictures of their kids that might be being saved by people who are using them for inappropriate purposes. This is when sharenting goes too far. And I call this “beyond sharenting” in a paper that I have coming out soon. Recently, I’ve started to work with Dr. Cameron Rosenthal, the director of the child protection team here at the University of Florida, where I work. And we’ve categorized five different ways that parents go too far and exploit their kids through sharenting. And we are looking at finding ways to make this more part of the pediatricians’ toolbox for when they talk to parents. And also for when pediatricians are looking out to make sure that children aren’t being abused or neglected. So these five categories are new. These are the five – these are new ways that we’ve chosen to categorize them. And this is actually the first time that I’m sharing a slide that has these categories the way that we have defined them and described them, and it’s currently a work in progress that Dr. Rosenthal and I are working on. I’m happy to talk about it in the future a little bit more. For those without their screens on, these are the five categories: commercialization of children’s lives, emotional manipulation, online harassment or bullying, invasion of children’s privacy and using children as props for personal gain. So until 2023, the United States rarely recognized that parents could go beyond acceptable sharenting. And, but I think that now what we’re showing is that the current approaches really focus on child labor law protection, not data protection or welfare based models of child protection. None of the models we see in the United States focus on children’s rights. And so I would ask, could we look towards a welfare model of protection? Our, my – “beyond sharenting”, a proposal is in an article that’s forthcoming in the Southern California Law Review. And it proposes a new framework for regulating parental conduct that’s grounded in family preservation, uniform standards, training child welfare officials and updating our child welfare laws. So, I’ll just conclude by saying that just as our views regarding child abuse has evolved, our views regarding regarding sharenting have to evolve. The law can both protect parental autonomy and honor children’s privacy through a comprehensive and multidisciplinary new approach that’s towards protecting children online, allowing for thoughtful investigation, education, remediation and prosecution of parents who use social media in a harmful way that can – in a way,  that can significantly harm their children. And so I welcome questions. I’d love to talk about more, and I hope I didn’t geek out too much about the law to you all during my presentation.

[Fortesa Latifi]: Thank you, Dr. Steinberg. So I’d love to get into the Q&A portion of our discussion. So if all the panelists want to turn on their cameras, that would be so appreciated. Great. So I’ll just start us off, and feel free to jump in. I wonder if you all have any ideas about how to help others understand: If you’re a parent who is resistant to sharing your child online, I feel like sometimes it can come across as like, judging other parents or other parents don’t really understand why you feel that way, and I wonder if you have any tips on how to help people understand why a person might be resistant.

[Liselot Hudders]: So there is no easy or simple answer to that question, because parents can be easily offended if you tell them that they are putting their child at risk. So I think it’s important to open up the conversation with them, and maybe you can use your own point of view. For instance, I was born, and grew up without social media. So the photo album is safely stored in my parents’ home. And there are a lot of photos that I would love to share, but also a few embarrassing pictures. So I had to learn that I could decide for myself what pictures I wanted to share. And I think it’s important for children as well to have that agency. So talking to the children and giving them the right to – the veto rights, for instance, to refuse to put a picture online or to say what they think about it is very important. And raising that awareness among the people around you is really important, that they are aware that the children can have a say in this and should have a say in this. And I think this raising this awareness is the first main point. I’m not really pointing fingers because the message is not that you don’t want to be, or you don’t want to share any picture anymore. So that’s not the main message, but just that you are mindful about what you share.

[Fortesa Latifi]: Yeah. I wonder if you all think that the age of a child really changes what oversharing may look like in the context of that child? 

[Stacey Steinberg]: I personally do.  I think that it’s really important to think about the age and also the developmental level of a child, which could be different for two different children. I think that when kids are really young, we really have the duty to shepherd their digital footprint towards adulthood and try to think of how they would feel not only now, but years in the future if information was shared.

We can also talk about consent differently. So with like a four year old, we could talk about, you know, “This is a great moment. I’m really excited to be doing this with you. Can we share it with my friends? Can I share it with my family?” And then you can start to kind of gauge their reaction, their level of embarrassment, their level of pride. I have three kids and each one feels very differently about information about them being shared. And so having that conversation I think is just a really important way that we can show them that we value what they have to say. And of course, then as they get older, we can also do checkups like, as our kids get older, you know, we can start to sit down with them once a year and show them all the things that we’ve chosen to share in the past year and at giving them an opportunity to say, “Oh, that makes me feel silly, that makes me feel embarrassed,” and we can take some of that information down. 

[Fortesa Latifi]: Yeah. Ryan, what do you think?

[Ryan Allen]: Yeah, I think, we just have to be aware. As kids get older, they just become more aware of what the impact is, and they become more aware of what their emotions are around these things. Young kids, you know, three and four year olds who I tend to work with, they’re going to – they don’t –  they don’t know, they don’t really, like, they’re not  going to really care either way because they have no idea what that really means, which is where it becomes more the responsibility of the parents. But as kids get older, that’s when you’re going to start seeing that those things can start to lead to more things like, you know, anxiety and depression and stuff like that. Because, you know, as social media use goes up, so do the rates of anxiety and depression. So, yes, I think that we have to be aware at different levels and have to impact at different levels. But, the conversation is going to –  is going to be the thing that shifts.

[Fortesa Latifi]: Definitely. I think that I also hear from parents in my reporting that they feel that their child can’t technically consent to being shared because they are too young, but the parent is making that choice to share with the understanding that if the child later asked for that content to be deleted, that it would be. And I wonder what you all think of that as a strategy?

[Liselot Hudders]: I think it’s important to talk to the children already from a young age, of course, adapted to the age of the child. But, parents often think that the child is not able to reflect on this or to understand what the consequences would be, but I think it’s already able from, from a young age to and it has a right to know what is shared and what pictures are taken and what is the aim and who will see these pictures. So I think if you talk about it and you show your child, even from a young age, in a playful way, and then it can evolve, then the child has its – has this knowledge and this media literacy already from a very young age. So I think that is a very important part.

[Fortesa Latifi]: Yeah, definitely. I wonder if you all think that posting a child on a private social media account is – has risks as well. Like, are we only talking about public accounts, or do you think that if a mom or a dad has a private account and post information about their child there, that there’s risks there too?

[Ryan Allen]:  I can say, I’m sorry – I mean, there’s always going to be risks. I think that it’s more secure that way. So if we’re going to say that it’s, you know, less of a risk than sharing it on a widely available platform where you have no – none of those constraints. Sure, it’s going to be less risky, but there is always the risk, because you can’t say that somebody is not going to then take that picture and then post it somewhere else. Like once it’s on there, somebody can do anything with it.

[Stacey Steinberg]: Usually when I think about the risks, I think about like the tangible, like – easier to identify risks that we talk about, like someone stealing the information, the idea of data brokers who might be collecting information about our kids based on what we share, and using them to create almost digital dossiers of our children, which we know happens with adults and likely can happen with kids as well, based on the information we share. There’s also a risk of people taking an image and, kind of what we – what the public usually calls like a deepfake, where they take an innocent image of a child and combine it with an –a sexualized image of an adult or a computer generated image. Those are like the concrete, tangible risks. And unfortunately, we don’t know how common those things are. And so part of what we need is we mean more information to understand it. There was a study from like to – a statement in 2015, by the Australian E-Safety Commissioner that said that 50% of all images that appeared on pedophile image sharing sites had originated on social media and family blogs, and those were pictures of kids at the beach, kids doing gymnastics, not pictures that we would consider necessarily harmful to share about kids. But what I try to focus on, at least in with myself, with my friends, with kind of, like kind of at my internal, gauge with when to share and not to share. Of course, those risks always have to be on my mind, but I think a lot about the more the softer, more intangible, but very real risks of my children not feeling like I value what they have to say, like me — not being paying attention to them and instead focus on my phone, which I do far too often. And I think, you know, I say it’s hard where we – our kids are the first generation to grow up shared. We’re the first generation trying to raise kids alongside social media. So, you know, I think that it is hard to always know how to, to make those decisions. But those are real risks. And I think those happen every single time we pick up our phone to share, instead of staying in the moment that we’re in. And so I think if we think about it as those two categories and maybe are guided a little bit more by the second one, but just in the back of our mind, knowing that the first category also is out there as well.

[Fortesa Latifi]: I also think about, like obviously every child is different and they are comfortable with different things, but I wonder if you all have ever talked to or heard about a child feeling sad as they get older and realized that their parents weren’t sharing about them? Because I wonder, like, there really is kind of like you were saying, like that’s the public way that we parent and show and show pride in each other. Like, I remember when my little sister graduated college, my mom was like, I feel like I have to make a Facebook post about it. And we, like, don’t even really go on Facebook anymore. But it like – there felt like there was that pressure. So I wonder what you all think about that. If that’s a possibility that you’ve heard of.

[Stacey Steinberg]: I definitely heard that in some of my early work. One of my mentors actually pointed that out, that, you know, that there are kids who, if parents don’t share at all and they feel that, you know, they want these accomplishments shared. There’s also a really great point in that, that the questions that somebody had asked about with this as well, that it can go both ways. Parent, kids could feel pressure. They could be upset, especially if you shared about one child and not the other. Or maybe if they didn’t share at all that the other parents in their community did share. 

[Ryan Allen]: I think I think it – For me, it’s okay that they feel sad about it. I think that it just creates an opening where you can have a conversation and you can talk about it.  “What are you sad about? Can we talk about like, are you sad because it’s not out there and you feel like I haven’t bragged about you enough?” So now we can start to have a conversation around social media literacy. And are they feeling that pressure that they should be out there because maybe they see their friends’ parents posting about them? But, you know, I don’t think that necessarily because they’re sad means that we should then be posting more. I just think that means that we can have now a reasonable conversation with them and have a discussion on, you know, why, maybe you didn’t do that and all of that.

[Fortesa Latifi]: I also think that there’s a difficulty in this world where sharing is just so like second nature, that if you’re a parent who doesn’t share your kid online, it can sometimes be difficult to keep others from doing that. And I wonder if you all have any strategies or thoughts on how to navigate that? Maybe not. I think it’s really interesting because it is hard to –  we are just so used to sharing and it is so like second nature. So I think you just have to have those conversations. But I mean, it’s not only other parents, right? It’s also like schools and, you know, classrooms like, what should we be considering when it comes to schools posting? Because I know classroom teachers and moms and parents, they love seeing the photos and that’s a different world that we live in now. But how do parents navigate that?

[Stacey Steinberg]: I think that some schools, maybe the majority of schools at this point, have some sort of social media sharing policy. I would say that it’s important that if your child belongs to an organization or a school that does it, that, you know, these things can be grassroots. Parents can bring them up in the education system and probably in a lot of other systems that we place our children in. I think that we kind of assume that the leaders have already thought through these complex issues that are weighing on our minds, but I think especially with technology, it is so much coming at administrators at one time that these are issues that are very easy to fall through the cracks. I know that as my kids were growing up, you know, it wasn’t just what the schools were sharing. It was all of the contracts that the schools have with platforms, for-profit platforms that take the information about our kids grades, about, you know, they have all of all of our kids background. I mean, it has even the school lunchroom, when they get the cards and the computerized systems, they get our personal information, they get our kids lunch choices. You know, there’s now, there’s a lot of apps that will even put kids beha-  like, behaviors on it, how their kids are feeling every day. Those are all just other data points that schools and other people are sharing about our kids, not necessarily with our consent. And when it is with our consent, how much of it is our informed consent? How much do we understand about it? When I went down the rabbit hole in my own school district, what I was really shocked to find out was that even the people signing the agreements really didn’t fully understand what content of our children that they were giving away. So I don’t know if that took us a little off topic, but just important to share.

[Fortesa Latifi]: Yeah, no, that’s really important. Thank you for that. I wonder if you all have any tips for young people on how to set boundaries around sharing with extended family, because I know that we all kind of have different ideas about what is acceptable to share. And I think, it is difficult because I know that grandparents or aunts or uncles feel that they want to be able to share things about the loved ones in their lives. But how can we kind of empower our kids?

[Stacey Steinberg]: I don’t want to take all of it. Ryan probably has better stuff on this, or Dr.Hudders. But I would say, I think that giving kids language is always a really good place to start. You know, having these conversations, having kids understand what these terms like consent even means or having kids, you know, a lot of times I think that kids don’t even have the agency or the autonomy to recognize that they could say no. And so starting that conversation, just like we want to teach them bodily autonomy, we want to teach them digital autonomy to some extent as well.

[Liselot Hudders]: I think that the media can be helpful as well, if the societal debate changes and sharenting is no longer normalized. And it is a topic in documentaries and in programs, it’s also covered by influencers, for instance. It can also help children to talk about it to other family members. So I think it’s very important to question the normalization of the practice. And that will help children as well. And that it’s addressed in schools, for instance, as well.

[Ryan Allen]: Yeah. I think all of the stuff is connected. So, if you’re working with your two year old and you start playing games with them and you teach them that when they say they don’t want to be tickled or whenever you’re tickling them, and then maybe they seem like they’re sad or mad or something like that, that you start to teach them those words then,  and you start to just recognize it and give, like –  be their mouthpiece. So if you’re playing with them and they seem like they get upset about it, you say, oh, were you feeling mad about that? And they say, yeah. And you say, okay, you say I don’t like that, right? That way we can have those conversations early, build that foundation that then can be built upon when we need to have conversations around social media. And that is also where you kind of have to come in and be protective for your kids, too. Because if you see a grandparent who maybe is a different way of thinking about this stuff, that they are, you know, doing this and they just think that it’s how they play because it’s maybe teasing is their language. And you see your kid not like it, then stepping in to again give those words to them, teach them how to say no, and sometimes just saying it for them just so that they can learn that. And then again, that can build onto these later conversations. 

[Fortesa Latifi]: Definitely. I wonder, for parents who are in the kind of, not-sharing camp, do you think that there are ways to speak to family members and friends when you’re sharing photos with them to kind of let them know, like, “Hey, this should only stay between us?” Because it can be kind of an awkward conversation. Like, I know I’ve had to ask friends before to take down pictures of my daughter, and it does feel really uncomfortable. So I wonder if you guys have any thoughts on that. 

[Ryan Allen]: Yeah, I mean, we had those conversations with my own parents right before we even had our first kid, and we were like, okay, we were going to send you pictures, but do not post them unless you ask us first. Setting that preemptive boundary really worked for us. And luckily we didn’t have to deal with any violations of that boundary. But, I think that’s probably one way to deal with it. And then afterward, again, is – it’s hard because a lot of people, we hate that uncomfortable conversation. But having that uncomfortable conversation and being able to, engage in that dialog with somebody and say, hey, look, I don’t want them – their picture posted, please ask me in the future.

[Liselot Hudders]: And I think it’s important to explain why you made that choice, but because you want to give the child the agency to decide for themselves if they want to, people trade on social media. So I think this is an important argument as well.

[Fortesa Latifi]: Is there a way to kind of protect pictures so that people can’t download or copy them, or is it just kind of like if you’re posting, you have to be okay with the level of risk?

[Stacey Steinberg]:  I really think you have to be okay with the level of risk. I mean, I’m sure that, like, I’m not on Snapchat. I can’t tell you exactly how that works, but I know there are some things when you take a picture of this and it will let the person know that there are always ways that people get around things. You can always take one device and take a picture of what was on another device. I really think it’s probably best if it’s not something you’re comfortable sharing broadly, just don’t share it. And, and I know that sounds kind of cruel sometimes because we want to think we can trust certain audiences, but the life of a digital footprint can be really long. Our relationships can change. I think also there’s – there is a history of things like, you know, there was a time where Facebook had a glitch in anything that was posted for the close friends audience, for example, went public for a little while. Once it goes, are there other sites on the line that can take advantage of anything public and save it, even if it gets deleted later? You know, I think that when I talk about sharenting, I often say that it’s not the questions I know to ask that worry me or keep me up at night. It’s the questions I don’t even know about yet. You know, I think that facial recognition, technology, science, AI, it’s all moving really, really quickly. And so I think that, sometimes it’s the ideas or the concerns that we won’t even know to be concerned about at this time, that worries me with what we share now. And once we post it, even if we delete it, is it really deleted forever? And I don’t feel like with my background I know enough to be able to say yes. 

[Fortesa Latifi]: Yeah, definitely. I wonder – this is an interesting question that was submitted. The person says, “I have a child who is now in their teens, and I have to admit that I did share every moment of her growing up on my private social media accounts, and I know it’s too late to do anything about what I posted in the past, but what can I do moving forward?”

[Liselot Hudders]: Well, maybe it’s a difficult one. Maybe you can sit together with the child and browse through the content to see what the child is okay with, and what not, and delete the picture that the child doesn’t feel good, and talk about it. How the child feels about sharenting, and if it’s okay with keep on going with sharing or not sharing and have a conversation about it with the child.

[Ryan Allen]: Exactly. And you get to model why you’re even having those doubts yourself. So I think it’s great you’re asking that question, whoever asked that because you’re starting to wrestle with these ideas yourself, and you’re starting to think about this and feeling, you know, maybe some concern or guilt or whatever you’re experiencing. And that’s all okay. And you can lead with that and you can say, “Hey, look, I shared these at a time when this was a very new thing. And we didn’t really know the risk. Like, we all knew our parents and everybody said, is there forever. But like, we didn’t really get it. And now I’m learning about this and I’m realizing, wow, I shared a lot. Like, look through this and I’m feeling worried that I shared too much and I want to know what your thoughts are on that.” So again, just having that conversation. Yeah.

[Fortesa Latifi]: I also think this is a really interesting question to me. Sorry, I just lost – Okay. “I see the potential for social media to shape social and cultural norms in my community and to share my culture with others. How can I share my culture and traditions without feeling guilty as a parent?” That’s a really good question and I want to just add that I am not of the mind that every single thing that parents share online about their kids is wrong. I don’t think that. I think it varies from parent to parent, from child to child. Like Dr. Steinberg said each of her three children feel differently about being shared online, and so I don’t want the take away for people to be: “I can never, ever share anything about my kids, ever.” I don’t think that’s the takeaway, personally, but I’m definitely open to other perspectives. So, I’m curious what you guys think about that.

[Liselot Hudders]: Yes, I agree, and you see that, that parent influencers can really change norms. For instance, norms about breastfeeding, discussing the struggles, the difficulties, how you cope with those and how you are still able to breastfeed in the long term, for instance, for when your child is 2 to 3 years old, it is not really accepted in society sometimes and then momfluencers can really change something. So, I think you cannot forget the positive sides as well. Privacy alone is not the only principle that is guiding the debate. And you also need to consider these positive aspects as well. So I agree. 

[Stacey Steinberg]: Yeah. Yeah I think so many good things can also come out of sharing and being vulnerable and being open. While you were just talking, I was thinking about, you know, what value does a family place on privacy? An individual place on privacy? Does a society place on privacy? And, you know, and it’s a very individual and personal question. And to give you kind of a context for how in the law, the legal community, we think about privacy, you know, in the United States, free speech has a stronger weight than privacy does when a court is asked to weigh in on somebody’s right to free speech, it considers another person’s right to privacy. But the free speech gets a lot more weight. Whereas in European countries, free speech and privacy are more equally weighed. And so it’s just kind of one example of different ways to to balance things. And just like every time we sit across the table with someone to have a cup of coffee and we choose to disclose something about ourselves, we’re giving up some of our private information in hopes to gain a connectedness or community, or to learn more, or to help someone else learn. And so I think, of course, sharing online is different than sharing across the coffee table, but I think it’s the same sorts of internal decisions that we have to make as far as how we want to build our networks and our communities. 

[Ryan Allen]: Yeah. I would agree with both of them, their points. And I think it’s just a matter of, I agree that we don’t necessarily need to be, “We can’t post anything about our kids.” It’s probably not a realistic expectation at this point. But I think that we just need to be mindful about it. And again, kind of what I was saying earlier, sharing on a platform and not having any constraints is going to be different than sharing with a group that is kind of, you know, more curated, which is going to be more than you’re just sharing it on your, like chat group. There’s going to be risks with each of those. But the risk can grow. And also you can be aware of the content that you are sharing. So, you know, we’ve talked about the pictures of the back of the head versus their face. You know, that can be one way to do it. Can you share it in a way that it, like – or just be aware of what the picture is before you post it? Is it going to be something that could be embarrassing, and if so, then maybe that’s not the one I post. I could post something different. So yes, I think it’s very okay to share. The most important part is that you’re just having this internal dialog as you’re doing it, rather than just posting to try and get, you know, just to put it out there.

[Fortesa Latifi]: Absolutely. Well, thank you all so much. I want to just turn it over back to Kris Perry and yeah, thank you. 

[Kris Perry]: A sincere thank you to Fortesa, the entire panel and to all of you for your thoughtful questions. If you found today’s webinar insightful, help us keep the conversation going. Your donation supports future Ask the Experts webinars. Just scan the QR code on the screen, or visit childrenandscreens.org to give. Thank you.