Children‘s data privacy is being compromised on a vast scale, often by parents who overshare online, a legal academic has warned.
Law professor Leah Plunkett, who teaches at Harvard University in the US, says some well-meaning “sharents” allow details to leak on to the web even before their children have been born via ultrasound pictures posted online.
The problem establishes a lifetime “digital dossier”, enabled and encouraged by tech giants, she argues in her book Sharenthood.
Professor Plunkett defines sharenting as the “publication, transmission, storage, or other uses of private information about children through digital channels by parents, teachers, or other adult caregivers”.
She also highlights “commercial sharenting”, in which parents use family experiences to make money, usually on Instagram or YouTube.
Professor Plunkett argues that Big Tech needs to be more aware of a child’s right to make mistakes and offer an “auto-forget” function, in which pictures and data can easily be wiped if they choose.
Generated data sets, such as pictures and video files, are highly prized by social networks to build up a picture of children and their habits when combined with other sources, such as fitness bracelets and GPS “fencing” trackers that stop children straying too far from home.
The book predicts that youngsters coming of age in the next decade will have every moment of their lives recorded, starting from their mother’s first ultrasound to graduation, creating “a data set that marketers, governments and potential dates will mine from now until it no longer matters”.
Privacy is further compromised by parents who keep their sharing settings on “friends of friends”, allowing images to spread without oversight through social networks, she says.
Professor Plunkett argues that “we owe today’s young people a better structure in which to grow up in a digital era” in order to improve their privacy and mental health and allow them “room to mess up”. She adds: “The digital world needs to be forgetful.”
Meanwhile, London tech entrepreneur Sarah Hesz warned of using social media as a “popularity contest”.
The co-founder of mothers’ meet-up app Mush said: “It’s really important to find ways to share the ups and downs of becoming a parent, but if you find yourself relying on the ‘likes’ of people you never see, then it can become unhealthy for your self-esteem.”
Sharenthood: Why We Should Think Before We Talk About Our Kids Online is published by MIT Press in September
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