'Sharenting'

‘Sharenting’ – “What is that?” might be the thought for many of us…it was the same thought for me too and soon I was researching more and more into the topic…here are a few of my findings and thoughts…
Social media personalities:
As discussed in another post, all of us have different social media personalities when we are online. While some of us feel comfortable sharing only our achievements online, many of us share a whole lot of other personal things  and there are yet others who totally shun social media! All of us have different takes and views on sharing information online. While there is no perfect right or wrong here and each person is entitled to share what they want,just knowing the risks empowers us.
The “star” subject:
These days there are videos for every type of content….
“You need to bake a cake?”  “Just go to YouTube” might be a popular retort…
“You want to paint?” “Just head to YouTube too”…
“You want to learn Java?” “Head to YouTube – there are plenty of live coding examples that make coding much more easier to learn…..”
While the subject in the above example is “cake”,”paint brush” and “code”, there are numerous videos where the subject is “children”. Children growing, talking about everyday activities with children, children,children and more children…most of the times the author talks about their own children in great detail. Not only videos, there are blog posts and other means of sharing which feature one’s own children.

Some times, some children’s digital identities are fixed from the time they are in their mother’s wombs!!
The more information we share about them – the more views, likes, shares and subscribers we get. We think we are helping other people out there in the same boat(and we might be helping somebody I am sure) -but I am not sure if that is always the case…in the corner of my mind there comes a faint thought if we are exploiting the children in any way because they cannot say anything…
This is “sharenting” which is talking excessively about them and recording every minute detail in full public view….
I admit I am also guilty of a few posts about my grown children as well! 🙂 But all my posts are reviewed by the star of the post – as all of them are old enough to make that decision. Some times, they are amused and sometimes they are not so amused but I hit “publish” only after the final assent by them!
I think most of us do not have that luxury as most of our child subjects are too young. We assume that we do not have to take their permission and yes, if they are too young – we cannot and we do not have to….
But apart from the privacy thought,the multi-million dollar sharenting question is what will the child think of all this sharing and “sharenting” when they grow up?
As you might be knowing, children grow up fast and it will be just be another 4-5 years before they assert their online identity.
Will they say “Stop, mom and dad, why did you have to record me so much?”or will they share your happiness in all the recording and sharing? Only time will tell…
Conclusion:
So, where are you on the “sharenting” spectrum? Do you share a little about  your kids or do you share a lot about them? What do you think they will think of this in the future?
What is my final take on “sharenting”? Take “sharenting” with care and balance – let us not embarass our future social media citizens!! 🙂
All thanks to Cybermum_India and Cybermum_AU for this thought that transformed into a complete blog post! 🙂