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These babies who have their account on Facebook
Putting a photo of her baby on her Facebook profile, to share this event with her distant family and friends, has almost become a reflex. The latest trend for geek parents (or not): create a personal profile for their baby, he hardly uttered his first cry.
Infant invasion on the Internet
A recent British study, commissioned by “Currys & PC World” reveals that almost one in eight babies has their own social media account on Facebook or Twitter and 4% of young parents would even open one before the birth of the child. Another study, carried out in 2010 for AVG, a security company on the net, advanced an even higher proportion: a quarter of children are said to be on the Internet long before they are born. Also according to this AVG survey, almost 81% of children under two already have a profile or digital fingerprint with their photos uploaded. In the United States, 92% of children are online before the age of two compared to 73% of children in five European countries: United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. According to this survey, the average age of appearance of children on the web is around 6 months for a third of them (33%). In France, only 13% of mothers gave in to the temptation to post their prenatal ultrasounds on the Internet.
Overexposed children
For Alla Kulikova, responsible for training and interventions at “e-childhood”, this observation is worrying. She recalls that social networks like Facebook prohibit their access to children under 13. Parents therefore circumvent the law by opening an account for a toddler, giving false information. She recommends making children aware of the use of these networks of friends on the Internet as early as possible. But obviously this awareness must start with the parents. “They must question themselves on what it means for their child to have a profile on the Web, open to all. How will this child react later once he realizes that his parents have been posting pictures of him since he was little?
Even Serialmother, our blogger known for her humorous, offbeat and tender outlook on parenthood, is uneasy about the massive exposure of toddlers on the web. She expresses it in a recent post: ” If I understand that Facebook (or Twitter) allows many families to stay connected, I find it dramatic to create a profile for a fetus or to warn those close to them of these rare moments in life, only via these social networks. “
The risk: a child who has become an object
For Béatrice Cooper-Royer, clinical psychologist specializing in childhood, we are in the register of the “child object” strictly speaking. The narcissism would be such in his parents, that they would use this child as a communication of oneself in its own right.The child becomes the extension of the parent who exhibits him on the Internet, like a trophy, in the eyes of all. “This child is most often used to reinforce the image of his parents, who, consciously or not, have low self-esteem”.
Béatrice Cooper-Royer evokes the little girls participating in beauty contests, whose photos are posted on blogs by their mother. These photos which tend to “hypersexualize” children and refer to imagery prized by pedophiles, are quite disturbing. But not only. Above all, they reflect, for Béatrice Cooper-Royer, a problematic mother-daughter relationship. “The parent is dazzled by the idealized child. The flip side is that this child is placed in such disproportionate expectation by his parents that he can only disappoint his parents. “
It is very difficult to erase your tracks on the Internet. Adults who expose themselves can and should do so knowingly. A six-month-old baby can only rely on the common sense and wisdom of his parents.