Watch Over Sharenting premiere on Tuesday 19 March at 9:30pm on SBS or stream on
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Cam Barrett’s mother recorded her entire childhood: birthdays, beach days, and all of the in-between. But it wasn’t only for her family to enjoy and keep a memory of.
The most private moments of Barrett’s childhood and adolescence in the US were shared by her mother on Facebook to a large audience.
“I had no privacy growing up, absolutely no privacy,” she says.
Some posts were seemingly harmless but made Barrett deeply uncomfortable, such as details about her first period being made public.
“People [were] coming up to me, congratulating me on something my mom had posted on Facebook. For example, my period. I had someone come up to me, whom I didn’t even know, and they were like, ‘Congratulations on being a woman'”.
Other interactions were more sinister.
“At 12, I received a DM from a man whom I didn’t know, who saw me riding my bike and told me he followed me home.”
Cam Barrett says exposure to unwanted attention on social media from an early age has left her with bad anxiety. Source: Supplied
By the age of 13, a child has an average of 1,300 photos and videos posted by parents on social media, according to a 2018 report by the UK’s Children’s Commissioner. This is before the age most platforms allow users to sign up.
Parents’ motivations vary greatly when it comes to posting images and videos of their children online. Some simply want to share their parenthood experiences and connect with other parents. Others have monetised their children’s lives, making profits from advertising or brand partnerships.
In 2017, the case of a US couple, who temporarily lost custody over their children after pranking them on camera for their YouTube channel, highlighted how far some parents were willing to go for the sake of engagement.
The rise of short-form video platforms such as TikTok and Instagram has further fuelled social media trends, including some controversial challenges like throwing cheese slices at babies’ faces.
However, the movement against ‘sharenting’, which refers to the exploitative practice of parents sharing non-consensual imagery of their children online, has been growing.
In 2023, France became the first country in the world to introduce a bill banning parents from oversharing their children online, marking a step forward in protecting children’s privacy rights.
As the first generation of children who grew up in the social media era has come of age, some are becoming vocal against ‘sharenting’, which refers to the exploitative practice of parents sharing non-consensual imagery of their children online. Source: Supplied
For Barrett, now 25, growing up in front of a social media audience became increasingly complicated. She says her mother became so addicted to the validation and attention she received online that quality time felt like a production “to make her seem and look like a really good parent”.
As a minor at the time, Barrett says she had not consented to be filmed and shared online. This unwanted exposure has inflicted lasting mental and emotional damage on her and led to a fraught relationship with her mother.
“It started when I was a child and then just stuck with me all the way until now. I have very bad anxiety and very bad paranoia, especially when I’m out in public. I constantly think that people are following me.”
Calls for legal protections
Along with other child influencers and online safety advocates, Barrett is now advocating for greater protections for minors used in creating monetised social media content.
In 2023, she spoke before the Washington state legislature in support of a bill aimed to “protect the interests of minor children featured on for-profit family vlogs.” The bill intends to allow children to receive compensation as well as request the content to be taken down from social media platforms once they turn 18.
“I just want to note that today is the first time that I’ve introduced myself with my legal name in three years because I’m terrified to share my name,” she said in her testimony. “When you google my name, childhood photos of me in a bikini will pop up. I’m terrified to have those weaponised against me again.”
For the generation of children whose lives were streamed online long before they could consent to it or even use social media, regulation of the multi-billion dollar content creation industry is crucial.
“My goal when I talk about stuff like this is not to attack parents who do post their children online. It’s not to shame people. I genuinely just want to warn them about the real-life consequences that come with posting your child online.”
Barrett also advocates against child exploitation on social media on her TikTok account, which has 238,600 followers.
“If you think that you are just innocently sharing your child’s life online, I’m here to tell you that you are wrong,” she says.
Sarah Adams, a mother of two and an American vlogger, doesn’t post about her children on her popular social media accounts. Instead, she advocates for parents to protect their children’s right to privacy and online safety. Source: Supplied
The dangers of sharenting
Sarah Adams, a mother of two and an American vlogger, discovered Cam through TikTok, and the two connected.
With over 400,000 followers across TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, Adams doesn’t post about her children. Instead, she uses her channels to advocate for parents to protect their children’s right to privacy and online safety.
“If you aren’t going to hand strangers on the street images of your children and you’re not going to invite strangers on the street to view your child in the bath, why are you posting it publicly on social media?” she says.
“I think that a lot of parents forget that some of the worst members of society are also on these social media platforms and that they are not looking at your children through the same lens that you are.”
Sijmen Ruhoff, a cybersecurity specialist from the Netherlands, knows exactly what Adams means.
His job is to trawl through image-hosting sites to report exploitative or child sex abuse content. He recently came across a website from Russia that at a glance doesn’t look out of the ordinary.
The majority of images, divided into categories such as cars or animals, seem fairly innocuous. But a quick look through the children category and comments under the photos reveals a more sinister underbelly.
“It becomes quite clear [who] the main target, the main audience, of the website is,” Ruhoff says. “It’s paedophiles.”
Most of the images appear to have been taken from social media, he says. And many of the original accounts are likely unaware of it.
For Ruhoff, that adds a layer of consideration to sharing content at all.
“What you put on the internet will probably stay there forever. You need to be aware of your privacy and how fragile your online presence can be.”
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