Sharenting: Children's Privacy in the Age of Social Media

Sharenting: Children's Privacy in the Age of Social Media

Stacey B. Steinberg

Through sharenting, or online sharing about parenting, parents now shape their children's digital identity long before these young people open their first e-mail. The disclosures parents make online are sure to follow their children into adulthood. Indeed, social media and blogging have dramatically changed the landscape facing today's children as they come of age.

Children have an interest in privacy. Yet parents' rights to control the upbringing of their children and parents' rights to free speech may trump this interest. When parents share information about their children online, they do so without their children's consent. These parents act as both gatekeepers of their children's personal information and as narrators of their children's personal stories. This dual role of parents in their children's online identity gives children little protection as their online identity evolves. A conflict of interests exists as children might one day resent the disclosures made years earlier by their parents.

This Article is the first to offer an in-depth legal analysis of the conflict inherent between a parent's right to share online and a child's interest in privacy. It considers whether children have a legal or moral right to control their own digital footprint and discusses the unique and novel conflict at the heart of parental sharing in the digital age. The Article explores potential legal solutions to this issue and offers a set of best practices for parents to consider

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when sharing about children online. It concludes by providing a child-centered, public-health-based model of reform that protects a child's interest in privacy while also recognizing a parent's right to share online.

Introduction.............................................................................................841

I. Parental Sharing on Social Media and Beyond.....................846

A. Understanding the Ways in Which Parents Disclose Information About Their Children................................................................ 847
B. Legal and Safety Risks Posed by Parental Oversharing .......... 854

II. Children's Rights, Privacy, and Public Health......................856

A. The Interfamilial Privacy Divide: When a Child and a Parent Have Differing Interests..................................................................... 856
B. Approaches to Children's Privacy Interests and Rights ........... 862
C. A Public Health Model of Child Protection ............................. 866

III. Legal and Public Health Approaches to Children's Privacy............................................................................................867

A. Available Legal Protections Are Ineffective ............................. 869
B. Best Practices Informed by Public Health and Child Development Literature .................................................................................. 877

1. Parents Should Familiarize Themselves with the Privacy Policies of the Sites with Which They Share ....................... 879
2. Parents Should Set Up Notifications to Alert Them When Their Child's Name Appears in a Google Search Result............. 879
3. Parents Should Consider Sometimes Sharing Anonymously ...................................................................... 880
4. Parents Should Use Caution Before Sharing Their Child's Actual Location .................................................................. 880
5. Parents Should Give Their Child "Veto Power" over Online Disclosures, Including Images, Quotes, Accomplishments, and Challenges .......................................................................... 881
6. Parents Should Consider Not Sharing Pictures That Show Their Child in Any State of Undress ............................................ 881
7. Parents Should Consider the Effect Sharing Can Have on Their Child's Current and Future Sense of Self and Well-Being . 882

Conclusion.................................................................................................883

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Johnny, age eight, is struggling to fit in at school.¹ He has the traditional symptoms of ADHD, and Johnny has been suspended from class multiple times. His mother, frustrated with his behavior and looking for support and a community of mothers experiencing similar parenting struggles, starts a blog detailing his misbehaviors. Johnny's mother posts pictures alongside Johnny's weekly behavior reports. She has many followers and is often asked to guest blog for large news websites.

Each week, she has coffee with Becky's mom.² Becky,³ a ten-year-old girl with a chronic health condition, calls the local children's hospital "home." Becky is preparing for a stem cell transplant. Becky's brother and sister reside three hours away with their grandmother, and Becky's mother sleeps on the pullout couch in the hospital room. Becky's mother writes a public blog, detailing her life as a mother of a chronically ill child. She has many followers on her blog and sells inspirational shirts and bracelets to help offset the costs of her daughter's medical treatment. Becky often contributes to the blog, and beams when she receives inspirational messages from her supporters. Becky has a college savings account set up by one of her anonymous fans.

As they chat about their respective blogs, they often run into Emily's father.⁴ Emily's dad does not run a blog. He knows little about social media but does have a Facebook page and Instagram feed. He keeps his newsfeed private, but over the past few years, he has accumulated approximately 700 friends on Facebook—some from his years in college, some coworkers, some family, and other longtime friends. Emily's father posts updates about Emily.⁵ He posts her achievements and occasionally posts the cute things she says. Emily is an avid gymnast, and her father posts pictures of her at gymnastics meets.

Parents like those of Johnny, Becky, and Emily use technology and social media not only to share information about their own lives, but also to discuss their children's lives. When parents use social media in this way, they often share personal information about their children.⁶ These disclosures offer

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families the opportunity to connect with their communities—to share and to seek support.⁷ At the same time, parents sometimes share without the permission of their children, and these disclosures may foreclose their children from the opportunity to create their own digital footprints.⁸

This Article argues that "sharenting," a term used to describe the ways many parents share details about their children's lives online,⁹ must be a central part of child-rearing discourse and legal analysis of the conflict between children's rights and parental rights. There has been ample discussion focused on how young people often create (and harm) their digital identities,¹⁰ and scholars have explored the threats children face from third parties online.¹¹ Yet little discussion is centered at the intersection of parents' choices to publish information about their children in the virtual world and the effect such disclosures can have on the children.¹² The dearth of discussion on this topic means that even some of the most well-intentioned parents likely press "share" on their digital devices without thinking about how their postings may affect their children's overall well-being.

In many contexts, parents act as guardians for their children's online identity, protecting children from harm online.¹³ Most parents reasonably expect schools,

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community organizations, and peer groups to obtain permission before sharing their children's picture online.¹⁴ Similarly, if a company negligently or purposefully discloses a child's personal information in a public arena, parents call on the harm to be remedied.¹⁵ Parents also play a supervisory role in their child's Internet use, often by setting limits on their child's access to the Internet and by discussing online safety threats such as cyber-bullying and sexting.¹⁶ Indeed, parents are seemingly the natural protector of their child's digital identity.

However, parents are not always protectors; their disclosures online may harm their children, whether intentionally or not.¹⁷ A parent's own decision to share a child's personal information online is a potential source of harm that has gone largely unaddressed.¹⁸ Children not only have interests in protecting negative information about themselves on their parent's newsfeed, but also may not agree with a parent's decision to share any personal information—negative

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or positive—about them in the online world.¹⁹ There is no "opt-out" link for children²⁰ and split-second decisions made by their parents will result in indelible digital footprints.²¹ While adults have the ability to set their own parameters when sharing their personal information in the virtual world, children are not afforded such control over their digital footprint unless there are limits on parents.

This Article is the first to provide a legal analysis on the intersection of a parent's right to share and a child's interest in privacy and healthy development. This is a novel issue linked to the rapid growth of social media. While parents have always swapped parenting stories with friends, communities, and sometimes public sources, stories shared on the Internet have a reach that simply was unfathomable a generation ago.²² Search engines such as Google index and cache the information,²³ providing an opportunity for infinite rediscovery long after any value of the initial disclosure remains.²⁴

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Part I of this Article explores the ways in which parents share details about their children's lives. It provides an overview on the manner, frequency, and types of...