While many parents have made their kids part of their social media world through posting photos and videos of them, some kids do not seem pleased with their online presence.
In an article published by The Atlantic, an 11-year-old with the pseudonym Cara described seeing herself on her mom’s accounts as “weird” and shared how she does not like some photos of her posted online.
Cara said: “I’ve wanted to bring it up. It’s weird seeing myself up there, and sometimes there’s pics I don’t like of myself.”
Meanwhile, Ellen, also an 11-year-old, was frustrated upon learning that information about her swim scores and sports statistics were published online upon Googling herself despite not having her own social media accounts.
“No matter what you do, it’s out there for people to know. Even if you’re just swimming—the rest of the world will know. My meet records are out there; now people know I’m a swimmer. [The internet] tells you where all the swim meets are, so that would probably tell my general location. It tells you my school. Parts of my story online were in Spanish. Now people know I speak Spanish.”
Some preschools and elementary schools often update parents through blogs or social media accounts, including publishing sports scores and notable moments from after-school clubs.
While some kids are not thrilled by the idea, other children including 4th grader Nate and 13-year-old Natalie were happy about their internet presence.
“It made me feel famous … I got to make new friends by saying, ‘Oh, I’m in a newspaper [online],” said Nate.
Natalie meanwhile said: “We thought it was so cool that we had pics of ourselves online. We would brag like, ‘I have this many pics of myself on the internet.’ You look yourself up, and it’s like, ‘Whoa, it’s you!’ We were all shocked when we realized we were out there. We were like, ‘Whoa, we’re real people.’”
Despite negative and positive impacts of posting information about kids online, some parents could not help but share their stories about their children.
A parenting blogger with a 14-year-old daughter said that refraining from posting about her child on the internet “would mean shutting down a vital part of myself, which isn’t necessarily good for me or her.”
(Photo source: radicalhub.com/ parents.com)
