When children realize that their whole life is already online

Searching Google for information about yourself has become a rite of passage

For several months now, Kara had the courage to talk to her mother about what she saw on Instagram. Not so long ago, this 11-year-old girl - which we, like the other children in this story, will call a fictitious name - discovered that her mother puts out her photos without her permission, and this is already happening for most of her life. “I wanted to talk about it. It’s very strange to see your photos on the Internet, and I didn’t like some of them, ”she says.

Like most modern children, Kara grew up being immersed in the social network. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube appeared before her birth. Instagram has been around since she was a baby. And if many children do not yet have their own accounts, their parents, schools, sports teams and other organizations could maintain their online presence from birth. The shock of realizing that the details of your life - and in some cases all its smallest details - are laid out on the Internet without your consent or knowledge, has become one of the main events in the lives of many teenagers and younger children.

Recently, a female blogger wrote an essay in the Washington Post, where she admitted that, despite the fact that her 14-year-old daughter was horrified to discover how her mother shares very personal stories and information about her, her mother doesn’t have enough spirit to stop posting these stories on the Internet, because "it would mean abandoning the vital part of itself, and it would not necessarily serve me or her."
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However, the creation of the online identity of their children is not only engaged in too zealous mommy bloggers; This is done by many average parents. In English, they even invented a word-wallet for this: sharenting [ from share - share, and parenting - parenting / approx. trans. ]. Nearly a quarter of children today have digital life starting from the fact that their parents post a photo with an ultrasound scan on the Internet, as indicated in a study conducted by AVG, an Internet security company. It was also found that 92% of babies under the age of two years already have their digital identity. “Today, parents create the digital identity of children long before children can open their first email. And everything that parents discover online will naturally follow their children in their mature age, ”Levin Law College at the University of Florida announced in a report. “Parents simultaneously serve as keepers of the personal information of their children and narrators of their personal stories.”

Kindergartens and elementary schools often blog or upload photos of children to their Instagram and Facebook accounts so that their parents at work feel like they are taking part in the lives of children. Sports achievements are recorded online, as well as remarkable moments in the life of extracurricular clubs.

When Helen, who was 11 years old, decided to search Google for information about herself, she didn’t expect to find absolutely everything, because she hadn’t yet had her own accounts in social networks. She was amazed to find their results in swimming for many years and other sports statistics. The writing, which she wrote in the third grade, was also posted on the school website, and signed by her name. “I didn’t think that I would be on the Internet in this form,” she told me.

Helen said that although she did not find anything too sensitive or personal, she was upset that all the information about her was published without her consent.

“No matter what you do, it’s already posted to everyone,” she said. - Even if you just swam in the pool, the rest of the world will know about it. My achievements are posted on the site, and now everyone knows that I am swimming. On the Internet you can find information about the basins, so as a result you can determine my approximate location. From here you can display information about my school. Some of my online documents are written in Spanish, and now people know that I speak Spanish. ”

Ellie was in fourth grade when she first looked in Google. Like Helen, she did not expect to find anything, because she did not have her account in social networks. Google found some photos, but she was still very surprised that there was anything at all. She immediately got an idea of ​​the image that her mother created for her on Instagram and Facebook. “My parents made notes about me all the time,” she said. “And I did not object to this, but then I realized that I was making some impression and that my personality was also online now, through her page.”

Not all children react negatively to the unexpected discovery of their online life. Some it pleases. In the fourth grade, Nate looked up his name and found himself mentioned in the news about how they were making a giant burrito in the third grade. “I did not know,” he said. - I was very surprised". But he liked this discovery. “I felt famous. I can meet new friends, saying: Oh, and they wrote about me in the newspaper, ”he said. Since then, he has been searching for himself on Google every few months, hoping to find something.

Natalie, who is now 13, said that in the fifth grade they were competing with friends, who would find more information about themselves on the Internet. “It seemed to us very cool to find our photos online,” she said. - We boasted how many people have pictures on the Internet. You search for yourself and find: Wow, that’s you! We were shocked to learn that we are on the Internet. We thought: Wow, we are real people. ”

Natalie's parents strictly adhere to the rule not to lay out her photos on the social network, so her photos on the Internet are few, but she wants more. “I do not want to live in the hole, so that I have only two photos online. I want to be a real person. I want people to know who I am, ”she said.

Kara and other children from 8 to 12 years old say they hope to agree on rules of conduct with their parents. Cara wants her mom next time to warn her that she wants to write something about her, and that her daughter had the right of veto to upload any photo. “My friends are constantly writing or saying to me, like:“ Wow, this photo is with you that your mother posted is very cute, ”and I immediately get embarrassed,” she said. Hayden, 10, said that several years ago, parents used a special hashtag for photos with him. Now he tracks it to make sure that they do not post anything shameful.

After children realize that their lives are available for everyone to learn, there is no turning back. Several teenagers and children from 8 to 12 years old told me that this served as an incentive to create their own profile in social networks in order to gain control over their image. But many other children take it too close to their hearts and withdraw into themselves. Helen said that every time someone next to her pulls out a phone, she worries that he can take her picture and put it somewhere. “Everyone is constantly watching each other, nothing is forgotten, nothing is lost,” she said.

To help children understand this issue, more and more elementary schools in the United States are starting digital literacy programs . Jane, seven, said she learned about her Internet presence, particularly from her school presentation on online security. Her father also warned her about social networks and gave her the opportunity to approve each photo before posting.

And yet, Jane - who, like all other children, talked with me with the permission of her parents - worries. She is too small to use the Internet on her own, but it already seems to her that a lot of information on the Internet connected with her is beyond her control. “I don’t like that other people know different things about me, and I don’t know these people,” she said. “There are thousands or even millions of things.” Andy, seven years old, always watches people who can take an ugly photo with him. One day, he caught his mother as she tried to take a picture of him while he slept, and then when he performed a silly dance. He immediately asked her not to post it on Facebook, and she did not do that. He found these photos shameful.

Some legislators are included in the case. In 2014, the European Supreme Court ruled that Internet service providers must give people the right to be forgotten. According to this decision, the Europeans can send a request to ensure that the information harmful to them, including crimes committed before coming of age, are removed from the Google search results. In France, harsh privacy laws allow children to sue their parents for publishing intimate or personal details of their lives without their knowledge. In the US, children and adolescents are not allowed such protection, and many simply try to behave very carefully. “You definitely have to live with caution,” Helen said.

Jamie Putnam, a mother from Georgia, said that she began to think more often that many friends of her children still do not suspect how much information about them is on the Internet. Recently, in social networks, she saw that one of her child’s friends had gotten a puppy. When she next met him, she mentioned this, and the child was terrified. He did not understand how she knew this seemingly personal information. “And then I realized that these children do not imagine that they appear on the Internet all the time,” she said. Now she carefully approaches the disclosure of details. "It feels like you are going too far when you tell everyone everything you know about them."