For seven years I was a compulsive ‘sharent’, chronicling my daughter’s life on social media. Then she told me how much she hated it …
In 2010, the year Mark Zuckerberg said privacy was no longer a social norm, my child was born. I had no intention of doing anything online that would compromise my daughter’s privacy, but I had never been a parent before and lived 5,000 miles away from where I grew up. Social media was my lifeline, and a place to share her development with our widespread loving family. I transcribed funny and sweet verbatim dialogues between us and posted them for my inner circle. I had become a “sharent” – a parent who publishes information about their child online. What harm could it do?
While I was writing a book about digital afterlives, though, I began thinking about how our online identities are shaped from our first moments, often by other people. Unease descended, and I took my then nine-year-old daughter for lunch and asked if we could have a conversation. “You’re not posting it, are you?” she replied. Sometimes, I only had to take my phone from my bag to elicit this response. Her reflex reaction to my question was the reason I wanted to talk in the first place.
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