sharenting

It's when you endlessly post pictures and videos of your adorable children on social media.

Historical perspective: Are you guilty of “sharenting”? asked Jenny McCartney in the Sunday Times U.K. in September 2017. That is, do you endlessly post pictures and videos of your adorable children on social media? In a recent poll, 42 percent of British parents declared that they happily engage in the practice. Photos of little ones on Facebook or Instagram no doubt bring joy to many people, not least far-flung relatives who rarely get to see the kids in person. The difficulty is that such sharing can become obsessive and end up invading children’s privacy. A 2010 survey found that 92 percent of children in America had an online presence by their second birthday; the digital records of many began even before birth, with 34 percent of parents posting their ultrasound pictures online. There is also something rather misleading about these carefully curated images of childhood. A small child is indeed a silky-skinned marvel who will fall asleep in your arms, with hair smelling of honey, but also one who will wake you in the early hours having been sick over themselves, and quite possibly scream ‘I hate you’ as you clean them up. Why only share the good moments? Why, more to the point, waste time recording parenthood online in a vain effort to capture the moment, when you should simply be experiencing it? Stop flaunting your kids on social media.