A journalist from The Daily Telegraph has written a scathing opinion piece on ‘sharenting’ and the possible harmful affect it can have on kids, using Hamish Blake and Zoe Foster-Blake’s social media activity as an example.
‘Sharenting’ is defined by the Collins English Dictionary as ‘the habitual use of social media to share news and images of one’s children’.
Angela Mollard questions the extreme repercussions posting too many pictures of your child on social media can have on the child and the danger of having these pictures public.
Mollard argues that since we don’t know the affect Sonny’s ‘Instagram famous’ status will have on him, they should exert caution when it comes to posting.
She also questions whether the level of fandom is creepy, stating: “Before long Sonny had more than a million fans even though he was not an actor or related to Beyonce or the Royal Family or even the Trumps”, noting that Buzzfeed now writes articles about his cute Instagram pictures regularly.
She summed up: “See the moral of the story is this: we don’t know what impact all this “sharenting” is going to have.We don’t know if pictures of gorgeous blue-eyed boys like Sonny, happily showering with his dad, and innocently posted to the internet, are being shared by paedophiles.”
Earlier this year, PR guru Roxy Jacenko, had to go to the police over doctored Instagram shots. Pictures of her then-four-year-old little girl, Pixie (who has a popular Instagram account), were doctored into lewd photographs and circulated around fashion professionals in Sydney. Roxy was forced to defend her popular Instagram account at the time.
What do you think? Should we exert caution when posting pictures on our personal social media accounts?
