#coolmomtech

According to OpticalCortex.com from a sample of about 21,000 accounts, the average user had roughly 840 followers. That means within a week of life this child has 80 times more followers than the average user.

Of course these are special situations being children of celebrities, but it doesn’t change the fact that these are children. And celebrities aren’t the only ones adopting this trend. No matter the family’s social status having such a large following from such a young age could affect a child later in development:

“They don’t even have a say in it, and I think that’s an interesting ethical question,” said Kaveri Subrahmanyam, associate director of the Children’s Digital Media Center at the University of California, Los Angeles. There is very little research into how children will react to discovering a rich digital history about themselves once they’re old enough to get online, she said, but parents should be aware of what and how much they post…Parents have to be really self-aware and mindful of what they’re doing with technology, and I don’t think we’re at that point yet,” Dr. Subrahmanyam said.

It could also be argued however that these accounts are harmless and are simply online albums of a proud parent. From an article on Today.com: 

…30-year-old stay-at-home mom Cristina Carmona says the social media account for her daughter is “the easiest way for me to share photos of her with my friends and family.

Apparently many parents create separate pages to preserve their own accounts:

Lily Silva says she has an Instagram feed for her son as a way to maintain her personal identity. “I think everything my son does is cute and I would love to post pictures all day long of what he does—but, I didn’t want him to hijack my page,” says the 29-year old marketing coordinator. “I'm still me—I’m a mom, but I'm also a daughter, girlfriend, employee. Although Mateo is the most important thing in my life, it’s a step I took to make sure I remained me.”

Today.com’s article also mentions the commonality of this trend via statistics, stating:

According to a new survey conducted by Gerber.com, close to 40 percent of moms aged 18 to 34 created social media accounts for their baby before the child’s first birthday — and another 7 percent made one before their kid’s second birthday.

Not all parents are on board with this trend, however,:

Even while many moms maintain feeds for their babies, plenty of others say they abstain—for reasons relating to privacy, modesty, boundaries, and other concerns...Christine Kirk is a 33-year-old new mom who makes her living in social media marketing for other brands as the C.E.O. of Social Muse Communications in Los Angeles. But she says setting up an account for her own son was a definite no-go.

Kirk argues that is a social media presence should be an individual’s choice, a decision to be made when they are old enough to decide for themselves:

“I have centered my career and my life on social media, and obviously see tremendous value in it from both a personal and professional point of view,” she says. “But I knew right from the get-go that I would never create any social media profile in my child's name and update it as if I were him. My son should have the choice as a young adult about if he wants a social media presence, and what that presence will look like. I don’t think it’s a parent's place to make that decision on behalf of their child.”

Kirk admits to sharing some information about her child online, but only when sharing her experiences as a mother, like tweeting about her pregnancy,

With all this in mind, the question is whether this is ethically okay and or safe. In future this may not be a question at all. “According to Liz Gumbinner, editor in chief of a parent-focused website called coolmomtech.com”: 

“Parents have this fear about their children being online too early. But I feel like that’s a really generational thing, because this is a generation that’s going to grow up without any other option. Most children born in the last 10 years will have been online hundreds, if not thousands, of times by the time they become self-aware or start to use computers.”

The most interesting opinion on this topic is from Molly Wood, writer for the NYTimes Personal Tech section who mentions:

“If anything, a child today who grows up and discovers he has no photos on Facebook or Instagram might think of himself as an unloved anomaly. In an age of obsessive digital detailing, if a child grows up unrecorded, what is his identity at all?”

So are you harming or helping your child by building them a digital presence?  It may be an unanswerable question with an outcome that will vary person to person.

sources: http://coolmomtech.com https://www.instagram.com/p/BMsGBaogaDz/?taken-by=majorgirl http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/newborn-dream-kardashian-social-media-followers-article-1.2870482 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/15/technology/personaltech/how-young-is-too-young-for-a-digital-presence.html?_r=0 http://opticalcortex.com/instagram-statistics/ http://www.today.com/parents/have-social-media-account-your-baby-40-percent-millennial-moms-1D80224937