Major events in life call for photos, starting from immortalizing pregnancy and birth to depicting everyday life. In the 21st century, the family album is now online, containing photos of children. This is what the emerging field of studies on parental practices on social media call sharenting. Today, there are more than 199 million posts on Instagram tagged #baby, followed by nearly 82 million for #babygirl and 65 million for #babyboy.

Anna Brosch, who is a PhD from the University of Silesia in Katowice in Poland, is a pioneer in studying the parental practice of posting pictures and texts about children. In this episode, she tells about a study she did on Facebook a few years ago. 

Her study highlights the conflicting sides to exposing children online: however important these images are for practising parenthood, they also involve risks for the children. As Brosch puts it – the Internet never forgets.

Keywords: children exposure, digital risks, Facebook, online privacy, social media, sharenting

• The article discussed in this episode:

Brosch, A. (2016), When the child is born into the internet: sharenting as a growing trend among parents on Facebook. The new educational review. 43(1), 225–235.

DOI: 10.15804/tner.2016.43.1.19

Free access to the article: http://czasopisma.marszalek.com.pl/images/pliki/tner/201601/tner20160119.pdf

• How to reach out

For comments, feedback or suggestions on articles for future episodes, please reach out to me on Twitter @rasmuskyllonen or by mailing to rasmus.kyllonen@helsinki.fi

• About the host

Rasmus is a master’s student at the University of Helsinki. His major is journalism and communication and as a minor he is doing pedagogy. Before his studies he worked as both a journalist and a graphic designer at various newspapers and magazines.

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