Every day, millions of parents post photos of their children online — a first step, a birthday cake, a school play. This practice has a name: sharenting — a blend of “sharing” and “parenting.” While it feels natural and even joyful in the moment, the cumulative implications for children’s privacy are only beginning to be understood.
The Scale of the Phenomenon
Research suggests that by the time a child turns five, parents will have posted an average of over 1,000 images of them online. These images — along with names, school details, locations, and developmental milestones — form a digital record that the child had no part in creating and cannot easily erase.
What Drives Sharenting?
In my studies, I have examined the psychological and social motivations behind sharenting behavior. The most common drivers include:
- Social validation — likes and comments provide immediate positive reinforcement
- Community building — parents connect with others going through similar experiences
- Memory-keeping — digital platforms serve as informal family archives
- Identity expression — sharing parenthood is increasingly part of curating one’s public self
Notably, darker personality traits — particularly narcissism — emerge as significant predictors of higher sharenting frequency, even when controlling for general social media use.
The Privacy Costs
The risks are layered. In the short term, children’s images can be extracted from context and misused. In the longer term, children grow up with a pre-existing digital identity — one shaped entirely by others — before they are developmentally capable of consenting to or managing it.
There is also a relational dimension: several studies document adolescents expressing deep resentment when they discover how much of their childhood was made public without their knowledge.
A Call for Thoughtful Practice
This is not an argument against sharing family life online. It is an argument for pausing before posting — asking not just “do I want to share this?” but “does my child’s future self benefit from this being permanent and public?”
The conversation around sharenting is ultimately a conversation about digital consent, and it is one our culture is still learning to have.
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