Sharenting: Protecting Your Child’s Privacy in a Digital World
Imagine your child taking their first steps, singing in their first school play, or receiving their first award. Instinctively, you capture the moment and share it on social media so friends and family near and far can celebrate with you.
What feels like a simple celebration of a cherished moment today, however, can also become part of a digital record that follows your child for years to come.
Social media has become a kind of digital keepsake box for many families—something previous generations did not have. Along with the convenience of preserving and sharing memories comes an important question for parents, psychologists, educators, and legal professionals:
The term “sharenting” combines the words sharing and parenting and generally refers to parents or caregivers sharing information, photos, videos, and stories about their children online.
Parents commonly share these moments out of love and pride, to celebrate milestones, stay connected with family and friends, and build community with other parents. Sharing family moments is not inherently harmful. Rather, the conversation around sharenting encourages parents to consider how they can enjoy the connection social media provides while also protecting their child’s privacy and future autonomy.
A Digital Identity Before a Child Can Speak
Many children have an online presence before they are even able to say their first words.
Pregnancy announcements, ultrasound images, birth announcements, and newborn photos may appear online before a child has any understanding of social media. This is significantly different from previous generations, when many of these memories were preserved privately in baby books and family photo albums.
As children grow, their digital footprint may grow with them. First-day-of-school pictures, sports accomplishments, birthdays, everyday family moments, and sometimes more personal experiences—such as illnesses, academic difficulties, or behavioral challenges—can become part of an online family scrapbook.
Over time, these posts can contribute to a digital identity that the child did not create for themselves.
The Family Photo Album Has Changed
Consider the difference between a printed family photo album sitting on a shelf and a collection of family photos and videos posted online. A traditional photo album generally remains within the home and is viewed by people intentionally invited to see it. A social media post, even when shared with a limited audience, can potentially be screenshotted, saved, copied, or shared beyond its intended audience.
That distinction is important. What may feel like a private family moment online can sometimes reach more people—and remain accessible much longer—than a parent originally anticipated.
Children, Identity, and Autonomy
Childhood is an important period of identity development. Children gradually discover who they are, what they value, what interests them, and how they want others to perceive them.
At the same time, they begin exercising independence through everyday decisions about clothing, hairstyles, friendships, activities, and interests. As children mature, they often become increasingly aware of how others view them.
For today’s children, however, portions of their lives may already have been documented online before they had the opportunity to decide how they wanted to present themselves. As children become old enough to participate in these conversations, asking how they feel about certain photos, videos, or stories being posted can help foster trust, autonomy, respect, and open communication.
Some Moments Deserve Additional Consideration
Not every family post carries the same privacy concerns. A birthday photo or lighthearted family memory may feel very different from sharing information involving a child’s medical diagnosis, custody situation, academic struggles, disciplinary experiences, behavioral outbursts, or other highly personal circumstances.
Before sharing sensitive information, it can be helpful to remember that children eventually become adults—and they may have different feelings about which parts of their childhood they want publicly available.
Something that feels funny, harmless, or temporary today may feel deeply personal to the child several years from now.
When Social Media and Family Conflict Intersect
Social media can also become a source of disagreement in high-conflict family situations. One parent may feel comfortable sharing updates and photos of their child online, while another may have concerns about privacy, safety, or the amount of personal information being disclosed.
In some family-law matters, parents’ online activity may also become part of the broader information considered during legal proceedings. Social media does not, by itself, determine someone’s parenting ability, but online activity can sometimes provide context about communication patterns, conflict, boundaries, and family dynamics.
For families navigating co-parenting disagreements, developing clear expectations around children’s privacy and social media use may help reduce conflict while keeping the child’s well-being at the center of the conversation.
Before You Hit “Share”
Before posting about your child, consider asking yourself:
These questions are not intended to discourage parents from celebrating their children. Instead, they can create a brief opportunity to consider the possible long-term impact of sharing.
Finding a Thoughtful Balance
Social media has given families meaningful opportunities to celebrate milestones, preserve memories, connect with loved ones across the world, and build supportive communities. It has also introduced questions that parents of previous generations rarely had to consider.
The goal does not have to be choosing between sharing everything and sharing nothing. Instead, families can work toward a thoughtful balance that allows them to enjoy connection while respecting a child’s developing identity, privacy, and autonomy.
A single social media post does not define a parent or a family. However, the collection of posts shared throughout childhood can become part of a child’s digital story. Before sharing, consider not only how the post feels today, but how your child may feel about it tomorrow. Because today’s post can become part of your child’s story for many tomorrows to come.
References
Cai, X. (2023). Do I have the right to share? sharenting and psychological ownership of children’s information in the U.S. Journal of Children and Media, 17(4), 579-597. https://doi.org/10.1080/17482798.2023.2260015
Longobardi, C., Fabris, M. A., Mastrokoukou, S., & Marengo, D. (2026). When parents share too much: Sharenting, social appearance anxiety, and internalizing symptoms in adolescence. Family Relations: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Applied Family Studies,https://doi.org/10.1111/fare.70247
Siddiqui, M. (2026). Sharenting and the quiet normalisation of digital child labour.Child Abuse Review, 35(1), 2. https://doi.org/10.1002/car.70104
Tosuntaş, Ş. B., & Griffiths, M. D. (2024). Sharenting: A systematic review of the empirical literature. Journal of Family Theory & Review, 16(3), 525https://doi.org/10.1111/jftr.12566
Walrave, M., Robbé, S., Staes, L., & Hallam, L. (2023). Mindful sharenting: How millennial parents balance between sharing and protecting. Frontiers in Psychology, 14,1171611. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1171611