It’s selfish for parents to share images of their children online

‘Cheese challenge! Cheese in baby face! Latest viral videos!” This 21st century hawker’s cry is for a Youtube compilation. It shows various babies being filmed as a slice of rubbery cheese is thrown at their face. Some of the babies insouciantly peel the cheese off and eat it; but most recoil, trembling from the shock, or go rigid and wide-eyed with fear. Some burst into tears. Perhaps most disturbing is the background laughter of the adults (presumably, in most cases, the parents) who publicly humiliate their children in exchange for “likes”, and think it hilarious.

French MPS are debating legislation that would put a merciful end to this form of internet “humour”. (Similar viral pranks include splatting puree into a baby’s face, telling a child that the “child police” are coming to get them and smearing pretend poo on to them.) But the proposed bill wouldn’t just ban such obviously horrible memes, it would outlaw all forms of “sharenting”: the modern parental habit of posting footage and pictures of your children online.

Is this an overreaction? There is, surely, a world of difference between exploiting and frightening your child for the sake of internet fame, and succumbing to occasional flushes of parental pride on Facebook. Almost everyone who has raised a child in the age of social media is guilty of the latter. I certainly am.

In the early years of motherhood, especially, I found “sharenting” almost irresistible. My children were, of course, uniquely sweet and charming – and it seemed obvious that the world, or at least my Instagram friends, would want to know this. Also, I was so lonely and baffled and bored. I had cut back drastically on work to look after my children so my creative energies were under-employed. And I missed the rewards of work: not just the pay, which had been material evidence of my worth, but the approval of my peers.

Posting something funny on social media gives you a little dose of that approval. Most of my sharenting posts struck a tone of rueful amusement: videos of my boys whacking each other rhythmically with sticks, or my daughter grimacing under the nit comb, or my son inching along a muddy road on his hands and knees, in protest at being forced on a country walk. They made my friends laugh, and every laughing emoji felt like a vindication. I’m still here! I’m still funny! I’m doing OK!

I have never posted an image of my children on a public account. And I can’t honestly say I regret all my sharenting. Some of the posts still make me chuckle aloud; I feel an almost professional pride in them, mingled with parental tenderness. However, I have come to recognise that even the most benign sharenting is fundamentally selfish: it benefits the parent, not the child. We do it to feel good about ourselves and try not to think too hard about whether it compromises the privacy and dignity of our dependents. In this respect, there isn’t such a gulf between a normal, loving parent in possession of a Facebook account and a cheese-throwing moron.

In this country, parents post an average of 1,500 images of each child online before that child has even reached primary school age. The muscular French solution – banning sharenting outright – may seem extreme but it only matches the scale of our foolishness.