Positionings, Challenges, and Ambivalences in Children’s and Parents’ Perspectives in Digitalized Familial Contexts

Abstract

Digital media use has long been part of families’ everyday lives. Various studies show that digital media is not only a component of the everyday lives of children and parents, but also raises new questions—or, rather, old questions in a new context. Everyday practices in families combine with digital practices with media, sometimes changing their form and reach and interlocking with other contexts and effects. In parent blogs, Instagram posts, and YouTube channels, families document their everyday lives in a plethora of ways. In the process, a great deal of information about children, young people, and adults, as well as pictures and videos of them, are published and shared with others via social networks or apps such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat. Many parents post pictures to let relatives and friends participate in their family life or in their child(ren)’s development. Some make a living from this and reach a large public audience.

1 Sharenting—Personal Rights of Children and Parental Responsibility

Digital media use has long been part of families’ everyday lives. Various studies¹ show that digital media is not only a component of the everyday lives of children and parents, but also raises new questions—or, rather, old questions in a new context. Everyday practices in families combine with digital practices with media, sometimes changing their form and reach and interlocking with other contexts and effects. In parent blogs, Instagram posts, and YouTube channels, families document their everyday lives in a plethora of ways. In the process, a great deal of information about children, young people, and adults, as well as pictures and videos of them, are published and shared with others via social networks or apps such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat. Many parents post pictures to let relatives and friends participate in their family life or in their child(ren)’s development. Some make a living from this and reach a large public audience.

In recent years, the so-called practice of “sharenting”—a mix of the terms “sharing” and “parenting” used to describe the habitual use of social media to share news, images, etc. of one’s child(ren)²—has increasingly come to the fore. With sharenting, the practice of (mostly parents) taking photographs of family members,³ which has long been part of “doing family”, conjoins with the digital social network practice of posting and sharing. Photos are habitually taken in families even when the children do not feel comfortable with it, often hinting that they will later be happy when these pictures are available. The spread of smartphones with camera functions has allowed for everyday life to be pictorially documented to an unprecedented extent and masses of pictures to be shared with others via messaging services and social networks. This is therefore a “perfectly normal thing”. Thus, pictures, videos, and other information about children—starting from an early age—are being spread among family members, friends, acquaintances, and (via social media sites) strangers.

This practice is embedded in everyday familial contexts, based on the assumption that parents, as adults responsible for children, do care for their rights; know their children; and due to experience and being informed, are able to estimate media-related acting and its consequences better than children. The miniKIM study shows that many parents of two to five-year-old children are members of social networks and share their children’s data.⁴ In “The State of the World’s Children: Children in a Digital World 2017”, UNICEF warns that parents are potentially distributing information about their children to a mass audience, which could damage the child’s reputation and thus expose him or her to economic and sexual exploitation, as well as impair his or her ability to develop an identity or find work.⁵

A closer look at what is understood as “sharing” reveals a wide range of data types and contexts in which such data is used⁶:

• unproblematic images that can be downloaded by third parties, modified, and distributed in pedophile forums

• embarrassing information for children

• information that makes children identifiable in other contexts (e.g., unwanted access to private information for distant acquaintances, data brokers who consider children to be the addressees of advertisements, or surveillance actors)

• inappropriate photos (e.g., nude photos)

• sharing information (sometimes unknowingly) in not clearly defined circles via social media

• sensitive data (e.g., health information) about the child in the context of parent blogs or network activities (e.g., information and exchanges on specific diseases or political commitment)

• public shaming photos as a means of education to put children under pressure through public presentation on conflict issues.

“Children have no control over the dissemination of their personal information by their parents”.⁷ This quote by legal scholar Stacey Steinberg refers to a fundamental—and usually everyday—constellation in families, which in turn is based on the assumption that parents, as guardians, are aware of children’s rights, know their children well, and are able to assess them. It also draws on the recurring idea that adults are better able to assess media-related actions and their consequences than children due to a head start in experience and information. In the context of digital media practices today, however, it is becoming increasingly clear that—on closer inspection—this does not necessarily raise new questions. Moreover, everyday practices in families under the conditions of data aggregation and algorithmization in the context of digitization raise far-reaching questions as well as risks for the future of children.

For example, Steinberg argues that sharenting has so far not been debated enough in the areas of children’s education and conflict negotiation between children’s and parental rights.⁸ The focus is often on how children use digital media and expose themselves to risky situations, or how third parties can become dangerous to children online. Only recently has the focus shifted to the consequences that parents’ actions in the context of digital media can have for their children. The focus is often on well-intentioned, everyday family media practices that, unknowingly or at least not sufficiently reflected, can have far-reaching impacts on children’s well-being. In many contexts, parents act as guardians of their children’s online identities to protect them from danger. Many parents expect, for example, that daycare centers, schools, or other public institutions ask for permission before putting their child(ren)’s image online. They also critically discuss what it means when commercial providers publish personal information about children. Parents control their children’s access to digital media or services in different ways to protect them. At the same time, according to Steinberg, parents not only protect their children in this context, but also disclose their children’s data. Children are usually dependent on their parents’ decision-making power in this respect. There is, in fact, no “opt-out” option for children as long as their parents decide.⁹ At the same time, there is often an “Interfamilial Privacy Divide”¹⁰ if a child and its parents have different interests in sharing private data. This poses difficult questions and and risks with unforeseeable consequences for the future of children under the conditions of data aggregation and algorithmization.¹¹

2 The Study

With this background, an empirical research was conducted,¹² that aimed to reconstruct familial practices when dealing with photos and children’s data in everyday, digitalized life.¹³ In 37 semi-structured and media-based interviews with 12 families (including 21 children) from four federal states in Germany, children, parents, and in some cases whole families were asked about topics including: the role of digital media in their family’s everyday life, styles of media education in their family, how they handle data (especially photos of oneself and others), how children participate in decisions about sharenting (taking pictures and sharing), their knowledge about the right to protect one’s image and the desire for participation, knowledge and notions of parents about digital media, privacy, and children’s rights. Participating children, of whom 9 were male and 12 were female, were 6 to 15 years old. The families were chosen by contrasting samplings with regard to experiences in media use, educational background, income, Goldthorpe/Erikson/Portocarero class schemes, migration background, and family structures.

The types of media education in the families ranged from restrictive and overcontrolling to uncontrolled (cf. Fig. 1).

Fig. 1

Types of Media Education

3 Contradictory Parental Practices of Data Protection

Similar to the types of media education, the practices of parents in terms of data protection varied and turned out to be quite contradictory. Also, digitally savvy parents showed a kind of ‘metadata pragmatism’, stating, for example, “I have nothing to hide” or “[w]e are all objects of surveillance”. In some cases, they even talked about the advantages of metadata-based personalization of services. Despite an approximate awareness of data collection and processing of social networking services and apps, parents expressed (almost) no knowledge or ideas about opportunities of action regarding how to protect their own or their children’s data in this context. In two of the families, the parents shared that parental privacy settings were determined with the children’s support, as the parents did not know what to do and their children were more informed so they showed them which settings and services to disable or install.

Several parents reported difficulties regarding their child’s ability to communicate with others via messaging apps. Although their child was younger than 16, they allowed him or her to use WhatsApp, knowing that this could raise questions of appropriateness. While letting the child use an age-inappropriate app—and thus giving some early autonomy to the child—they decided to make the child hand over his or her smartphone every evening and let them search all communication (messages, threads, etc.) to exercise parental control and protection, whereby the child’s privacy sphere thus becomes violated. Some parents told about controlling their children’s usage of services, such as games or YouTube, by using apps that close applications once the parentally permitted time of use has run out.

The reported practices show that parents’ intention to protect their children’s data is thwarted by a lack of knowledge, as well as by uncertainty, naivety, resignation, and pragmatism.

4 Children’s and Parents’ Criteria for Sharing or Protecting Photos

In the interviews, children were shown seven exemplary children’s photos, which they were asked to describe and classify. The pictures differed in terms of the motifs and the recognizability of the children’s faces. In four pictures, the children’s faces could be recognized, and in three, the faces could not be recognized due to pixilation or the shot’s angle. The interviewers asked the children what they thought of the pictures, and how they would rate them if they themselves were depicted in them. Moreover, the children were asked, along with questions about their knowledge of their personal rights, to indicate to what extent their own photos may be shown or shared. This was followed by questions about their knowledge of data protection on the internet, as well as their existing knowledge of data processing in the context of digital services.

During those interviews, the children named different criteria regarding the disclosure of photos to others. Their consent to share or to protect photos of themselves related to the extent of their participation in parental decisions on the disclosure of the photos (which ones and to whom), their relation to potential addressees in regard to trust towards potential recipients, the degrees of publicness of the presentation context, the content of the pictures with regard to positive or negative connotation and the potential of recognition or shaming, and their fear of sanctions regarding the depicted situation—in relation to their wanted or unwanted recognizability. The criteria unfold against the backdrop of the children’s own experiences and perceptions:

A 11-year old interviewee differentiates between different ranges of public:

Y1: Okay, who would be allowed to see such a picture of you?

L1m(11): Actually, everybody.

Y1: Okay, who is everybody?

L1m(11): Well, all my friends and my family.

Y1: Okay, and would it be okay to put this on the internet, for example?

L1m(11): No, I wouldn’t put it on the internet.

Y1: Okay, why not?

L1m(11): Because I wouldn’t want the whole world to see this

(line 670 ff.)

Another 7-year old girl also shows in her argumentation that trust and relationship plays a role in who should be allowed to see a picture of her:

F3w(7): Well, I would not take strangers, only, well, people whom I have met before perhaps, or whom I know already, or people who helped me (line 628 ff.)

In general, the children expressed diverging positionings towards the same pictures, which resulted in each photo receiving various ratings.

In their interviews, parents were asked also about their sharing practices in relation to the content of the shared photos, the children’s participation in this practice, the parents’ reasons for the children’s participation (whether or not it took place), and the addressees of the shared photos. The criteria from the parents’ perspective for sharing or protecting pictures were rather unanimous: Those who shared pictures said that they do it with photos of their children which are regarded as particularly “cute” or “funny”. One mother described which pictures of her daughter she takes and shares:

H3w: When they look cute or sleep or I don’t know what, when something is funny, well, then… and yeah when she is lying on the couch once again absolutely flabby, driveling, dead or halloween when she is made up funnily in such situations […] goes directly to the family WhatsApp group (line 220 ff.).

Photos worth protecting were described as those where the content could potentially negatively impact the children’s (future) life and those found to be revealing, such as naked or swimsuit pictures. In both cases, the parent’s perspective usually guides the action, even when contrary to the children’s wishes. One child interviewee expressed her annoyance about her mother’s sharing of pictures she does not want to be shared. Some of the children stated that they did not know if, when, and with whom their parents shared pictures of them; others reported that their parents took and shared pictures of them despite their protest. Some interviewees found that they had no right, as the parents were the ones who were in charge.

F3w(7): Actually, they need not ask me because they are my parents, and they rule me. Yes, they rule me. (line 796 ff.)

Nonetheless, most of the children expressed that they want to be involved in decisions about taking and sharing photos.

F1m(10): But if they take a whole photo, then they should ask first. (line 1313 f.)

Among them were both, children who have so far not perceived having any say in their parents’ decisions, as well as children who had already explicitly expressed to their parents that they wanted to be involved. Primarily younger children stated that they did not want to be involved or would leave it to their parents to decide. Some also only want to be involved in certain situations, especially when it is a matter of being recognizable, when pictures are perceived as “embarrassing”, or when pictures are perceived as disadvantageous. Even if they are not included in parental decisions, children sometimes have very precise ideas about how they would like to be represented, but not necessarily a precise idea of how they should be involved. At the same time, children who already had profiles on social media and had discussed what to share with their peers did not view themselves as empowered to act vis-à-vis their parents.

Parents reported that they increasingly involve their children in decisions about taking and sharing photos according to their ability to protest, especially connected to rising age. Whereas there was a broad range of reports about children’s (non-)participation, in some of the families, the children did not participate because the parents presupposed consent and assumed that the children would make it known if they did not agree. Some parents expressed the opinion that the children had—due to their age—no right and no capability to decide; some children stated that the parents consulted with them before they shared or that the children were granted participation after sharing and that they participated in an “ex-post” intervention.

Y1w: And are you allowed to decide what pictures are being shared?

I1w(11): No, but my mother mostly asks me if this is okay, and then I say “yes”.

Y1w: Ah, okay. You mean when she uploads it, right?

I1w(11): Well, mostly, she uploads it first, and then I see it. Well, mhm, mhm but these are not pictures of me that are embarrassing. (line 718 ff.)

In some separate interviews with children and with parents, divergencies between reported and factual practices became apparent. Some of the parents reported that they never would publish or share pictures of their children wearing swimwear or barely clothed, but contrary to that, some of the children said that their parents shared such pictures on their Facebook account. When reviewing the family’s Facebook profile, there were photos of the family (with children) in swimsuits. All parents differentiated between Facebook as a “public space”, where data should be protected more, and WhatsApp as a “private space”, where data sharing was viewed as uncritical. As their difference criterion here—reconstructed from the interview data—is the controllability of the target group for the shared children’s data, issues such as data protection in regard to metadata analyses are not considered.

5 Spectrum of Strategies Dealing with the Areas of Conflict Between Autonomy and Protection, Responsibility, and Participation

Regarding the strategies reconstructed from the interview data, the fundamental children’s rights dilemma between autonomy rights and protective rights, as well as the question of responsibility and participation, become clear at numerous points (cf. Fig. 2).

Fig. 2

Children’s and Parents’ Strategies in Dealing with Autonomy, Responsibility, Protection, and Participation

Children’s autonomy is given space—in very different forms—by on the one hand side parental permission to use social media or a range of permits which implies giving freedoms, allowing or conducting risky practices or setting no rules at all, and on the other hand side by the children finding ways to use digital media in secrecy or developing creative strategies of expanding media time. In one family, the siblings added together the daily permitted time for each child and used it up jointly, thus extending the time available. In terms of protecting children, parents introduce restrictions regarding time and areas or content of media use, or limit the presentation of their children on social media (sometimes only rhetorically when posting pictures of their children, nevertheless). The children’s role in supporting themselves and their data protection is that they develop strategies to get information about and to control parental sharenting, for example, by searching the parent’s smartphone for posted pictures or teaching the parents about data protection by helping them with settings on their digital device. Here, the distribution of responsibility within the family also reveals a broad range—from controlling children’s access to media use and content to shifting responsibility to the children. One mother of a 10-year-old girl said that she didn’t oversee the child’s media use at all; her daughter is allowed to go on the internet without any control, and she trusts that her child would come to her if there were any problems. In some families, children or parents reported that the children get or take responsibility for data protection in regard to digital media, also for the parents’ devices. As for children’s participation in decisions about media use and sharenting, the parental practices range from no participation to regularly consulting with the children when deciding what to share. In many cases, this was connected to age: The older the children were, the more involvement they were granted in such decisions. From the children’s perspective, some of the younger ones not only assumed a parental decision-making power, but also demanded participation by protesting parental practices with which they did not consent. The children’s demands for participation were sometimes more and sometimes less successful depending on what the parents allowed. But even in negotiation-oriented families, parental decision-making power was mostly undisputed when it came to digital media.

6 Discussion

The results show that “normal” (generational) regimes and everyday practices in families and society in combination with even adults feeling overwhelmed in the context of digital media can lead to a lack of consideration of children’s rights by parents. In general, childhood concepts and generational orders, as well as the parents’ available knowledge of data protection issues and the resulting consequences for the protection or participation and respect for children’s autonomy, are shaping frameworks. In the contexts studied, attention to children’s rights in media education is clearly absent in some families’ everyday lives. In many cases, children are hardly involved in decision-making or are denied the ability to make decisions. On the other hand, they are attributed extensive responsibility and freedom of action in areas where parents do not view themselves as having the power to act.

In the context of respecting children’s rights in digitalized, everyday familial life, the question arises as to how parental responsibility for children’s upbringing is expressed in media education practices, especially in the form of reduced participation and inadequate protection of children. This, in turn, raises the question of whether, in the context of digital media use, it can be assumed that parents can always know what is best for their children. It is also questionable whether parental decision-making power is always in the best interests of children, given the fact that children express themselves significantly more “data-sensitively” than their parents on various points. On the other hand, it is questionable whether parents have the “right” to violate their children’s privacy in order to protect them. Furthermore, the possibility of demanding certain rights, especially in the context of digitization—for example, when it comes to the future consequences of algorithmically-evaluated metadata from parental sharing practices for children—requires appropriate information about the processes, contexts, and consequences of such data collection and exploitation. This lack of information is a problem for both parents and children: How can parents take responsibility for their children’s data when they have only rudimentary knowledge about data use? How can children judge what is too public for them if they cannot assess the public dimension of Facebook, for example? Is protection by intervening in privacy legitimate? What would be an adequate level of information to be able to give factual “informed consent”¹⁴? And how do we deal with the fact that children, at different points in their biographies, consider certain data or photos to be problematic or protected in different ways?

The questions addressed here point out that an effective consideration of children’s rights in digitized, everyday life requires both protective and autonomous spaces at various levels. In addition to the subjective empowerment of children and parents in dealing with data—as far as this is comprehensible and feasible for the individual—children and parents need support from public educational and upbringing institutions such as day-care centers, schools, family education institutes, educational counselling services, and other relevant actors. It also becomes clear that, if their views are to be taken seriously, children should in many places be involved more systematically in decisions that affect them and their data or rights to their own image. Beyond that, however, it is also clear that in view of the contexts of data use and the availability of children’s data in the digital space—over the production of which they largely have no say—a structural framework is necessary that enables the protection of children’s rights, and—as these issues do not only affect children’s but basic civil rights—also of adult’s digital civil rights, through political control such as debate and law-based control. More participation of children is obviously already possible at a rather early age. With regard to the distribution of responsibility, an individualization of responsibility like “more media competence for parents” can only be part of a bigger solution to protect children’s rights in digitalized contexts.