Reading a New York Times article, November 14, 2015, about mothers hiring professional photographers and setting their children up with social media accounts and followers, making money off their children, reminded me of Brooke Shields or Brittany Spears or Drew Barrymore as children. I initially thought it is just what has occurred in America for generations, exploitation of children for parents’ gain with the justification of no harm and that the children like the attention. That was until I got to the section of the article, “Meet the InstaMom, a Stage Mother for Social Media,” by Hayley Krischer, that said:
“Ginger Clark, a psychologist and professor of clinical education at the University of Southern California, compared parent-run Instagram feeds to the pageant world.” Not every kid is going to have this experience, but it runs the risk of giving the child the sense that they are a commodity in your eyes,” she said. “You have to be extra careful to make sure the messages you’re giving your child are `This is for fun, this is dress-up.’ But when you’re hiring your own photographer, then it becomes more commercialized.”
“Patricia Greenfield is a psychology professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, director of the campus’s Children’s Digital Media Center and a co-author of an oft-cited study that found that fame was the No. 1 goal for children ages 10 to 12. “It really boils down to someone’s values and whether or not you want your child to grow up thinking of himself or herself in terms of how famous he or she is, versus having more pro-social values,” Dr. Greenfield said of cultivating Instagram stars. Her co-author on the study, Yalda T. Uhls, a child psychologist, said children whose parents seek fame for them may grow up to be introverts or have higher-than-usual social anxiety. “The other extreme is, your child will get so used to this attention that they’ll start to crave it and they may crave it in unhealthy ways,” Dr. Uhls said.”
As a grandma, I believe my grandchildren are the best of everything, beautiful inside and out, and talented in so many ways. I know their parents do too. However, the reality is that only a few make it in the limelight and most will end up disappointed and depressed, and not focusing on a future goal for himself or herself that is real. So, for immediate gratification, we may be creating a generation of narcissists with poor value systems. The proliferation of this new social media presence for children is frightening for our society and frightening in the fact of what the children may be exposed to in this social media society. This is addressed in the article:
“Regardless of the potential psychological effects, the mothers interviewed for this article said they feared online predators. “You never know who’s behind a profile,” said Mia St. Clair, 29, a professional photographer in Spokane, Wash.”
So, why should this Grandma bring this new craze to the attention of Boomer grandmas? YouTube and FaceBook are rampant. A dozen years ago, in their beginnings, the parents of our grandchildren embraced the concepts as ways to connect and share their new babies instantly and to a wider audience. To honor and respect the parents of our grandchildren, they quickly realized that they did not want this exposure for their children’s health, safety, and long term welfare. They stopped posting pictures and information about the grandchildren.
What is on the Internet is there forever and, when the grandchildren are adults, could be accessed by employers who might use sophisticated software tools to do psychological profiles of their entire lives going back to their families of origin. Sound farfetched? So did a lot of what exists now in our world.
What is posted also becomes beyond control. The article continued:
“Ms. Cannon, the pastry chef from Brooklyn, recently dealt with an incident in which a Facebook user posted photos of Princeton and other children without permission. A group of mothers, including Ms. Cannon, demanded that they be taken down.”
We grandmas have the experience of years. Thousands of FaceBook “friends” and YouTube “likes” are meaningless in real life. We grandmas know true friends there for us in good times and bad are small in numbers, and as we get longer (we never say older) our circles get smaller, not larger, by choice.
Everyone is entitled to live their lives as they choose. The opportunities in social media for harm are massive and the consequences alarming. I would send the New York Times article to the parents of the grandchildren with one question: “What do you think?” Open a dialogue. Share your personal life experience without judgment and blame.
Here is the link.
Mema
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