Experts warn parents about future damage they could do by posting about their kids online

Parents who continuously post about their kids’ problems online could be unwittingly damaging their futures with a “humiliating digital footprint” that could cost them.

Parents posting about their children online could be damaging their futures. Picture: iStock

Parents who continuously post about their “problematic kids” online could be unwittingly damaging their future.

Legal expert Claudio Bozzi said youngsters’ job prospects and relationships were too often overlooked when mums and dads took to the web.

Many were sharing private details about their child’s mental or physical health conditions in the hope of raising money or to seek advice and support.

Videos and photos of children doing or saying embarrassing things on social media also left a “humiliating digital footprint”.

Dr Bozzi, a barrister and Deakin law lecturer, told the Sunday Herald Sun: “It has enormous reach and it’s permanent.”
“The parent might think they are just sharing it with a group of established contacts but they can also share it and it can end up in all sorts of networks.

“It’s remarkable how quickly they can lose control of that information and image.”

So-called “sharenting” was of particular concern among parents who were social media addicts and influencers.

“All these people who are deliberately trying to reach a mass audience through their children,’’ Dr Bozzi said.

“We have got this genuine problem of deliberate oversharing.”

Even parents who “innocently and with the best of intentions” shared details of their children’s milestones could be giving away identifying information to predators, Dr Bozzi said.

Many parents had no idea when they posted information on social media they were effectively publishing it to the world, he said.

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Companies and educational institutions were also “mining data and creating dossiers on children” – or buying information collected by others – and waiting for the right time to use it, Dr Bozzi said.

Australian eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said parents posting about their children typically did so without their child’s knowledge.

Children could be “developing a poor understanding of consent and respect themselves” as a result, she said.

@mandy_squires