Sophie Kratsas was only a few hours
old when she received her first email: a “welcome to the world” message from
her father, Nick Kratsas. He had created an email account for his newborn
daughter while still standing in the delivery room. This was 2014, and Kratsas,
44, had already noticed a dearth of unclaimed email addresses with a person’s
full name without numbers, special characters, or other concessions.
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“I’m like, man, if I can grab this for her
now, eventually she’ll be able to use this when she’s ready for it,” Kratsas
said. A few days later, he created a Facebook profile for Sophie so he and his
wife, Heather, 41, could begin tagging her in posts and photos. When she is old
enough, they intend to turn over the email and Facebook accounts to her, along
with the robust digital histories that come with them.
Sophie, now nine, is one of many children
in her generation whose digital footprint precedes her physical one. In an age
when teens and tweens are more online than ever, some parents find it just as
important to invest in their offspring’s digital futures, like securing their
email addresses, domain names, and social media handles, as it is to invest in
their finances and education.
“Both the digital and children are sort of symbolic representations of a future, and so putting those two things together is really salient and anxiety-provoking as people start to think about: What is the future going to look like for my child?”
“Both the digital and children are sort of
symbolic representations of a future,” said Frances Corry, a postdoctoral
fellow at the Center on Digital Culture and Society at the University of
Pennsylvania. “And so putting those two things together is really salient and
anxiety-provoking as people start to think about, What is the future going to
look like for my child?”
Because of this, she added, the way parents
approach their children’s social media presence is most likely informed by the
relationship they have had growing up with it.
Early birdsChelsea Moylan, 34, came of age in the
early aughts when the internet was new and still largely unexplored. “Anytime
there was a new social media, me and my friends were always on there early
enough to get our names,” Moylan said. It is a privilege she now wants for her
two children, Josie, two, and Franny, six months.
“I was like, I need to get them their
names, and I didn’t want to have to put a dot in it,” she said. Franny and Josie
now have their own email addresses and private Instagram handles, which Moylan
used for only friends and family. She intends to hand over the accounts to her
daughters when they turn 18.
“Anytime there was a new social media, me and my friends were always on there early enough to get our names.”
Sapphiroula, 28, and Nicholas Condoleon,
32, parents and online creators better known as “The Condos”, made an Instagram
account for their three-year-old son Georgii using his first and last name —
with no pesky dots or underscores — in June 2019, two months before he was
born. But their younger son, Charlie, one, was not so lucky.
“Someone’s got Charlie Condo,” Condoleon
said, holding his phone up in a video interview. “And it’s like some random
dude!”
Messages to the futureMost of these digital artifacts sit
untouched until parents think their children are ready — but some parents are
using them in the meantime. Matt Maguire, 40, made email addresses for his
children, Sophie, nine, and Emerson, five, a few months before they were born.
He sends them messages documenting their childhoods that he plans to share as a
kind of digital scrapbook when the time is right.
So far, Emerson has accumulated 601 emails
from her father and other family members. For Sophie, that number is 1,198. It
will be a heartfelt gift when the time comes, but one that requires some
maintenance. According to its policy, Google may remove all of your content
from any accounts that have been inactive for two years. Parents holding onto
Gmail accounts, and the messages inside them, will need to ensure that they are
logging in often enough to keep them afloat.
Ethical issuesBut starting a child’s digital footprint at
a young age raises some privacy concerns. While email accounts are not
public-facing, the ethics become tricky when parents begin posting pictures of
their children to social media, said Stephen Balkam, the founder of the
nonprofit Family Online Safety Institute, which works with leaders in
government and tech businesses to promote internet safety for children and
families. “If you do want to upload photographs, keep it tight,” he said.
“Would that parent be OK with their child taking those accounts that they’re being handed and deleting everything? That’s one possible outcome.”
A majority of policies governing when
children in the US can use social media platforms are based on the regulations
set by Congress in the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which
prohibits websites from collecting information on users younger than 13 without
parental permission. Facebook, Instagram, Google, YouTube and TikTok require
users in the US to be at least 13 to sign up for an account. On Instagram, any
child younger than that age must clearly state in the bio that the account is
managed by a parent or manager.
But as with any issues related to
parenthood, Corry said, caregivers should expect the unexpected when the time
comes to relinquish control of their children’s social media accounts. “It’s
maybe creating an identity that your child isn’t going to identify with,” she
said. “Would that parent be OK with their child taking those accounts that
they’re being handed and deleting everything? That’s one possible outcome.”
Moylan already plans to wipe her children’s
Instagram accounts before they inherit them. “You’re not going to want to be
17, and if somebody scrolls back far enough, it’s you in a diaper,” she said.
Regardless of the platform, parents taking
early ownership of their children’s digital footprint allows for a certain degree
of control over this newer and more unpredictable element of life. “I
understand it as a benefit that you can exert some sort of reputation
management over your child’s identity,” Corry said.
And while parents have no way of predicting
what role social media may play in the future, acquiring these accounts is a
relatively low lift for a potentially high reward. “What do we lose?” Nick
Kratsas said. “It’s not like we paid for it or anything.”
If he were to relive that day in the
hospital room again, Kratsas would have done only one thing differently: secure
his daughter an Instagram handle, too.
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