TOOn a Wednesday at 7am I drop my son off for a two-night school camp. The first big school camp. Children carry pillows under their arms and drag suitcases whose wheels and weight they can barely support. They are nervous. Enthusiastic. Some cry. At 7:45 they had already loaded their suitcases. Through the tinted windows of the bus I see that my daughter has settled in next to her friend, so I wave goodbye and get to work.
Before 10 am my phone rings. Parents were asked to download an app so the school could communicate during away days. There are 10 photos of the class on a ferry and arriving at camp in a post on the app. I feel relief. I was worried about the bus arriving safely (even though I knew it was irrational) and it’s comforting to see my son slapped by his friends, smiling at the camera.
Soon the phone rings again. And again. And then again. At the end of the day I received 20 posts, each consisting of up to 10 photos, which I guess is the maximum.
At noon the next day there are 12 more posts.
As my day is punctuated by post after post, not just from camp, but from after-school care, from my other child’s school day, I continue to unlock my phone. I scroll through carousels of photos of children playing, look for mine, and confirm that they are safe and happy. It is a continuous chronicle of childhood that takes place outside of my physical supervision.
Does anyone really want this?
band by the time a child turns 13, it is estimated that around 72 million data will have been collected about them. Eighty percent of children in the developed world have a fingerprint at two years old. Much of the blame for this has been placed on premature access to social media (the subject of new federal government plans to restrict access to younger teenagers) and “sharenting”: excessive sharing of photographs of one’s children online.
It’s not difficult to conjure up the image of a teenager scrolling through TikTok or a cocky dad posting on Instagram a photo of his baby sleeping next to a laser-cut wooden sign declaring his age in months.
But it is not the complete picture.
We have a much broader and more intimate culture of recording our children. To photograph our children. Receive and request data from our children. It is in their cribs, in their nurseries, in their schools. It is consuming the memory of our phones. And it is almost inescapable.
He Australian community attitudes towards the privacy surveypublished last year, spoke to almost 700 parents. Half said they felt they had control over the privacy of their children’s data. Three in five said they had no choice but to enroll their children in a specific service. Almost all said their children have the right to grow up without being profiled or attacked.
But, from their first days, we recorded them. It is an act of love, of narcissism, of habit, an insurance against oblivion; These creatures that we have created, whom we raise and adore, why not capture every expression, moment and step that is unrepeatable, beautiful, fun and tender? These photographs feel private, yet unmanageable in their volume and almost involuntary in their taking. Even a normal Saturday in my family could result in up to 32 photographs; a roll of old school film.
There is also something else. From the first days we are sold the idea that surveillance is security. That, without data, parents cannot be sure of their child’s well-being. Baby monitor: promising “total tranquility” – Live stream not only videos of babies sleeping on your phone a room (or half a city) away, but also data on oxygen levels, heart rate, and sleep behavior.
It speaks to the most basic parental instinct: protecting the baby.
But, as Dr. Donell Holloway, a researcher at Edith Cowan University, writes, The “datafication” of childhood expands as the child participates in education. Contemporary childhood is “undergoing a profound transformation.”
When children enter daycare, some parents search for, welcome (and others simply receive) an avalanche of photos on apps that they must download. These images act as a kind of ongoing proof of life and a demonstration of the safety and good practices of early education providers. Most post photographs of the children throughout the day, along with updates on what they were offered for morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea, how much they ate, when they slept and which pillars of the school curriculum. early learning achieved. It can be a comfort, a source of joy. Once this expectation is established, a day without receiving photos can be worrying.
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In 2019 the early education consultancy Karen Hope wrote on an industry blogSpoke, that “photography in early learning centers has become, in some ways, a runaway train… How are we going to communicate to families that a photo of their child in front of a puzzle does not always evidence learning, development or commitment? ?”
It doesn’t end with daycare.
“Schools play an important role in how children experience privacy on a daily basis,” the then-UN special rapporteur on privacy wrote in the report. a report published in 2021. The mass transition to online learning when the pandemic began led to a boom in technology in classrooms that “amplified existing power imbalances between educational technology companies and children, and between governments, children and parents.”
One day during school camp I receive more than 100 photographs of children.
The publications provoke contradictory reflections in me: first, I am very comforted that she is well. The second one, leave her alone.
YoIn the final section of 10 photographs, of the class returning on a boat from the island, I cannot see my daughter. For a moment I worry: has she been left behind, alone? Is she okay? This is an anxiety I would not have otherwise had. He would have been alone, working. He is somewhere else, in the care of people I trust. But instead I worry. Until I see her in the back of photograph nine. She’s fine. Duh.
The expectation of information disturbs a healthy distance, a healthy lack of knowledge, between children and parents. It can overwhelm parents with anxiety. We are all exhausted and the constant need to evaluate and observe our children does not help.
And it is an affront to children’s privacy.
Children now expect their intimate moments to be recorded. As a friend of mine pointed out, it’s no longer, “Mom, look at me!” but “Mom, take a photo of me!”
They know how to review their own photographs. My youngest daughter came home from daycare eager to check hers. It was exhausting. They were shit photos.
Privacy is essential for children’s development. Safety too, absolutely. But your privacy is overlooked and compromised.
“Adults’ interpretations of children’s privacy needs can impede the healthy development of autonomy and independence, and restrict children’s privacy in the name of protection,” the UN special rapporteur wrote. “Adults’ reliance on surveillance to protect children…limits children’s rights to privacy and autonomy.”
Privacy is fundamental to children’s ability to develop a sense of self, self-esteem and independence.
Parents can opt out, in theory. There is usually a box you can uncheck at the beginning of the year. Many parents who do this get tired of seeing their children in photos with a star-eyed emoji on their face or having them removed from photographed scenes. Others forget it or don’t read it at all. Ultimately, it is easier to give consent. It’s easier to float in the current with everyone else than to swim against the current to an island alone.
When I meet my daughter at the school gates, carrying her bag of dirty clothes and on the verge of exhaustion, she barely stops to say hello and hug. He wants to tell me everything he did. Archery. Manufacture of shock absorbers. An obstacle course. Swimming on the beach. She is the proud narrator of her own independent life. I look at her smiling as she tells me about the world she lived without me, forged by herself, by herself. And I pretend I haven’t seen it all already.