Sif they were weather forecasts, a red or at least orange alert would have to be issued. Also because the perfect storm is coming for little girls and boys, children and grandchildren, posing for photos and videos. Parties, school plays, family dinners, holidays, ski schools and tumbles in the snow have triggered and will trigger the index on the smartphone, where the camera icon is a reference to the clicks of the past, black and white prints and Polaroids destined to fade over the years. The point is that we won’t stop at the shot, you will post the result on your social networks (of us adults, parents and relatives) and on the chats of friends and acquaintances, sharing school plays, Christmas poems, hugs, amazement in front of gifts, first turns in the snow, visits to cities of art. Another binge, but of virtual memories. The phenomenon is called sharenting, from the English to share (to share, to share) and parent (parent).
SharentingBut how much can it hurt?
With a tangible effect for anyone who frequents children, even small ones, aged two, three, four: they have learned to pose because they know they are called to be on stage. So much so that they often ask “Aren’t you taking pictures of me?”. They are mini actors, fun family stars in miniature size, over whom the sword of Damocles hangs a probable future adult from Narcissi.
Chiara Saracenosociologist, dozens of books on family, couples, rights, and doyenne of Italy in the making (it is she who remembers her 83 years in the registry office), is biting: «The child sells like cats. Narcissism comes first and foremost from parentsbecause today being a parent is something performative. Children are used as consumer objects, emanations of mom and dad. But what will they, now older, think of having been continually exposed in public? What’s more, parents risk communicating to children that they have to live up to it, given that their actions will be disclosed.”
Always live
Alberto Pellai, psychotherapist, professor at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Milan and prolific author with books dedicated to parents and with stories for children like the last one The magician of time (Nord Sud editore), cites the example of the recitation: «What children need is for their parents to look at them, smile, not to scold them. With the mobile phone in his hand he moves from an emotional relationship to a performative, exhibitionistic, narcissistic dimension. We take a very intimate piece of life and disclose it without them realizing it and being able to give informed consent. We generate a narcissistic fragility with children treated like Hollywood stars, led to think: “My life is a TV series”. They live and relate in the virtual, not in the real, while the relationship with society is very important in the developmental age.”
Parents take too many photographs of their children and then share the images on social media. This behavior, called sharenting, may not be good for children (Getty Images)
Potential future daffodils
We therefore raise them as proud and potential future Narcissi actors, but it distresses us to see them with their smartphone always in their hand, once they become pre-adolescents or kids. Parental anxiety regarding their children’s parallel online life is overflowing (another red alert), as demonstrated by a recent study by Demopolis on the current concerns of parents towards their children, carried out for the association “Con i bambini”: 84 percent of those interviewed put drug addiction first internet, which beats violence (71 percent), bullying (66 percent), the use of alcohol and drugs (58 percent) and school crashes (53 percent).
A paradox, which Loredana Cirillo, psychotherapist at the Minotauro Institute, had already investigated with Children of the internet. How to help them grow amidst narcissism, sexting, cyberbullying and social withdrawal (Erikson publisher) written with Matteo Lancini, and now explored in depth Suffering from adolescence (Raffaello Cortina publisher). Cirillo is very harsh with the adult world: «As children and teenagers own a smartphone, we are disgusted to see them take selfies, post, chat. But we got used to them by photographing them right from the morphological stage, when they were in the belly! And setting an example every day, incapable as we are of giving up our cell phones. It is the loss of the concept of intimacy and social modesty. Today everything is spectacularized, overexposed, shared. These children, very young people and adolescents are undergoing a process of radicalization especially in giving more importance to the self than to the other. This is the essence of narcissism.”
Perfection in baby size
The Narcissus of Greek mythology falls into the water in his reflection, the one from the third millennium risks feeling bad if he doesn’t have a stage, if he doesn’t hear the applause, if he isn’t confirmed, if he isn’t framed for a video. Luigi Mazzone, head of child neuropsychiatry at the Tor Vergata Polyclinic (Rome), admits: «There are no studies that investigate the correlation between taking photos/sharing on social media and narcissistic traits/perfectionism in children. However, I have two children, aged 5 and a half and three, and they ask me: “Show me how I look in the photo”. In general, the studies investigate the consequences on children in terms of privacy and the danger linked to photos online.
It turns out that among the reasons that push parents to share photos/content about their children, there is a need for social approval. The child’s posing comes from parental input. A survey of 817 adolescents, which aimed to investigate their point of view on this issue, highlighted that in general adolescents disapprove of sharenting, especially when this is attributable to a parental need for social approval and ostentation. The point is: what “models” do we want to give to our children? Let’s remember that feelings and emotions cannot be condensed in the post of a photo.”
The memory box
More physicality, more glances, more silent beeps, less cell phones, less exhibitionism, less demand for perfectibility (of parents and children). Educating is a difficult job and in times of accelerating reality and crumbling of beliefs it is even more so. Alberto Pellai recalls: «The relationship with the other provides a series of information, fundamental in the developmental age: I look at you, I see how you react, if we argue I have to put my child skills into play to repair a mistake, apologize , explaining what I feel and feel. If instead I live in the virtual world, one click will be enough to block you, I don’t like you, I’ll throw you away. And I don’t learn anything!
Avoid the flood of photos and videos on Christmas and holiday daysavoiding educational alerts. Instead, aim to capitalize on memories, precious and important for growth, as the sociologist Chiara Saraceno further explains: «It doesn’t worry me that the children themselves, small, of pre-school age, ask to see themselves again in videos shot perhaps years before: “What I didn’t know how to do it”, “How I was little”. After all, once upon a time there was the box with confusing photos inside. It was a game to look, to ask who those faces were, to see each other as children. In some way the family history was reconstructed. What worries me instead is that today photos and videos are no longer a private matter of the family network. And I ask: what right do you have to leave traces of your little ones to people who they have no idea about?”.
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