Dozens of you sent me this sharply insightful piece from the Atlantic this week on the first generation of Instagram children coming of age and being completely over social media.
Here’s a little preview:
“The children of the Facebook era—which truly began in 2006, when the platform opened to everyone—are growing up, preparing to enter the workforce, and facing the consequences of their parents’ social-media use. Many are filling the shoes of a digital persona that’s already been created, and that they have no power to erase…..Caymi Barrett, now 24, grew up with a mom who posted Barrett’s personal moments—bath photos, her MRSA diagnosis, the fact that she was adopted, the time a drunk driver hit the car she was riding in—publicly on Facebook. (Barrett’s mother did not respond to requests for comment.) The distress this caused eventually motivated Barrett to become a vocal advocate for children’s internet privacy, including testifying in front of the Washington State House earlier this year……Barrett says she’s still feeling the effects of her mother’s decade of oversharing. When Barrett was 12, she says she was once followed home by a man who she believes recognized her from the internet. She was later bullied by classmates who latched on to all the intimate details of her life that her mother had posted online, and she ultimately dropped out of high school.”
This article is behind a paywall but it was so good it made me re-up on my Atlantic account.
I’ve said a thousand times that I struggle with my own posts about my kids. My friend Sara Petersen, the author of Momfluenced, is quoted in this piece talking about how thankless a job parenting can be and how addictive posting our kids to “prove” our invisible labor matters.
The Atlantic piece made me want to check in with some of the kids I interviewed for the Under the Influence podcast about how their influencer parents’ social media habits impacted them. The ones I spoke to are about eighteen now. Their moms were the first mommy bloggers, early Facebook adopters and Instagram afficionados. I’ve stayed in touch with these wonderful young humans since we first spoke because I genuinely want to know more about their trajectories through the world and how being featured on so much social media so early on impacted them. Here are three of their recent stories. I’ve changed their names here to protect their anonymity for obvious reasons. They already feel overshared.
Caitlin, 18
About six months ago Caitlin started dating her very first boyfriend. She calls herself a “late bloomer” and often attributes that to the fact that she was mortified about a potential love interest googling her and getting to see literally thousands of hours of videos from her childhood and her mother’s blog detailing Caitlin’s journey through puberty.
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