“Learned how to smile this week. Adults seem to get a kick out of it. Adults are funny.” was the latest Tweet from 2 month old newborn daughter of USA Today show correspondent Jenna Wolfe (59k followers) and NBC News correspondent Stephanie Gosk (12k followers). Harper’s mother Jenna said “I wasn’t sure that Harper would have any followers other than family but I wanted to give our baby a voice in the world.
This is just one of many examples of parents creating social media accounts for their babies and children as well as accounts being created for unborn children too. Infact, you will see images of an ‘unborn child’ of their antenatal scans uploaded before birth. This really starts to show the value people are putting on social media and the importance they think it will have in years to come. Most people create these accounts for their child to be use socially, though some parents also have in mind stardom, businesses and brands so securing their child’s name could prove important if they grow up to be famous.
Is this all going too far?
A study created by English computer retail chain Currys & PC World has shown how important social media is in their thinking, revealing that around one-eighth of new parents in the UK create a Facebook account/page or a Twitter username for a newborn child, while 4% of parents create accounts even before the baby is born.
Parents are seeing the importance of securing a piece of the internet space for their children, though Twitter Facebook may well be irrelevant by the time the children in question are able to take advantage of their profiles, superceded by newer and more powerful social technology, who knows, maybe the internet will be a thing of the past…