Up First from NPR - The Sunday Story: Permission to share

Episode Date: July 9, 2023

"It's this version of me that my mom's publicized and made very permanent."Lou grew up as a social media baby. Their mom had a public blog where she shared details about her life as a mother. But she also shared details about her kids, including Lou. Now, Lou remembers the blog as a fixture of their childhood, but not in a good way. Throughout their teen years and into adulthood, strange adults would reach out to Lou online, asking personal and often inappropriate questions. Classmates would use content from the blog to embarrass them. Lou is part of a generation of social media babies now grappling as young adults with a digital version of themselves created by their parents and shared with the world. Today on The Sunday Story, a look at family blogging, a trend that's become so popular there's now a name for it: "sharenting." But a growing number of young people are starting to object, saying such blogs take a toll on their mental health and violate their privacy.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

I'm Aisha Roscoe, and this is The Sunday Story. So, as you might know, I have three young kids, and they love social media. I mean, TikTok, YouTube, all of that. They especially love these videos of other little kids and their families. They're all over social media now, like parents sharing every part of the kid's life, posting videos of their kids playing with new toys or doing pranks or having these lavish birthday parties. Sometimes, you know, something bad happens, like a child breaking their leg or something, and I have seen this. It's not great for the kids, but honestly,

it seems like even though there's the worry and the trip to the doctor, they can make some good content out of this, and that can be quite profitable. There's money to be made from product placements, ads, and views. And that's great for the parents. But what about these kids? Like, what are they getting out of all of this online exposure? Hanisha Harjani is a freelance journalist in Berkeley, California. And they've been looking into this very question. Welcome to the podcast, Hanisha. Thanks for taking question. Welcome to the podcast, Anisha.

Thanks for taking the time to chat. Thanks, Aisha. So this kind of like posting of family videos on social media has become so popular that it's got its own name, right? Yeah, so the practice is now commonly known as sharenting. So, you know, when parents share everything about the experience of parenting or raising a family online. But before sharenting was a term, there was what we called mommy blogs, and they kind of really got this whole trend started. But you're like a pretty young journalist, if I can say that respectfully. So how did you get interested in this topic, you know, on like raising kids on the internet? Well, I was a little bit like your kids, Aisha. I grew up on the internet and I wanted to be online. I had YouTube accounts where I would make silly videos with my friends, but I had the

agency and the ability to delete those videos when I got older, and I started to cringe at the content I made. When I started seeing kids on my social media feed today, as an adult, I was, you know, first amused by them, but then I realized that the accounts that they were being featured on were not their own, and they didn't have the agency that I did growing up to take down any content that they didn't want online anymore. So one thing about this is that even though it's like happening all over the place, it's still like fairly new generally.

Like, I wonder, were you able to find a lot of information about like the impacts of this? Yeah, the lack of information actually really surprised me. The experience of these kids is often being gatekept by their parents. And, you know, though it seems really wholesome on its face, there's definitely a power dynamic there. I also started coming across stories of family vloggers that were darker and less wholesome. And that troubled me, especially when I realized that the really curated accounts we see online, they edit out those less perfect moments. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's going to be harder to sell a video if you have the kid going, I don't want to do this. I'm tired. I would assume, though, like,

that the upside, for the parents at least, is that they can probably make some good money. Like, that's what I think when I'm looking at this. Like, they can, and that may be the justification for you got to get out here and make these videos. Totally. And, you know, it's worth saying that along with the real downsides I found reporting this story, it's also true that blogging and blogging

have been beneficial specifically to moms searching for a community to share their experiences about the struggles and joys of motherhood, which can kind of be isolating. And that's where the story that you've reported begins, right? Right. I interviewed one of the first really successful mommy bloggers. She called herself the queen of the mommy bloggers. She called herself the queen of the mommy bloggers. She said that the blog was really instrumental for her when she was a new mom with a crying baby, lots of diapers, and no sleep. Everything hurts. Everything is messy and dirty. And I was so bewildered in early motherhood. That's Heather Armstrong. She's been in the news lately because she recently died by suicide.

When I spoke to her last fall, our conversation was about her writing. Two decades ago, she had one of the hottest blogs on the internet. It was called Deuce.com, and it was an outlet for the chaos she felt as a new mother. After I had my first kid, I realized that the only way that I was going to survive was writing about it. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't have friends who had babies. My mom was not in town. I was alone, and I was writing about it.

And it turns out, there were a lot of other moms out there having similar frustrations. Mommy blogging took off right then. Everybody was like, oh my gosh, we can talk about this with each other. We can say this is f***ing hard. What do we do? What are the answers? And laughing about it. That's what made her blog such a success. It became a place for new moms to commiserate.

And Heather was candid, even crass sometimes, but she told it like it is. These days, Heather said it's a whole different story. I look around at Instagram today and everything is just extremely clean and polished. She said mommy blogging today isn't about finding community. It's become way more commercial. You know, picture perfect. I imagine that there's probably a lot of quiet depression going on with women

scrolling through all the really pretty things on Instagram and Pinterest and whatnot. This shift in the mommy blogging space started when advertisers saw just how many moms were clicking on these blogs, and they wanted to get in front of that audience too. Heather experienced this change firsthand. As her blog's audience grew, advertisers started to reach out to her. And the money was enticing, but that meant she had to do product placements, and her kids could no longer just draw pictures at home. Instead, they'd go to a decked-out condo that somebody

rented out for them and use art supplies that a brand had given them and pose for pictures. And it just became this drag where my kids were like, okay, we just want to watch, you know, and use art supplies that a brand had given them and pose for pictures. And it just became this drag where my kids were like, OK, we just want to watch a show and do some art. Ultimately, this trend towards brand sponsorships and sterile countertops and immaculate homes, it became too much. It's what led her to walk away from her influencing gig. But Heather maintained that her kids were fine being part of her blog.

It was never, don't write about me. Like, everybody early on was like, okay, these mommy bloggers are going to just, they're crucifying their children. Their children are going to be so upset that they wrote about them. And my kids do not care at all. At all. I asked Heather if her 13-year-old child might be willing to talk to me about their experience being featured online, and she said, maybe. But when I followed up with Heather about the request, she stopped responding to me. I was able to use clues from Heather's blog to track down her other kid, her 19-year-old daughter.

I knew her full name from the blog, Lita Elise Armstrong. And I found out that she was going to Drexel University through some comments I found on a subreddit, where people talk about the things that mommy bloggers like Heather post. I basically punched that information into Google, and there she was. So hello, how's it going? It's pretty good. It's pretty good. How are you? We got on a Zoom call in March and Lita pushed back on her mom's claim that she didn't care at all about being written about online. She has had photos where I was like, can you take this down? Sometimes she's like, okay, but sometimes like she gets weird about it.

Lita says she gets it. It made a lot of money for the family, and she saw firsthand how it helped her mom feel supported and how it also helped other parents, too. I do think that, like, it was hard not being able to, like, consent to that kind of thing. I think maybe, like, she had asked permission to post certain things. I feel like that would have made me feel a little more secure.

Lita says the blog was kind of a double-edged sword. There were some really cool moments where Lita would feel almost famous. But like a famous person, there were also times where she didn't recognize herself. I would read stuff and I would be like, I definitely never said that. I was a little frustrated because like, I have all this content being put of me online and sometimes it's not even accurate. It's just embarrassing. And this has caused some anxiety. Lita worries sometimes about whether this digital footprint might limit the opportunities available to her.

She's thinking about it as she starts applying to jobs and internships. I think it's scary to think that, like, I can be judged off of that. And there are other ways that Lita doesn't feel safe online. For instance, she doesn't have the anonymity that other kids do when they first create online profiles. My mom tags me in a photo and then I get so many follow requests from all these random adults. That's why Lita makes sure all of her social media accounts are private. I know that if I, like, un-privated my account, like, so many random people would follow me, and I don't know how I feel about that.

You're listening to The Sunday Story. We'll be right back. Now Our Change will honor 100 years of the Royal Canadian Air Force and their dedicated service to communities at home and abroad. From the skies to Our Change, this $2 commemorative circulation coin marks their storied past and promising future. Find the limited edition Royal Canadian Air Force $2 coin today. We're back with the Sunday story. Lita is among a growing number of people struggling with this dilemma.

I actually first heard about this problem through someone named Lou. They're non-binary, Native American, part Maricopa, part Hopi, and indigenous Pacific Islander. Lou also asks that we only use first names for them and for their mom, Jodi, due to concerns for Lou's safety based on past experiences related to the blog. They're currently living in Colorado, and when they're not dancing in Denver, they can be found walking their dog. His name's Monty, but that also means his name's Montresser, Spaceport, Magoo, Monty Monty. I met up with Lou in Colorado Springs to talk about mommy blogging because, like Lita, Lou's mom also had a blog. For my mom, the blog was her coping mechanism for everything she was going through as far as being a military mom. Lou's mom, Jodi, was blogging around the same time that Heather's blog, Deuce, was in its heyday, though Jodi's blog didn't have the millions of followers that Heather's blog did. While Deuce.com was tightly curated for its audience,

Lou's mom could let it all hang out. She was practically raising her five kids by herself, so that was what the community was for her. The community that presented itself to me was a little bit darker and a little bit more inappropriate. Because Lou was pretty young, just nine when the blog began. So I got more creepy requests, more adults who were building relationships and accessing that information online.

These adults would reach out to Lou online. And like many other kids growing up in the late 90s and early 2000s, Lou spent a lot of time on the computer. They played games, frequented chat rooms, and sometimes Lou would even comment on their mom's blog. Silly stuff like, hi mom, or like, fart humor, or, you know, this is Rocky and I've taken over. Rocky. That was the name of the family dog, but it was also what the family called Lou when they were growing up. Their mom's audience would use Lou's username, which was attached to these comments, to track Lou down on other sites, chat rooms, to start conversations. Like, oh, hey, how's your mom?

At first, it wasn't completely obvious to Lou who these people were supposed to be. They were strangers. But... They already had all of the names to people in our family and, like, places that we'd been and what was going on. So it felt way more intimate than it really was. Lou talks about it like a warped parasocial relationship. That word is usually used to describe those one-sided relationships where fans believe they have a real connection with a celebrity. But in this case, the power dynamics are all jumbled.

Lou wasn't a celebrity. They were just a kid. There's no way for that child to have autonomy in that situation. They don't have the facility to cut off that interaction. The power is on the other side with whoever is consuming the content. And those adults controlling the conversation, they would message Lou in these online chat rooms, and then they'd suggest to move to phone or video calls.

And on these calls, Lou says, there was a lot of... A lot of flirting. Like, you look so great in this picture. I wonder what you would look like without this on. And now, Lou can even see how some of these adults were grooming them by trying to build trust. People wanted, like, saying that they wanted to be there for, like, emotional support or, like, see what you're going through. Because Lou was going through a hard time. And strangers online could see that from how their mom talked about them on the blog. Like, there's this one blog post that Lou remembers vividly to this day. I think it's called sagging rocky style. Jodi had written it after she had caught

Lou using her underwear one day. Online, she built up this funny, exaggerated scene, but what Lou's mom didn't show. What was actually going on was my laundry was downstairs in the laundry room in a molding pile, and I had nothing clean to wear. And I was so desperate for something clean that I stole her underwear. What Jodi published on her blog, This Funny Slice of Life, was actually a much darker narrative behind the scenes. There was just this Twilight Zone kind of feeling. It was crazy making. I felt nuts all the time. And then when the kids got to that post, oh my god, that was rough. That was a big one. This would happen with blog posts. Lou remembers walking down the hallway at school and hearing other kids giggle and whispering loud enough for you to hear like, gross, gross, gross, or like, hey, I heard your parents got in a fight, or, you know,

like that. The persona Lou's mom created for them online was impacting Lou's real life and their sense of self. Lou had grown up with the blog around. It was a fixture of their childhood, another sibling. They can't really recall a time without it. And sometimes it became hard to tell where Lou ended and Rocky, their online persona, began. It's not even a fictional character that I'm dealing with and unpacking and unraveling. It's this version of me that my mom's publicized and made very permanent. And it's like feeling like a bird in a cage with the mirror. Lou says it wasn't the only reason, but it was one of the reasons that contributed to them dropping out of high school.

Soon after, Lou moved away from home. But Lou realized that the situations they were moving into were not always safer. Years of being approached inappropriately online had lowered their guard for creeps in real life. The first place they moved into after leaving home seemed really good on paper. There was this guy who was like, oh yeah, I'm a deployed soldier. My wife and my 13-month-olds are looking for a roommate and someone to help clean up around the house. But then, Lu says, the husband started to cross boundaries. Immediately, he went into like flirting, asked if I wanted to call him master,

like, if he wanted to sew me a maid's outfit. This was awful and disappointing to Lou, but it wasn't necessarily new. I was like, yeah, this is fine. This is fine. This is how I'm used to being talked to online. Lou and Lita's stories are just the beginning. I mean, have you been on social media? It's full of kids being featured by their parents online.

I just want to note that today is the first time that I've introduced myself with my legal name in three years because I'm terrified to share my name. Because the digital footprint I had no control over exists. This is Cam. When she was a kid, she was also the subject of a mommy blog. And I actually reached out to her for an interview for this piece, but she never got back to me. What I did find was her public testimony for Washington State House Bill 1627. It aims to protect the interest of minor children who are featured on for-profit family blogs. Here's Cam at the hearing on February 14, 2023. When I was nine years old, the intimate details of my first period were shared online. At 15, I was in a car accident in which the fire department had to come with the jaws of life to remove a car door off of my leg. Instead of a hand being offered to hold, a camera was shoved in my face. My first year in high school, I had a severe case of MRSA, which had me in and out of the

hospital for three months, all of which was posted and over-exaggerated on social media. When I'd returned to school, my math teacher, who had seen my mother's posts, would taunt me and tell kids to stay away from the infected girl, which led to peer bullying, decline of my mental health, and which inevitably led me to dropping out of school. Mr. Chairman and ranking members of the committee, I plead you to be the voice for this generation of children because I know firsthand what it's like to not have a choice. The Washington bill has stalled in the state legislature, but a similar bill in Illinois was approved by lawmakers earlier this year,

and the governor is expected to sign it into law. It's kind of a big deal, because it's hard to make laws about parenting, and that's for good reason. Legislating parenting can quickly turn racist or xenophobic, but family blogging is kind of in its own category, a strange gray area where parenting and business overlap. Here's Washington State Representative Christine Reeves. She sponsored House Bill 1627, and she's a mom who also sometimes features her kids online. The reality is our kids don't always get a choice, though, in how they're included in an online presentation. I know my kids don't. They get plastered on mail that I send out every single summer.

Both the proposed laws in Washington and Illinois aim to provide children with the rights to their likeness or their image. That means they'd get paid for participating in content creation. You know, like how children in entertainment have been all this time. Children on online platforms aren't usually considered to be in the entertainment industry, but that's what these bills would be changing. You know, the fight we got into in that committee was like, well, child labor laws should already cover this. But the reality is child labor laws were written for physical workplaces, physical manufacturing, etc.

Child labor laws never conceived of online brand profiles and content creation. Developmental psychologist, professor, and British Psychological Society member John Oates knows this all too well. He's been working with children in media settings for much of his professional life. He even helped create regulations in the UK to safeguard child actors taking part in performances on the stage and the screen. But before we even began our interview, he mentioned there really just wasn't much research done into children on the internet in this context. It's hard to get access. I can relate to that. I reached out to so many current parent influencers for this story. Not one of them

got back to me. I guess their fears would be that it might show that their work is more harmful, perhaps, than they would like to believe it is. According to Oates, there's an inherent power imbalance when it comes to children who are featured heavily on their parents' social media. Children are almost inevitably disempowered if an adult asks them to do something. And depending on the dynamics of the household, the child is not necessarily going to be free to say no. Where Oates has had most of his experience

in the professional media spaces of film and television, parents of child actors play a really important role. Ideally, they act as a buffer between the production's interest and the child's needs. But when the parent becomes a producer, as is the case for most social media influencers, this relationship is distorted. I would say an unacceptable conflict of interest. Oates recommends that influencer parents who want to feature their children on their platform responsibly,

they should take the same approach that a more professional media organization would when working with minors. The top principle is respect for autonomy, dignity, and privacy. There may be some parents who don't know the harms associated with social media exposure, but there are parents, Oates says, who don't necessarily have the children's best interests at heart. Well, I'm afraid a lot of parents don't. This is where legislation may help.

At the very least, it will make parents think twice about what they're posting. When I reached out to Lou's mom, Jodi, to get her comments on Lou's experience with the blog, Jodi said, quote, Lou feels traumatized and scarred by my blogging, and I accept the fault, unquote. She says she doesn't consider her blog to be a mommy blog. Jodi says that while she did post about her kids, the blog was mostly about her own thoughts and experiences.

She says when her kids were young, she would edit or delete posts if her kids asked her to. She says that Lou never told her that they were being bullied or getting approached by strangers because of the blog. If she had known, she says, she would not have ignored that. She says that she didn't realize that Lou had any issue with what she had shared about them until two years ago. Two years ago is when Lou posted their first TikTok about this experience. This is how I actually first encountered them myself. Have you ever wondered what it was like for the kids who were posted online in those mommy blogs and like all over social media and all that jazz? Hi, I am

a 28-year-old who is still struggling with the ways that that impacted me. Lou went viral on the app after posting a series of videos on this topic. They got a lot of likes and comments and follows. The videos somehow even made their way back to Lou's mom. And Lou only knows this because their mom wrote them an apology that she also posted to the blog. It was the damage has already been done. I'm sorry you feel that way kind of apology. So I know like there were people who harassed her about it, like just by the nature of the way the internet works. So I think her apology was a response to that.

Was there like a little bit of, I don't know, satisfaction from where you heard that they were embarrassed? Because that's kind of also how you felt as a child sometimes. Absolutely. It was super validating even just to hear that it had frustrated my mom a little bit, like, okay, I've reclaimed a little bit of the power in this space. But soon, this experience started feeling familiarly invasive. Like, people on TikTok would seek out their mom's blog even when Lou explicitly asked them not to. It felt very similar to the, oh, these people, they're watching me for entertainment and they're not here for me. They're here to consume what I've gone through as something to pass the day. Today, Lou has taken down most of their TikTok videos.

They realized that what they were seeking was community, but not this kind. Not the kind that they had known growing up. When I met up with Lou in Colorado Springs, they had just come back from a trip with their partner Camille and a group of friends to a small mining town nearby called Victor. In Victor, Colorado, there is a school for sale. Originally built in the 1800s, it's got tall ceilings and big windows and soccer fields and 11 bedrooms. It's the kind of place you'd build a dance commune. We all kind of were being chummy and saying like, oh, what if we actually did this? And we could actually do this maybe.

And we're like, we'll have a painting room and we'll have a sculpting room and we'll all like get together and we'll dance in the main area and then it'll be great. These days, this is how Lou spends their time. Surrounding themselves with friends and music, trying to connect with their native culture, and spending their time in community in real life. And they've kind of taken a break from social media, too. If they do go back, they'd want to be... Behind the scenes, the dude holding the camera instead of, you know, the dude in front of the camera. This story was edited by Queena Sook Kim

and mixed by Chris Hoff. Shereen Marisol Maragi and Anna Sussman also provided feedback. It was produced at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. I'm Ayesha Roscoe, and you've been listening to The Sunday Story. This episode was produced by Andrew Mambo and Emily Silver and edited by Jenny Schmidt. It was engineered by Josh Newell. Our team also includes Henry Hottie and Justine Yan.

Our supervising producer is Liana Simstrom and our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. We'd love to hear from you. So please send us an email at thesundaystoryatnpr.org. I'm Aisha Roscoe. Up first, we'll be back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week. Until then, have a great rest of your weekend.