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(By Troy Price) If you are a podcaster you strive to embody transparency and authenticity. Listeners love how they feel when you share the most personal of details. If listeners feel good during your show, it is likely they are going to stick around and maybe even tell their friends. That is a great reward for your transparency and authenticity, right? Why wouldn’t you want to tell your audience everything about you and the people you know? I can think of one reason, it could tear your family apart!
I want to share reasons why you podcasters who are parents should not share too much, too often about your children on your shows.
The issue of parents sharing too much about our children online is not new, but there seems to be an increasing media interest in the topic. Most of this coverage speaks of social media in general, but I want to suggest that with the transparency and authenticity directive that you have as a podcaster, you may need to hear about these risks the most. Hopefully the details below will stop you from ‘Sharenting’ ( a term coined in a 2018 Forbes article that means, ‘The phenomenon of parents putting information about their children online.’
On October 28, 2016 NPR published a story titled, ‘Do Parents Invade Children’s Privacy When They Post Photos Online?’ This article best presents two potential risks of Sharenting. The first is simply that you may be violating their child’s privacy with many of your posts. While historically this is not been a great concern for many parents, the advent of the internet and social media has increased the opportunities for fights among children and parents have about children’s rights (including the right to privacy). The second risk mentioned in the article is a little more serious. The article discusses the practice of ‘digital kidnapping’ and shares how pictures of your children can be copied and used in ways far beyond what you originally intend. This could be as simple as when a Disney blogger copies and shares the joy on your child’s face when they first say the castle. Or this could be, as the article presents much more nefarious uses of shared pictures. With this knowledge, the article asks parents to consider this advice from Wendy Sue Swanson, a pediatrician and the executive director of digital health at Seattle Children’s Hospital. She suggests that before parents share online they should always “… think about the benefits [of sharing], and how do we mitigate the risks [of sharing]”.
Also, Psychology Today published an article titled, ‘Should You Share Images of Your Kids Online?’ on August 12, 2019 that discussed Sharenting. The article core message is about privacy (like the article above). The best part of this article is that it offers a list of what parents should consider before sharing information about your kids online. Definitely click through and view that list.
Another, less scholarly article was published recently on the Jellies blog. I do not endorse the Jellies service mentioned on this website, but the information shared in the blog post is very valuable. In their article titled, ‘5 Reasons Not to Post About Your Child on Social Media’ privacy issues and digital kidnapping are mentioned again. But the article also shares what I think should concern you as a podcasting parent the most. This article presents the most serious risk of sharenting is that ‘Your Social Media Posts Might Attract Dangerous People’.
To summarize, in the real world, I do not invite crowds of people I do not know to come into my house, I bet you do not either. It is obvious in the real world that giving loads and loads of people you do not know access to your personal items and family puts your family at risk. However, in the podcasting world, we do not have the same sensibility. I do not know anything about the majority of the people that listen to my show, I bet you do not either. Yet we share information about our family on our podcasts with these people we don’t know and hope more and more people we do not know to listen! This is unwise.
As you podcast, consider the tips mentioned in the referenced articles and put them into practice. Ask yourself the tough questions listed and modify your behavior, if needed. Make the best podcast you can, but keep your family safe.
Troy Price is the co-founder of Front Porch Studios in Berea, Kentucky. He has been involved with podcasting for over a decade. Listen to his show “Podcasting Tips From The Front Porch” HERE.