The transparent house

Children deserve the same rights to privacy as adults have. A big factor in which children don’t have a right to privacy, even in their own homes is vlogging. Vlogging in and of itself means sacrificing your privacy in exchange for a certain level of authenticity with the viewer, recording both the highs and the lows of day-to-day life. Many channels that vlog rack up millions upon billions of views from dedicated viewers regularly. However, what happens when you bring children into that mix? Family channels seem to have been around since the start of the internet. Now it becomes a norm for kids to have their faces posted all over the internet whether that be pictures parents post on Facebook or Instagram or videos posted to TikTok. I have to admit, I do follow family TikTok accounts that have their kids in some of their videos if not all. Some of the biggest family channels and tiktok accounts that post their kids have been in a lot of hot water because of their shamelessness in not allowing their children privacy. To which point does the steady stream of “family-friendly” content drift into the territory of exploitation?

I can’t wrap my head around growing up with a camera in my face at all times, 24/7 365, recording everything I’m doing from eating to doing laundry. I’m glad I grew up in the mid-2000s when Youtube was just starting out and Family channels were a subject not yet touched. There’s nothing private in these kids’ lives that are forced to participate in their parent’s family channels. Their lives are completely open to strangers to watch them grow up. It feels like this awful parasocial relationship with strangers in the comment sections judging people’s parenting skills. These parents are using their kids for profit, props in their videos in order to make money off of it. The kids are the main actors but they don’t benefit from the videos at all, they don’t see a dime. Kids can’t consent to be the main character in their parent’s dramatized lives.

I don’t think any kid growing up wants to be watched by complete strangers. In fact, when kids are little, most parents specifically teach them stranger danger, yet these family channels are okay with vlogging their kids to strangers on the internet. It seems to me that if the strangers are in a different state or country, then what’s the harm, right? And speaking of danger, a lot of these family channels’ most viewed videos are videos of their family going through a hardship or their kid(s) are in jeopardy like a broken arm or got in trouble at school, so it’s no wonder that a lot of videos have over-dramatized thumbnails of their kids crying or bleeding. A very big family channel lost two of their kids because of their videos containing mature content such as verbal and physical abuse and they passed them off as “pranks”.

When YouTubers discuss family channels, they have the grace to censor the kid’s faces as they deserve at least some respect from these youtubers because they’re certainly not getting it from their family. Every kid deserves privacy, even if their parents are family vloggers. Human rights apply in general to all age groups which is exactly why world leaders have signed the CRC (Convention on the Rights of the Child) which says that people under the age of 18 often need special care and protection which adults do not. Many argue that kids can’t be trusted like adults and should not be given the same rights to privacy as adults but I would argue that kids need privacy to become self-reliant adults.

Since growing up on the internet from a very early age, I’ve seen countless tiktoks surfacing of kids my age (16-17) telling the internet how their parents have taken their door away because they got a bad grade on a test or have bad mental health and their room sifted through. Children like these who have no privacy grow up to never trust their parents with anything because one minor slip-up could cause them to go under room arrest with a sheet to have just a thin sliver of privacy between them and their family.

Children have to discover who they are apart from their parents in order to establish a healthy and strong sense of personal self. My mom has never once paraded through my room, going through personal things like my journals or calling for a phone check which is why I have a good relationship with her now. I am willing to give up my phone for her to search for something on Safari if her phone is dead because I’m not afraid of her seeing something she deems untrustworthy and taking my phone for the next three months.

Children with privacy are much less resistant when adults do have to interfere. With time, children become more confident and responsible with the privacy given to them. Personally, I’ve never broken my parent’s trust of privacy with me and in doing so, I’m free to go to friends’ houses almost every weekend. I feel horrible for these kids who have their personal lives exposed because of their parent’s ignorant decisions.

“Facebook: The privacy saga continues” by opensourceway is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.