Meet Jack. He’s just appeared in his nursery nativity play, in an adorably fleecy sheep costume with black face paint on his button nose. Not so long ago, you saw him grinning as widely as his Halloween pumpkin. In the summer, he was shrieking in the sea. A year ago, he was smearing cake on his face. You’ve even seen his ultrasound when he was the size of a peanut.
In fact, whether you’ve met Jack or not, you’ve got a pretty good idea of what his three years of existence look like because he’s all over your social feeds. Parents of young kids are typically in their early thirties, meaning they were teenagers when the first iPhone was launched in 2007. For all their adult life, they’ve had a camera in their pocket, and the ability to share any meaningful moment faster than they can sneeze. Little wonder that 70 per cent of UK parents put pictures of their kids online at least once a month, according to image protection platform Pixsy, with younger parents (18-24) twice as likely as older ones to post. Welcome to the age of “sharenting”.
