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Abstract
answering the Special Issue of Social Media + Society call for papers
Infancy Online
A Privacy Trusteeship Paradox.
How Parents Administer Their Newborns’ Digital Identity.
Many parents almost instantly share their children’s daily activities and experiences with a globally spread network of family, friends, and public. Research on self-disclosure describes this pattern as part of parents’ self-representation within processes of social interaction. However, a privacy paradox can be found: While social media users consider the protection of their private information to be important, their concerns rarely affect their online behavior. This paper adds a further perspective. It understands parents as trustees of their infants’ digital identity. The results of 16 in-depth interviews with young parents indicate that they are largely unaware of the described role duality and are only partially able to foresee the consequences of their activities. Finally, a privacy trusteeship paradox can be found: : Despite feeling unable to respond adequately to the risks of social media activities, even the most aware parents share personal information about their infants anyways.