Picture
taken by Jonathan Acuña at Musée d’Orsey, Paris, France (2019)
The Ethics of
Micro-Microcelebrities
Social Media
Ethics
By
Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.
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Head
of Curriculum Development
Academic
Department
Centro
Cultural Costarricense-Norteamericano
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Senior Language Professor
School of English
Faculty
of Social Sciences
Universidad
Latina de Costa Rica
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Sunday, July 19, 2020
Post
347
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As
stated by Saltz (2014) on an article at Vulture.Com, “We live in the age of the
selfie.” And whether we are producers and sharers of these fast self-portraits
or not, the plain fact is that these pictures gush into social media effusively
and plentifully by the hundreds every second and for many different and similar
reasons. But when it comes to exposing babies, toddlers, infants, and children
in the media by and with their Influencer parents (usually the mother), how
ethical is it to do this? Is it legal to monetize with infants’ images because
of advertorials and the need to get an online presence on social media sites?
Let
us think for a moment on the various reasons people have to take selfies and
post them online. On a research study carried out around selfies and shared at
Psychology.Com, Dr. Griffiths (2019) numbers several reasons why people publish
self-portraits. Among their justifications he cites “self-confidence,”
“environmental enhancement,” “social competition,” “attention seeking,” “mood
modification,” and “subjective conformity.” However, which of these reasons do
you think apply for infants, whose lives are publicly exposed on the web by
their parents (usually the mothers)? What about the reasons an Influencer mom has
to expose their children to social media at an early age? Probably none of
reasons mentioned by Dr. Griffiths apply to children who are publicly exposed
by their parents in the media.
Barely
speaking it can be stated that female Influencers who display their kids on
social media are into “social competition,” “attention seeking,” and
“subjective conformity.” Social competition is shallowly defined by Dr.
Griffiths (2019) as “taking selfies to get more ‘likes’ on social media.” For
Influencer mothers who expose their kids to the media, they take part in this competition
due to “prolific, deliberate, and commercial” purposes (Abidin, 2015) linked to
what is now called advertorials and the commissions gained through the selling
of baby products. On the other hand, there is an underlying need for attention,
and the one way to become advertorial creators of baby and infant products is
through self-portraiture where the starring characters are their children. Dr.
Griffiths also points out that one of the reasons for selfies is the need to
“fit in with one’s social group and peers” (2019), which is a clear indicator
of micro-celebrities’ behavior like the one displayed by Influencers who want
to take people in their social clusters into buying the products they recommend
in their self-portraits with their children.
Is
all this social media exposure of kids by Influencer mothers morally correct?
There is a prevalent online identity created by these social media female users
or micro-celebrities in their online social networks; they seem to know what
they are looking for with this presence. But it cannot be said the same for
those kids who were, are, and continue to be exposed to social media in the
search for monetization. “[P]arents who habitually underestimate or discount
the privacy and long term effects of publicizing information about their
children at the time of posting” (Abidin, 2015) do not exactly know what the
impact of all this disclosure of “private” information of children is, and
these kids who do not exactly know what is going on or why their images are
being used to profit from advertorials won’t be aware of the impact of their public
lives until they become old enough to make sense of this kind of micro-microcelebrity
life encouraged by their moms.
It
is uncertain to call this social media exposure child labor exploitation but
monetizing the image of a child is one of those things we cannot believe
ethically and legally framed. Legislation in various countries does not include
anything about this particular issue. Abidin (2015), in her paper about
Influencer Mothers, points out that there is no stated legislation in Singapore
where she carried out ethnographic studies on micro-microcelebrities. She also
brings up the fact that in the state of California no such law exists either
(Abidin, 2015). In Costa Rica where I live, the current labor code does not
specify anything about the monetization of young labor in social media through
the use of self-portraiture and advertorials. Once again we find ourselves
thinking that just because something like using one’s children’s images seems
to be legal does not mean it is ethical because parents will not get into
judicial trouble. Ultimately, when these children grow up, they may consider
their parents’ pervasive exposure of their image their teenage or adulthood
ordeal. And because legislation does not always walk hand in hand with ethics,
this moral issue seems to constantly evaporate into the ethersphere.
References
Abidin, C. (2015). Micromicrocelebrity: Branding Babies on the
Internet. M/C Journal, Vol18, (5).
http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/1022
Griffiths, M. (2019). The Psychology of the Selfie. Psychology Today.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-excess/201905/the-psychology-the-selfie
Saltz, J. (2014). Art at arm’s length: A history of the selfie. Vulture. http://www.vulture.com/2014/01/history-of-the-selfie.html
The Ethics of Micro-microcelebrities by Jonathan Acuña on Scribd
Sunday, July 19, 2020
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