The Ethics of Micro-Microcelebrities

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.
Head of Curriculum Development Academic Department Centro Cultural Costarricense-Norteamericano	Senior Language Professor School of English Faculty of Social Sciences Universidad Latina de Costa Rica
Sunday, July 19, 2020 Post 347

         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

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