I became a father last year and around the same time I started following many Instagram accounts related to newborn health, parenting tips and baby care.
But after few weeks, my Instagram algorithm took a strange turn. Along with useful suggestions, it began showing me something that made me uncomfortable -- baby Instagram accounts. Newborns with usernames, toddlers with bios, reels, highlights, hashtags, collabs and sometimes even 'DM for brand enquiries'. As a parent, it made me uneasy. As a technology journalist, it honestly scared me. I have spent years writing about apps, platforms, data, AI and privacy. When you look at this trend through both emotional and technical side, you realise this is no longer just about parents sharing happy moments, it is about digital consent, data that always stays online, online surveillance by platforms and infants being pushed online before they even understand what the internet is. My son is nine months old. He doesn’t know what Instagram is but if I create an account for him today, his face, habits and moments instantly become part of the internet. That thought makes me stop. Childhood should be private, messy and safe. Social media, however, has slowly turned childhood into content. I feel Instagram isn’t just a place where photos sit. Every image is processed. Faces are analysed. Behaviour is tracked. Data is stored and studied. When parents post their baby’s photos, they are not just sharing memories, they are feeding a system built to collect and learn. Many parents say their child’s Instagram account is private but private does not mean invisible. Privacy on social media often protects you from other users not from the platform itself. Even if only approved followers can see the posts, the platform itself still has full access. The images are still stored. The metadata is still processed. Also, we are living in a time where artificial intelligence (AI) can generate faces, clone voices, manipulate images and create deepfakes that are increasingly difficult to detect. AI systems improve by learning from data and the internet is their biggest training ground. Clear and repeated images of babies uploaded over time can be valuable for companies like Meta. Once that data is used to train systems, there is no undo button. You cannot pull your child’s face out of an AI model five or ten years later. Then comes monetisation. Social media has mixed personal life with business. Many parents justify baby accounts by saying it helps with brand collaborations, free products or extra income and I won’t deny reality -- raising a child is expensive and social media does offer opportunities. But is it right to make money from a child’s identity before they understand consent, money or consequences? As parents, we make many decisions on behalf of our babies. But digital identity is different because it is permanent. You can change schools, move cities but you cannot erase the internet. Big tech companies have been under scrutiny globally for how they collect and use user data, including data related to children. Even when platforms claim to have safeguards, the reality is that data is still the core business. Images, videos, behaviour, engagement, all of it feeds algorithms. When a child’s data enters this ecosystem early, it stays there for life. As someone who reports on tech, I know how fast platforms evolve and how slowly regulations catch up. What Tech Experts Are Saying According to Faisal Kawoosa, Founder of Techarc, exposing kids, even infant to social media and other digital platforms is not a healthy trend. Many parents believe this helps make their content go viral, but they often forget some important things. "They infringe the digital privacy of their children and leave their digital footprints at a very early stage of their life. Today with AI, this data is being fed into may models and it is still evolving, we don’t know what all can be done with these pictures and videos of kids by the time they grow up, or how it might harm their digital identity," he said. He added that "we are depriving them of their right to choose and decide how, when and why to appear in the digital world. When we say everything should be consent based do we have their consent even if we are their parents? And are they mature enough to give their consent?" Tarun Pathak, Research Director at Counterpoint Research said: "There is a lot around digital identity. If you look at it from the point of view of how these kids are being tracked, the oversharing of information is a big concern. Because right now, it’s not just about images. I think parents and everyone are now getting more and more aware of the potential downside of sharing images of kids. But there are other things attached to it. For example, digital cues the background information, the smaller nuances in those pictures or maybe even the comments, these can also be tracked and looked into in a much more detailed way by AI and once those details are out, they can never really be removed from the internet. "So effectively, we are creating a digital identity for all kids without their consent. By the time they are five, seven or even ten, when they start using the internet in an AI era, they will have absolutely no control over their digital identity," he explained. There could be misuse. For example, if we create a digital shadow for our children, it is something kids won’t be able to edit or delete. With AI, you’ll be creating a lot of digital cues just by being on the internet. As I mentioned, it’s not just about pictures. "There are many different variables at play once your data is out. That data could be taken or shared by someone who is not able to use it in a proper way. We have seen platforms like paedophile websites or forums where pictures can be edited or misused," he warned. "I think people are becoming more aware but still one can find plenty of such information online. There should be some kind of rule or regulation that looks into explicit sharing of images or identities of kids before they are mature enough to understand what is happening on these platforms If this happens more on social media platforms, kids may later, once they grow up, feel it was an invasion of their privacy," Pathak noted. Conclusion Personally as a father, I keep asking myself one question before posting anything about my child -- am I doing this for him or am I doing this for the internet because my child’s right to privacy should matter more to me than online validation. In a world where online data is everything, keeping your child offline even partially feels like an act of protection. As a tech journalist, I know the internet never forgets.
