By Soon Li Wei
KUALA LUMPUR, July 10: For seven years, Harsha (not her real name) dreamed of becoming a mother.
Long before her daughter was born, she had already created Instagram and TikTok accounts for the child she had yet to hold in her arms.
Like many first-time parents, Harsha and her husband were overjoyed after years of trying to conceive. They wanted to preserve every milestone in their only child’s life through social media, creating what they believed would become a digital photo album while sharing their parenting journey with family, friends and followers.
From her daughter’s first wobbly steps to her first day at school, almost every precious childhood moment was captured in photographs and short videos. Some of the posts attracted hundreds of thousands, even millions, of views and likes. Today, their daughter is seven years old.
“I always thought that when my daughter was old enough to understand social media, I would hand over the accounts to her so she could look back on the journey we documented from the day she was born until now,” Harsha told Bernama.
However, what began as an innocent effort to preserve cherished memories took a disturbing turn about two months ago.
Harsha was forced to deactivate her daughter’s social media accounts after discovering that an unknown individual had created a fake profile using the child’s photographs and reposted them with offensive and disturbing captions.
“I had to lodge a police report because someone had misused my daughter’s photos and videos for inappropriate purposes. I was worried they could be circulated for scams or even for sexual exploitation,” she said.
Although deleting the accounts meant losing years of treasured memories, Harsha said her daughter’s safety had to come first.
“It broke my heart… (because) those posts captured her childhood and growth, but for the safety of my daughter and my family, I knew I had no choice,” she said.
ONLINE RISKS OF SHARENTING
Harsha’s experience reflects a growing phenomenon known as ‘sharenting’, the practice of parents sharing photographs, videos and personal information about their children on social media.
A blend of the words ‘sharing’ and ‘parenting,’ the term refers to parents documenting their children’s lives online, often before the children are old enough to understand or consent to having their personal information shared publicly.
While the practice is usually motivated by love, pride and the desire to capture precious memories, it can also expose children to significant online risks.
According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) has heightened these risks, with publicly shared images increasingly vulnerable to misuse, including the creation of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
Chief of Child Protection, UNICEF Malaysia, Saskia Blume, said many parents unknowingly expose their children to potential harm by posting their images online.
“Most parents share photos of their children out of love and pride. But the digital environment has changed. Images shared online can be copied, scraped, manipulated or misused without a family’s knowledge or consent, especially as AI tools become more accessible,” she said.
Blume said AI technologies have made it easier for publicly available images to be collected, manipulated and potentially exploited, highlighting the need for greater public awareness of the long-term consequences of sharing children’s personal information online.
However, she stressed that responsibility should not rest solely with parents and caregivers.
Instead, social media platforms must be held accountable for protecting children online.
“We really need to shift the discussion to the accountability of platforms. Safety by design should become the norm, including making children’s accounts private by default,” she said.
Blume added that stronger platform safeguards and more robust privacy settings could significantly reduce children’s exposure to online risks while creating a safer digital environment for young users.
FEARS OVER DIGITAL PROFILING OF CHILDREN
While many parents continue to practise sharenting simply to share their children’s precious milestones, awareness of the risks associated with the practice is also growing.
A joint study by cybersecurity firm Kaspersky and the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT), titled Small Shares, Big Risks: How Parents Assess Threats and Cope with Sharing of Children’s Data and published on May 6, found that parents across the Asia-Pacific region and Egypt, including Malaysia, are increasingly concerned about the digital footprints they create for their children. Their concerns stem from fears of ‘stranger danger’ as well as algorithmic profiling by technology companies.
Co-authored by Kaspersky Asia Pacific Senior Manager for Cybersecurity Education Trishia Octaviano and SIT Deputy Director of the Teaching and Learning Academy Associate Professor Jiow Hee Jhee, the study analysed 152 online responses collected between October 2025 and February 2026 from respondents in Hong Kong, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam.
The study found that 74 per cent of parents are concerned about social media companies using their children’s data to train or develop software, while 71 per cent worry that their children are being targeted with tailored advertisements. Nearly 80 per cent of respondents also believe that third-party marketing companies tracking and profiling their children could have serious consequences.
According to Octaviano, the immediate physical risks associated with online sharing remain the greatest concern among families. More than seven in 10 parents believe strangers can determine where they live (74 per cent) and where their children attend school (73 per cent) based solely on information shared on social media.
She said the study also found widespread concern over the potential misuse of children’s photographs. Three-quarters (75 per cent) of parents believe their posts could be exploited by others, while 69 per cent fear that content they share today could be taken out of context and embarrass their children in the future.
“With the rapid advancement of AI, these concerns are becoming increasingly relevant. Today, cybercriminals no longer need a large collection of images to manipulate or generate harmful content.
“Even one publicly available photo can potentially be used as a source material for cybercriminals with AI tools at their disposal to create realistic-looking fake images, including AI-generated CSAM.
“Meanwhile, AI also lowers the barrier for image manipulation, making it easier and faster to produce convincing synthetic content,” she told Bernama in an email interview.
SIT’s Jhee said that, for many parents, discomfort with sharenting stems from a natural concern about strangers.
“They worry about unknown individuals saving their children’s photos, piecing together where their family lives, or misusing such information years later in ways they cannot control.
“These concerns are valid and point to how exposed children can become without parents fully realising it, and feeling uneasy about sharenting often reflects an awareness of these risks, and that awareness is an important first step towards more mindful and protective sharing decisions,” he said.
AFFECTING CHILDREN’S MENTAL HEALTH
HELP University’s Clinical Psychologist and lecturer at the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Behavioural Sciences, Kelly Phang, said many parents engage in sharenting as a way of expressing their love for their children and sharing their milestones and achievements.
However, she said these well-intentioned actions may not necessarily align with their children’s wishes, particularly during the developmental stage when they are forming their identity and sense of autonomy.
“Thus, it is not about how much a parent loves their child, but rather on how comfortable the child will be with the digital footprints,” she told Bernama in an email interview.
Citing the psychosocial development theory of German-American psychoanalyst Erik Erikson, Phang said adolescents go through the Identity vs.Role Confusion stage, during which they explore their independence while developing a personal sense of self, identity and self-esteem.
“With that said, digital footprints and their consequences, such as reactions from others and being searchable, can shape how adolescents define themselves, whereby they might perceive that their identity has somewhat been ‘assigned’ to them.
“If the content is unfortunately a source of cyberbullying, this could then potentially damage their self-esteem and also their relationship with their parents,” she said.
SAFETY BY DESIGN
UNICEF’s Blume said governments and technology companies should embed children’s rights and safety into social media platforms and AI systems from the outset, rather than responding only after harm has occurred.
She said adopting a ‘safety-by-design’ approach is crucial to preventing CSAM and other forms of online exploitation before they occur.
“Emerging laws, regulations and industry codes governing digital platforms and AI should explicitly recognise children’s rights, while companies should be required to conduct Child Rights Impact Assessments to identify and mitigate potential risks before introducing new products or services,” she said.
Blume also called for zero tolerance of AI-generated CSAM, urging technology companies to strengthen efforts to detect, report and swiftly remove abusive content while ensuring their AI systems cannot be used to generate such material.
“Platforms should adopt stronger privacy and security measures by default, including enhanced safeguards against large-scale scraping of children’s images, limiting unnecessary collection of children’s personal data and automatically applying the highest privacy settings to children’s accounts.
“Greater transparency and accountability were equally important, with companies expected to clearly explain how social media and AI systems collect and use data, monitor emerging risks, detect abuse and prevent foreseeable harm,” she said.
Blume further stressed the importance of strengthening digital and AI literacy among children, parents and caregivers, while ensuring young people are meaningfully involved in the design, testing and governance of digital products that affect them.
“We are at a pivotal moment. Governments, industry and civil society have an opportunity to establish norms that place children’s rights, including their rights to safety, privacy and wellbeing, at the centre of social media regulation and AI governance from the beginning, rather than trying to address harms only after they occur,” she said.
SAFER SHARENTING
Meanwhile, Octaviano urged parents to be more mindful of the information they share about their children on social media, saying simple precautions can significantly reduce the risks associated with sharenting.
She advised parents who wish to share family moments online to set their social media accounts to private if they do not intend their posts to be publicly accessible, and to review their privacy settings regularly.
“Parents should periodically check who can view their profiles and posts, review their list of contacts and remove resharing permissions where such options are available.
“They also should avoid sharing identifiable personal information, including their children’s full names, dates of birth, home addresses, school names or school uniforms, as such details could be exploited by malicious actors,” she said.
— BERNAMA