BY FORTESA LATIFI
MARCH 10, 2023
Search Claire’s name online and this is some of what you will find: photos of her as a child, merchandise with her face on it available for sale, and a YouTube channel with millions of subscribers and hundreds of videos featuring Claire and members of her family. In the videos, Claire grows from a toddler to a teenager. On Instagram, fans comment they miss videos from the old days. In public, people sometimes recognize her and ask for photos. Altogether, the family’s YouTube channel has over a billion views but if it were up to Claire, none of the videos would exist.
For Gen-Z, social media has always been a given. Many consider the first social networking site launched in 1997, the same year that Pew Research marks as the beginning of Generation Z. It’s commonplace for young people of this generation to have their triumphs and travails documented on the Internet, with a digital footprint that follows them from platform to platform over the years. But for some young people, their parents shared more than evidence of an elementary school Spelling Bee win or a smiling photo of their first day in college. Instead, the intimate details of their lives, from videos of them as crying children to footage of a parent disciplining them – are shared and sometimes monetized without their explicit consent.