There blogger and writer Selvaggia Lucarelli spoke during a press conference at the Chamber of Deputies yesterday, 11 April, aimed at presenting the bill “Provisions on the use of minors in the context of digital platforms for sharing multimedia content” by Gilda Sportiello (M5S).
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Selvaggia Lucarelli’s speech in the Chamber
Here are his words: “Children are behind the success of many of the most well-known profiles on the web,” he began Lucarelli Before to make a reference to Chiara Ferragni and Fedez, who even showed the images from the video surveillance cameras of their home to the social audience.
“Judges often don’t know what sharenting is. To avoid all this upstream, unfortunately the law is currently absent. A small newspaper with a low circulation cannot publish photos of minors, while a parent can post photos of their children on social media in any circumstance, due to what I define as the narcissism of parenting or to monetize. There are parents who bill for their children’s content. Children become capital, the image of children becomes the property of their parents,” she added.
Lucarelli also spoke about content in which children are ridiculed or sexualized: “Traffic, views, become currency. Their page can be sold to companies at a higher price. Children serve this purpose, and also create empathy, affection and even value. I’m talking about the risk of an unchosen notoriety and an unwanted digital identity that will become ballast for children. The irreversibility of the phenomenon should push the Government to act.”
“Minors are determined by their parents in their dignity without the parents having any obligation. Today, if a teacher mocked a child and put him in embarrassing situations, he would be reported immediately. If a parent did it, social workers would intervene. Paradoxically, if all this happens on the web, the indignation turns into a sort of legitimation whereby everything is allowed, despite the enormous audience.”
The dangers of sharenting
We had already discussed the topic almost a year ago. Our collaborator Dario De Santis, historian of science, created a reel to raise awareness about dangers of sharenting which was seen by more than two million people. Here is his point of view: “When we share a photo on social media, in fact we are not showing, but we are spreading duplicates. In fact, anyone, from Whatsapp to Facebook, can download that photo onto their device and do what they want with it. Therefore, although the gesture closely resembles that of showing a photo to a group of friends, in reality it is something profoundly different. And while digital contacts are normally less deep and binding than physical and real ones, in the case of photographs it is exactly the opposite: granting friendship to a person on Facebook does not mean letting them enter “our home”. On the contrary, showing a photo of our son in costume on social media means potentially allowing anyone to keep a copy.
I don’t think I’m surprising anyone by saying that there are groups of pedophiles who also share material caught from the net without too much difficulty. However, even without arriving at such a disturbing scenario, it must be clear that the material shared online will remain available to everyone for a long time, even those who are not in direct contact with us.
Children cannot make a decision of this type, they do not have the tools to reflect on the consequences of this gesture; when they grow up they will be able to decide firsthand whether and what to share about themselves, including the many photos of their childhood; but if we do it for them we will make an irreversible decision.
For what then? For a handful of likes? Let’s physically show photos of our children, print them and keep them at home or give them to our loved ones, but let’s remember that sharing a digital photo is not like showing a photo album.
This is a relevant issue, still little debated and left to the conscience of each of us. Instead, it would be important to at least reflect on the peculiarities of this gesture to start a common discussion and draw up shared rules.
In the meantime, if we really can’t help but share, we only post photographic material online that we would show to an audience of strangers.”
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