Entre curtidas no Instagram: a exposição de crianças nas redes sociais e suas possíveis consequências ao desenvolvimento infantil

Abstract

With the advent of the internet and communication technologies, as online social networks gain visibility and importance, being applied around the world, favoring an exchange of information, communication and a propagation of ideas. Technological changes have led to changes in the social life of people, and especially in relationships established within families, with an impact on the routine, the dynamics of functioning and forms of communication. In this context, the practice of oversharenting, a term in English that means sharing of the parental life through the creation of a digital identity for the child, exposing their routine, image, habits and characteristics in social networks. Therefore, through this study, we investigate how the possible causes of childhood in Instagram's social network on child development, based on Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Theory of Human Development, we discussed the use of infant or maternity/paternity profiles on Instagram. For this, we used Virtual Ethnography or Netnography. The data collection was done through manual search of hashtags, through an online form answered by 30 (thirty) mothers/fathers using the social network Instagram, in addition to making observations and records in field diaries. The results showed that the maternity profiles in Instagram are often a way for the family to insert the child into the digital world and also to define their first experiences in the network. We have seen the close relationship between child visibility in Instagram and practices related to consumption and child adultization, issues that may be considered detrimental to development, considering the child's young age and their inability to think or define the use of their own image and personal information on social networks. Finally, we observe that the exaggerated children and adolescents’ exposure of information in social networks can pose a threat to intimacy, privacy and the right to image, which in many cases represent violations of established legal and constitutional rights with the aim of preserving and protecting children and adolescents as persons in development.