From Big B to AI kids, Assam Police innovates to create awareness about ‘sharenting’ ‘

PTI, Jul 26, 2023, 4:28 PM IST

Four ‘created children’ are leading an awareness campaign launched from Assam on the perils of oversharing of information online of minors by parents. The four are the latest ‘recruits’ by the state police in its pioneering drive on the ills of ‘sharenting’, which deals with sharing of photographs and personal information of children on the social media by parents.

The special director general of police Harmeet Singh said the four ‘children’ are artificial intelligence(AI)-generated creatives being used by Assam Police in its campaign against ‘sharenting’ and have attracted attention online.

“We started the ‘sharenting’ awareness campaign in 2021. As AI is in the rage now, we thought of using it and it has caught everyone’s attention. We are riding the AI wave to spread the message,” Singh, who is leading the drive, said. Assam Police have been using pop culture, memes, humour, modern day idioms among others as means in the campaign ‘#DontBeASharent’ which urges parents not to make their children ”social media trophies” as it could lead to potential threats at different levels for the children, a concept which is relatively new for Indian parents.

A poster of Amitabh Bachchan’s film ‘Shahenshah’ is being used to drive home the point. It parodies the famous dialogue from the film, ‘Rishte main to hum tumhare baap lagte hain, naam hai sharent’ replacing the word ‘shahensha’ of the original.

A nursery rhyme ‘Johnny, Johhny’ is also tweaked to urge parents not to share photographs of their children without their consent.

One poster presents data on the parents’ awareness about the dangers of online sharing. It claims that 61.6 per cent of the parents in the country believe that they have the right to share images of their children without the latters’ consent. Ironically as much as 98 per cent of parents consider the images they post of their children may be embarrassing, but do so anyway.

An alarming fact is that 76 per cent of the parents who share details of their children online are aware that the images could end up in wrong hands, yet don’t stop from putting them up on the social media.

Singh said people in the Western countries are discussing ‘sharenting’ and in India, where digital footprint is increasing at a phenomenal speed, there is an urgent need to educate the people.

“What parents think to be innocent fun on the social media could actually lead to a lot of trouble for the children in future. Some parents start sharing as early as from the image of the foetus,” he said.

The oversharing of information on children on the social media could lead to cyber bullying, real life bullying, identity theft, financial fraud and ‘online grooming’ which could turn to ‘sextortion’.

Instances of girls being stalked physically after their fathers posted online information about their (girls) whereabouts to men who posed as fathers of other girls on the social media have been reported in different parts of the world.

Singh also pointed at the danger of children posting sensitive and private information about themselves later in life after having seen their parents do so in their early years.

“Also, the COVID pandemic led to a situation where entire life went online. Young children are growing up with the feeling that the way of the world is through media and not physical contact. So, they tend to share more on social media,” he added.

“Social media has lot of pros and has become the idiom of the new world. But we have to be updated on the privacy rules before using it extensively. It is great that some children are great achievers and their parents want to share it with everyone. But we have to keep the personal information restricted,” the special DGP added. The sharenting campaign, which is assisted by consultant Salik Khan and his team, has reached about half a million people through social media and other fora. It has also bagged the special mention award at the DEF India Social Media for Empowerment Awards 2022-23 for best digital intervention in south Asia on community mobilisation, he said. ”We try to keep the campaign interesting so that it creates curiosity among the people to know more and leads to greater awareness. We appeal to parnets to practice cyber hygiene on personal information about their children like they do in respect of their personal and financial transactions,” Singh added.