A generation of overexposed children are being used by their parents for social media clout. What happens when they start to speak out?

A child is born. Before they even landed “Earthside”, in the language of Instagram, a scan of them as a foetus in utero was uploaded to a waiting audience. The room in which they will sleep – the pale pastel paintwork, the carefully curated nursery furniture – is all there, ready, waiting: an advertorial empty of its model. Then comes the photo of the baby being born, held aloft to their audience while still covered in vernix, eyes not yet open, their mother smiling, hair perfect.

From now on, their every moment and milestone is documented for the camera and monetised. That first smile, first word, first step, all mediated by a device and sent to an audience of strangers, many of whom have formed a parasocial relationship with that mother, that father, that child. The child comes to know and understand the black mirror that is regularly put in front of them. There will be days when the child happily performs for the camera; others when they push it away, when they don’t want to be filmed. A natural feeling, but one they may well have learned to suppress. Because performing for the camera makes mummy and daddy happy, although they don’t call it performing. They call it authenticity.

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist

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