Many parents like to share photos and videos of their kids online with friends and family. However, there are many parents who also share social media accounts with their children, too. Some parents have their children at the center stage of their social media accounts, that they control, making a huge following and profit off of their children.
However, this can be detrimental and dangerous for young kids.
25-year-old single mother Jacquelyn has gotten a huge following on her TikTok channel, @wren.eleanor, where she shares videos of her 3-year-old toddler often. The account has over 17 million followers.
The mom shares videos of her daughter doing everyday kid things, as well as some sponsored posts like clothing hauls. However, as of recently, many people online have noticed that her videos were receiving really inappropriate reactions from adults and online users.
Many pointed out that there were tons of people saving videos of Wren and commenting on them things that were rather flirtatious and inappropriate, especially to a 3-year-old child.
One TikTok user shared screenshots from comments that were posted on videos of Wren, with grown men asking "do you want me to get engaged to you?" or "is she single?" TikTok users are reitorating that Wren is only 3.
TikTok user @mom.uncharted shared that we need to reconsider ourselves as a society where it has become so normalized for men to follow young female children online, commenting on and saving videos of them.
Many moms online, and TikTok users in general, want to know why Wren's mother would put her in such a compromising and dangerous position where adult men are fawning over her in such ways online.
Showcasing that videos of your child in a bathing suit, or even eating some food, can be saved hundreds of thousands of times—moms are starting to see that those innocent videos shared online are not so innocent.
Moms are deciding, following the Wren Eleanor situation, to delete photos and videos of their kids from their own social media profiles and pages. Even if they don't have many followers, some moms are claiming they do not want to risk it.
Aside from moms, older siblings and aunts, uncles, and grandparents are following suit in deleting things from the internet—claiming they don't want people to use their images in compromising and disturbing ways.
Her TiKTok account has not been removed, either, because she has not violated any of the social media network's rules or guidelines. However, many are claiming she knows about the issues because she has turned comments off on all other social media posts of Wren.
As many young children, like Wren, are too young to truly understand the permanency of the internet and social media, it leaves the question open: should we even post children online if they can't truly understand it?
