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Matthew S.'s avatar

"As an aside - there are a growing number of parents who don’t post any pictures of their kids (with varying degrees of strictness) to social media."

I see this a lot with very online types, especially left-of-center folks—photos of kids with emojis over the faces, for example—but I don't really see it happening with people I know in real life. Like you mentioned earlier in the article, most people are reasonable about this, even coming from the opposite angle. Photos of kids birthday parties? FIne. Video of their reactions if no one comes to their birthday party? Gross and psycho. Every so often a video goes viral because it shows some poor kid in a sad situation and draws a lot of sympathy for the kid, and I'm glad they are able to get some positive vibes sent their way, but I cannot help but wonder who the deranged parent is on the other side of the camera who is *continuing to record* while their child is suffering some profound emotionally painful moment.

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Lila Krishna's avatar

I'll go as far as to say child actors are messed up too. I read I'm Glad My Mom Died by a former child actress Jeanette McCurdy, soon after becoming a parent, and realized that while you can try making it as ethical or noncoercive as you can, the problem is performing emotions. Kids are still learning how they feel about things and how to reconcile their emotions with situations with other people. When you make them perform, you're messing with that learning process. If they are made to show emotions on demand, or pretend to be someone else for extended periods, or cry on demand, or pretend to be romantic with someone they don't have romantic feelings for, it messes with their learning to interact with their own emotions. At least with film acting, there are some boundaries, i.e. it's not in the setting where you live your life or situations that you experience day to day. Social media performance doesn't even have those boundaries.

I used to joke about having my kid be a child star so we don't have to worry about paying for college, but now I don't even want my kid acting more than in a school play.

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