02/10/2026
Are you guilty of Sharenting?
Don't feel bad, most of us are.
Sharenting, a portmanteau of "sharing" and "parenting," refers to the habitual practice of parents posting detailed information, images, and narratives about their children on social media platforms and digital channels without obtaining the child's informed consent. While the impulse to share parental pride is understandable and historically manifested through photo albums and family gatherings, the permanence, discoverability, and scale of digital sharing fundamentally alter the risk calculus.
Individual posts may appear benign in isolation. However, the "Mosaic Effect" demonstrates how small, seemingly insignificant details accumulate into a comprehensive profile that reveals sensitive information about habits, routines, and vulnerabilities.
The convergence of widely available AI tools and abundant training data, much of it inadvertently provided by parents, creates an environment where children's digital identities can be manipulated, weaponized, and exploited at scale.
The practice of sharenting intersects privacy ethics, security risk management, and long-term digital citizenship in ways that demand careful consideration and informed decision-making. As artificial intelligence capabilities continue to advance and threat actors develop increasingly sophisticated exploitation techniques, the information shared today about children will face security challenges we cannot yet fully anticipate.
Check out my latest blog post, "Shared Today, Stolen Tomorrow: Why Oversharing is a Security Risk for the Next Generation," to learn more about Sharenting and how it could potentially be another attack vector for your employees and your organization: https://credocyber.com/shared-today-stolen-tomorrow-why-oversharing-is-a-security-risk-for-the-next-generation/
For a deeper dive into Sharenting, pick up a copy of my book, "The Digital Citizen's Guide to Cybersecurity: How to be safe and empowered online": https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Citizens-Guide-Cybersecurity-Empowered/dp/1956464220