The Dark Side of "Sharenting" (And Why You Should Avoid Posting About Your Kids On Social Media)

European telecommunications giant Deutsche Telekom launched a campaign using deepfakes to scare parents into being more careful about what they share online. The effort is meant to illustrate the dangers of "sharenting" (parents oversharing photos of their kids online). The video showcased is a disturbing imagined future where kids are suffering from identity theft, exploitation and worse … all because of the "innocent" photos their parents shared of them online when they were younger.

Fair warning - if you're a parent, then watching this video will probably make you want to delete every photo you've ever posted of your kids immediately. Especially after watching a deepfake of a ten year old girl warn her parents that "what you share online is like a digital footprint that will follow me around for the rest of my life." Thankfully, the parents in the video are just actors, but the realness of the ad makes its message urgent.

Contrary to what you might think, the point of this campaign isn't even to convince you that sharing on social media is bad. Instead, it's promoting a "digital drivers license" certification program teaching safe online usage. But you might end up feeling like maybe there is no such thing as a "safe" way to share photos of your kids online at all. And you might not be wrong about that.