The Dangers of Sharenting: The Dark Side of Growing Up Online

Is Online Sharing Exposing Our Children to the Perils of AI?

“This is a threat

Do you know what a threat is

I have no private life

You will commit suicide

or become like me”

— Leonard Cohen.

Looking back on these words by Leonard Cohen, we can’t help being struck by the eerie relevance they hold today. Numerous kids have committed suicide because of social media. And this threat is about to become worse. But how did we get here? Why is this acutely relevant in our current AI and machine learning age? BEWARE: If you ignore this warning, your children and those you love the most could be next.

We’ve all done it. As doting parents, we’ve shared countless pictures of our children online, their milestones, everyday moments, and innocent shenanigans. We’ve been building their digital presence before they could utter their first words. After all, what’s wrong with sharing the joy of parenting with our family and friends, documenting our child’s journey through life? Little did we know that we were inadvertently creating a playground for a new era of cybercrime and cyberexploitation powered by artificial intelligence (AI).

A Chilling Message from the Future

Take a moment and picture this — a nine-year-old girl, named Ella, is now a fully grown woman, addressing her parents through the silver screen of a cinema hall. She delivers a stern warning from the future, chastising her parents for the seemingly innocent act of sharing her childhood photos online. A haunting message from a deepfake — a hyper-realistic digital replica of a human created using AI.

You think: this must be science fiction, right? No, this isn’t a scene from a dystopian TV series, but an alarmingly real…