When you have a baby, there is a long list of things you need: crib, bottles, wet wipes, diapers, a personalized URL, a Facebook page, a Twitter handle, an Instagram account, a Tumbler blog and an email address. You're not doing all that? Well, you should. It's a thing! Well, maybe you shouldn't, but either way, it's a thing. Some parents are setting up their children with a full digital profile before they're even born. Others send them emails as kind of an ongoing digital baby book. And our camera guy, Ricky, is basically the poster child for this trend.

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Picture.

So my son's digital presence takes over a Twitter account, Tumbler account, Instagram account. I also have his yahoo mail and his g-mail. So I came up with the idea when I was in the hospital, about 24 hours after he was born. It was important for me to secure my son's digital identity, because I didn't want him to have to worry about it when he's much older and have to come up with some sort of crazy name derivative of his real name. I post pictures on his behalf to his Instagram account, and I send those to him so that when he's older, he can kind of see, you know, what it was like, like sort of a daily diary that he'll be able to read when he's an adult, when he's able to access his email. He'll get notes from me, his grandparents, his mother, and we hope that that'll sort of shed some light in sort of what it was like for us to raise him, but as well, it's good for us because it allows us to sort of digest the day and really just take a step back and, you know, reveal ourselves as parents. [Babble] Yay! Good job. You say lee-ta [phonetic].

Ricky's obviously the extreme example here, but a lot of parents are doing some version of this. Like Kate, who's just sticking with email.

We got the idea to set up a email account for Jacks [phonetic] because it was the first time we actually went to a movie and, you know, they have all those ads that come on before the movie, and Google had done an ad about emailing your kid, and we looked at each other and thought, "Oh my gosh, that's such a great idea." It's so convenient, but it's also such a nice time capsule, and also a really intimate way of documenting his childhood. It was a little weird setting up the email account for him, especially when he was three months old. I mean, I did feel like I was hijacking his email future, you know, he's going to get it at 12 years old, and he didn't -- he's not going to be the one who created the account. His mom created the account. So, eh, I felt a tad bit of guilt for that.

On the other end of the spectrum are parents who are working hard to keep their children off the internet completely. It might surprise you, but I actually lean a little more in that direction. I know that any child born after the year 2000 has been on the internet plenty, but giving your child a social profile means creating a data record before they're old enough to decide for themselves, and I'm not totally okay with that. For my part, my son does have his own URL and Twitter handle, but they're a mashup of his dad's name and my name, so it protects his identity a little bit. I do post some photos on Facebook, but I'm still looking for the right mix of photo management, family sharing and respecting his right to privacy. After all, someday these kids are going to grow up and they're going to see all these blog posts and pictures, and they might be kind of mad. They're definitely going to be embarrassed. I do think I might start doing that email thing, though. He's only seven. It's not too late.

Based on the story above:

Do you think that parents are wrong for doing this for their young children on social media? Why or why not? How would you feel if your parents had created a social media page for you when you were young?