Welcome to the Internet – at six months old

Oct 6, 2010 by Dirk Singer

(Disclosure – AVG is a Rabbit client and we developed this campaign for them.   However, the subject matter – what sort of digital footprints we’re creating for our children – is one that I do think deserves more thought and discussion)

What’s the average age at which a child starts acquiring an online footprint?  In North America, Australia and Europe you’ll be “born” online at an average of six months old and by two 80%+ of children will have a presence on the Web.

That’s according to Internet Security company AVG, which carried out research among mothers in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and the ‘EU5′ (UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain).

Not only that, 23% of children will have had their scans uploaded online – meaning in a sense that their online life will pre-date their real one.   And that online footprint will be built on and will follow them around for the rest of their lives.

Other research highlights:

• In the US 92% of children under two have an online presence, compared to 73% in the EU5.   In Japan however it’s only 43%
• Though the average digital birth of children happens at around six months, a third (33%) of children have information and photos online within weeks of being born. In the UK, 37% of newborns have an online life from birth, whereas in Australia and New Zealand the figure is 41%.
• A quarter (23%) of children have had their pre-birth scans uploaded to the Internet. This figure is higher in the US, where 34% have had antenatal scans posted online, while in Canada the figure is even higher at 37%
• Seven percent of babies and toddlers have an email address created for them by their parents and five percent have a social network profile

Why does all this matter?

Well, privacy concerns aside (a five minute scan through Open Facebook and you can find plenty of baby and pregnancy information), parents are creating what’s called been called a ‘digital dossier’ for another human being.

As AVG’s research showed, many kids today will be ‘present’ online right from the moment of their birth and it’s worth thinking about what kind of information you want to make available about your child online.

And on the note of creating digital dossiers, this short film produced by the (Harvard) Berkman Center for Internet & Society following the online path of a (fictional) child called Andy is worth looking at:

(See also the blog post by AVG CEO JR Smith on the subject)