I'm back from my maternity leave, and how timely it is to see a new study that finds parents are building digital footprints for their children prior to and from the moment they are born.
The survey, conducted by security firm AVG, found that 81 percent of children under age two currently have some kind of digital profile or footprint, with images of them posted online. In the United States, 92 percent of children have an online presence by the time they are two, compared with 73 percent in the EU5 (UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain).
Even more extreme are the findings that 7 percent of babies and toddlers have an e-mail address and 5 percent have a social networking profile created for them by their parents.
As a new mom, I'll admit to posting the adorable shots of my baby's cute poses and first smiles to my Facebook account. But I've often thought about how my baby perceives and reacts to my use of technology, including the incessant waving of my iPhone camera in front of her face. I'm reminded of this two-year-old girl's first encounter with an iPad, and GovLoop's Andrew Krzmarzick's question of "How young is too young for social media?"
How will the federal government react to this true, new generation of digital natives -- who have digital footprints before they are even born -- in the future?
Brittany Ballenstedt
Brittany Ballenstedt writes Nextgov's Wired Workplace blog, which delves into the issues facing employees who work in the federal information technology sector. Before joining Nextgov, Brittany covered federal pay and benefits issues as a staff correspondent for Government Executive and served as an associate editor for National Journal's Technology Daily. She holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Mansfield University and originally hails from Pennsylvania. She currently lives near Travis Air Force Base, Calif., where her husband is stationed.
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