Parents from Shanghai to Chicago are proudly putting pictures of their children on social media.
It might be taken for granted - but no previous generation of children will have had the experience of having their entire childhoods intensively and publicly documented in this way.
In the UK, the average parent with a social media account has posted 1,498 photos of their child online by their fifth birthday, according to a survey by domain name company, Nominet.
This might be a global phenomenon for proud parents - but what about the children, who will have been too young to have any choice in the matter.
But the very first people to have had some of their childhood pictures posted online are now reaching adulthood. And they are not always happy about their formative years being preserved in digital aspic.
- "When I was 12 or 13 I started realising there were things [on Facebook] that I thought were a bit embarrassing," said 16-year-old Lucy, from Newcastle, whose dad has been posting pictures of her on the social networking site since she was seven.
- "I asked him to take them down and he was happy to, but he didn't quite understand why. If I had been asked [at the time], do you want these photos out there for all to see, I would've probably said no."
'De-tagging' her past
Even those who were pleased to be on social media as children are less sure about it now. Dana Hurley, 20, from east London, said that as an 11-year-old she was happy for her parents to post photos of her on Facebook.
"At the time it was exciting… I liked attention. Now it's kind of weird because you look back and think, this was for everyone to see," she said.
In my opinion, I don't think parents should post pictures of their children on social media, due to children not really being aware of what their parents are uploading, I do think it is unfair. Furthermore, most of the time once children are at a certain age they do regret taking certain pictures and allowing their parents uploading the pictures.
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