Babies' Digital Footprint Begins Before Birth

(Oct. 7) -- In Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher's "The Social Network," a cocaine-addled Sean Parker, played by Justin Timberlake, rattles off a vision of the future that, depending on your point of view, is either dystopia or utopia.

"We lived on farms, we lived in cities," he says. "Now we'll live on the Internet."

For many American children, that's becoming the reality they are born into.

Internet security firm AVG recently did a study on the digital information available for the youngest citizens of some of the world's most wired (or, really today, wireless) countries, including the U.S., Canada, the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. The finding? More babies are becoming as visible on the Internet as those who can actually operate a keyboard.

Here are the startling digital milestones:

-- Nearly one-fourth (23 percent) of children were found to have had pre-birth scans uploaded to the Internet. In the U.S., some 34 percent had antenatal scans posted online. (Hat tip: Econsultancy.)

-- The average age at which a child acquires an online presence, courtesy of the parents, is six months. By the time they are 2, 81 percent of children have some kind of "digital footprint."

-- A third (33 percent) of children have had images posted online from birth.

-- A quarter (23 percent) of children have had their pre-birth scans uploaded to the Internet by their parents.

-- Seven percent of babies even had an e-mail address created for them by their parents.

-- More than 70 percent of mothers said they posted baby and toddler images online to share with friends and family.

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Unfortunately, Facebook's dodgy history with privacy is well documented, and a 2-year-old can hardly be counted on to make an informed review of the default privacy settings.

There are holdouts, however. According to the Pew Internet Project, even in Facebook-happy America about a quarter of people aged 12 to 17 don't use social networking, and that number rises to about 60 percent for adults 30 and older. Still, this study indicates that these numbers will likely rise as new generations grow up locked into the Internet.

AVG stresses that parents should be very considerate of the life they're dictating for their children by putting their lives online so early, and should always remember to track privacy settings.

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