Mumbai: Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty’s son Viaan has just turned two but already boasts of over 13,000 followers on Twitter. His profile reads: “I am just two so don’t judge me! I love milk, sleeping, and cuddling up to my mum and dad, and want to see world peace! (ok last one I don’t know much about yet)”. Viaan is constantly active on social media and is one of those Gen Next babies worldwide whose parents are of the view that their children should have a social media profile.
One of the major reasons cited by Viaan’s parents for starting early was to avoid fake accounts. In earlier interviews, Raj Kundra said, “Already since creation, there are ten different impostors of my son. The idea to register Viaan early was to avoid fake accounts. I didn’t want it to be a scenario where in the future he has to add @iamviaan or @theviaan like Shilpa and I have had to due to some impostors having snatched our names and pretend to be us.”
The trend is fast catching up with tech-savvy young parents, who are increasingly booking email accounts, Twitter handles and Facebook profiles for their young ones. Software professional Meeta Shroff Juyal created her daughter’s Facebook profile when she was three years old. “With changing times, parenting norms have also evolved. We can’t raise children born in 21st century to follow the norms of 80s or 90s. We created her profile so that we have a space where we can upload her videos and pictures and capture these memorable moments forever. We also didn’t want our daughter to feel left out when all her friends were active on social media. Parents can’t keep the kids away from networking sites forever, so it is better if she learns about the pros and cons of social networking from us. We can train her to maintain a balance and not overdo it.”
Bollywood actress Celina Jaitley wanted her kids to carry forward the ‘digital legacy’. Jaitley introduced her twins to Twitter when they were just two weeks old. Celina and her husband have locked Twitter handle for their twins @winstonjhaag and @viraajjhaag. The duo has also created Facebook profiles and Gmail accounts so that impersonators do not have an opportunity to violate their famous names.
Another young mommy, Sarika Sharma often shuttles between India and Dubai for work. She says, “We keep shifting our bases to various countries but we ensure that Ayanna (our daughter) is imbibing values from her grandparents. So she has an access to Facebook and Skypes regularly. She keeps asking me to tag her play school friends in the pictures that we upload on her account. When her dad is away for work she keeps chatting with him.”
