Sharenting, the practice of parents sharing pictures, videos, and personal information about their children on social media, has become a routine feature of contemporary digital parenting. Early work on social networking sites shows how parents frequently post about their children, shaping their children’s identities and privacy long before they can control their own online presence (Yegen & Mondal, 2021). In this study, privacy is defined not only as a personal boundary but also as a form of data sovereignty in the digital sphere. In the context of sharenting, digital privacy involves the complex negotiation between a parent’s right to share and a child’s future right to control their personal digital footprint. This definition is consistent with Ouvrein and Verswijvel (2019) who emphasize that privacy is closely linked to impression management, and that children should have the agency to control their own digital identity long before they can provide informed consent. In this context, digital identity refers to the collection of data and images available online that form a persona or “digital footprint” of an individual. This is crucial because sharenting is not merely a matter of parental freedom of expression; it directly involves the protection of a child’s dignity, safety, and privacy. As highlighted by Steinberg (2017), parental posts can shape a child’s digital identity long before they have the opportunity to express their own opinions, which may potentially impact their future social and personal development. This is further supported by Berg (2024) who argue that children’s digital identities are often initiated even pre-birth through “performative” and “social” motivations of parents, creating a permanent digital record that the child has no agency to manage.
To deepen this conceptualization, it is crucial to recognize that a child’s digital identity within this sharenting ecosystem is not merely a static compilation of parental choices. As conceptualized by Galinon-Mélénec (2019) digital identity is dynamically molded through a dual-layered structure of digital traces. It is formed not only by voluntary traces—the conscious, deliberate uploads of content by parents—but also fundamentally by technical-digital components and system-generated traces. These platform-driven traces include algorithmic profiling, automated tags, and aggregated netizen interactions. Consequently, the technical architecture of the platform actively co-creates the child’s public digital identity, transforming private family documentation into a permanent, systemically institutionalized public artifact that escapes parental control.
On visually oriented platforms such as Instagram, this visibility is intensified: parents curate “family photos,” extended self-presentations, and idealized scenes from everyday life that feature children as central characters in their online self-representation (Baloğlu, 2023; Ranzini et al., 2020; Tosuntaş & Griffiths, 2024). Instagram, a visual-centric social networking service owned by Meta Platforms, operates through a complex algorithmic environment that dictates content visibility and creator behavior (Liang et al., 2025). In the Indonesian context, Instagram is a dominant digital space with over 100 million active users, significantly shaping social norms and parenting styles (Kemp, 2024). Its structure, which encourages constant visibility and “aesthetic” lifestyles, creates a digital infrastructure in which private family moments are easily turned into public spectacles, often with minimal regulatory oversight of children’s digital rights in the country (Sujon, 2021).
The growth of sharenting research has been mapped scientifically and bibliometrically, revealing its rapid expansion across communication, psychology, law, and education. (Cataldo et al., 2022; Kumar & Rani, 2024; Tosuntaş & Griffiths, 2024). Previous research highlights how digital connectivity has resulted in children being “datafied”, with their digital footprints appearing from infancy, often described as permanent traces or imprints that ensure digital traceability, often without their consent (Ghilardi & Bortolatto, 2023; Molina Luna, 2025; Ong et al., 2022). These digital footprints act as permanent imprints that establish a persistent digital traceability, where a child’s early life is archived and searchable long before they can provide informed consent. This traceability means that sharenting does not merely create temporary visibility but leaves enduring digital traces that may influence the child’s future social and professional identity. In this study, these traces are analyzed as the catalysts for public discourse, as netizens often react to the potential long-term consequences of such unerasable digital records. In contrast, the current study extends these findings by specifically examining how such datafication triggers collective moral reactions in the Indonesian context. Cross-national work in Malaysia, Egypt, Brazil, and other contexts shows that sharenting is embedded in diverse cultural and regulatory environments, as parents negotiate affection, social norms, and legal constraints when posting about their children (Bevilaqua & Favero, 2024; Hanani et al., 2025; Jamaluddin et al., 2025; Salem, 2025).
While symbolic convergence theory (SCT) has been used to trace how shared fantasies and rhetorical visions emerge in online comments, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic (Hossain et al., 2022), it has not been systematically used to understand how netizens collectively create symbolic narratives around viral content involving children. Bibliometric and systematic reviews explicitly call for a more theoretically grounded, multidisciplinary, and socially located approach, pointing to a gap in studies that integrate netnography with SCT in the domain of sharenting (Cataldo et al., 2022; Tosuntaş & Griffiths, 2024). We applied SCT to analyze how fragmented netizen comments on Instagram converge into shared rhetorical visions regarding sharenting practices. By using SCT, this study moves beyond individual reactions to identify the “fantasy themes” or collective narratives that emerge when netizens discuss viral child content. This theoretical lens allows for a deeper understanding of how public consensus or conflict is symbolically constructed, revealing the underlying social norms and values that govern digital parenting in Indonesia. In response to this gap, this study proposes to investigate netizens’ responses to viral content involving children’s on Instagram through a combination of netnography and SCT, specifically focusing on the viral “Ara” case in Indonesia. In this study, “Ara” is a pseudonym representing a young child whose private emotional distress, vulnerable domestic interactions, and instances of intense crying during parental reprimands were documented across five viral videos and shared online by her parents for public consumption. This specific case serves as a critical focal point because the content triggered a massive wave of public moral policing and digital drama regarding the ethics of sharenting. Consequently, this study shifts the focus from parents to the audience, treating Instagram comment threads as sites where shared meaning, moral evaluation, and symbolic narratives are actively constructed. This research aims to identify and categorize the fantasy themes and rhetorical visions that emerge in netizens’ comments on viral children’s posts, using SCT to trace how shared stories, images, and metaphors shape collective understandings of division, analyzing how netizens negotiate rights, privacy, and child welfare in their responses, utilizing insights from legal, ethical, and educational studies on sharenting and children’s digital rights (Tepelena, 2025) and connecting audience discourse with the cultural dynamics of influencers, commercialization, and broader digital family branding, as documented in studies on parenting influencers, kidfluencers, and advocacy accounts.
Research Questions (RQs)
This study addresses the overarching problem of how viral sharenting practices on Instagram trigger collective symbolic convergence among netizens, thereby shaping societal norms and rhetorical visions of digital childhood in Indonesia.
Literature Review
The Concept of Sharenting and Children in the Digital Age
The term sharenting refers to the practice of parents routinely sharing photos, videos, and information about their children on social media, often from infancy or even before birth. Initial studies on this practice show that parents use social media to document their parenting journey, build family identity, and maintain social relationships, while simultaneously shaping their children’s digital identities without their children’s control (Yegen & Mondal, 2021). Globally, numerous scientific reviews and mapping studies show that sharenting has become a prominent research theme across disciplines, including psychology, communication, law, and education. Scientometric and bibliometric analyses describe the rapid growth of publications on sharenting, while grouping them into clusters such as children’s rights, privacy, digital commodification, and new parenting styles (Cataldo et al., 2022).
Privacy, Children’s Rights, and the Risks of Sharenting
The growth of sharenting raises serious concerns about privacy, children’s rights, and the long-term effects of digital exposure. Several studies highlight the emergence of the concept of the “datafied child,” namely, children whose digital footprints are intensively formed from an early age, often without their awareness or consent (Molina Luna, 2025; Siibak & Traks, 2019). Molina Luna (2025) emphasizes that around 80% of children already have a digital footprint by the age of two, making the right to be forgotten increasingly relevant in the context of disruptive technology. This pervasive digital traceability, as theorized by Galinon-Melenec (2019), suggests that every digital interaction serves as a trace that is not merely data but a fragment of a person’s evolving identity. In the context of sharenting, these traces are created by adults but are permanently attached to the children, raising profound concerns about how these involuntary digital footprints define a child’s privacy and future social reality long before they can exert their own agency. Legally, various studies highlight that sharenting has the potential to violate children’s personal rights, such as the right to their image, privacy, and dignity. In the Brazilian context, sharenting is seen as a practice with the potential to violate rights, thereby requiring parents to take responsibility for protecting their children as vulnerable subjects (Bevilaqua & Favero, 2024). Research in various regions shows similar patterns of concern. Jamaluddin et al (2025) outline the need for legal reform in Malaysia to balance parental rights and children’s digital autonomy. Kovačič (2025) shows that many parents in Slovenia are unaware of the long-term impact of sharenting and rarely ask for their children’s consent, highlighting the urgency of digital privacy education.
Sharenting on Instagram, Virality Culture, and Representation of Children
Instagram occupies a central position in sharenting studies due to its highly visual nature and focus on self-presentation. Chandana et al. (2025) showed how sharenting on Instagram has become a normalized practice, despite security concerns. They highlight gender representation, cultural influence, and the normalization of sharing as part of the ideal family narrative, while warning of the risks of oversharing.
In the context of influencers, research shows an additional complexity in the form of the commercialization of childhood. Brosch (2025) examined Polish parenting influencers on Instagram and found tensions between authenticity, commercialization, and privacy practices, highlighting the use of children as advertising tools, differences in practices between fathers and mothers, and weak labelling of sponsored content, which has implications for child rights violations.
Theoretical Perspective and Methodological Review: Ethnography and Digital Representation and Fantasy Themes Concept
SCT offers a robust theoretical framework to understand how groups construct shared meaning through narratives and symbols. This theory highlights the role of dramatizing messages and fantasy themes in forming symbolic commonalities that ultimately produce rhetorical visions (Olufowote, 2006; Zanin et al., 2016). Through this process, group members share stories, metaphors, and symbols that crystallize into a shared view of social reality. Within the framework of this study, SCT provides a lens for reading netizens’ comments on viral content involving children as an arena where fantasy themes about “digital childhood” are produced and shared.
These fantasy themes are understood as creative and imaginative interpretations of events that emerge through narratives about “good parents,” “children who are victims of exploitation,” “ideal families,” or “momfluencers hungry for popularity.” When these narratives are frequently repeated and accepted, they form a collective rhetorical vision of sharenting. Thus, applying SCT to this context represents a significant theoretical development, as previous literature has not explicitly combined this theory with sharenting research (Chandana et al., 2025; Vizoso-Gómez, 2025). Integrating SCT with netnography allows for a richer analysis of the emotional and moral dimensions of netizens’ responses, going beyond simple pro-con categorization. Emotions such as frustration, envy, anger, disgust, or pity are analyzed as part of a symbolic drama that binds commentators to a particular rhetorical vision, such as the view that sharenting is a natural expression of affection or an exploitative practice to be resisted.
Following this theoretical lens, the study adopts a netnographic approach to operationalize the analysis of online communities. From a methodological perspective, many studies on sharenting utilize surveys, interviews, and content analysis of parents’ or influencers’ accounts (Chandana et al., 2025). Previous research has revealed the complexity of parents’ reasoning regarding sharenting and community standards, while also examining the privacy paradox among motherhood influencers (Baxter & Czarnecka, 2025). However, we introduce a distinct methodological contribution; instead of focusing on self-reported data from parents, we intentionally employ netnography to capture the raw, unsolicited, and collective responses of netizens. Netnography, as a qualitative approach to studying online communities, has been used in other contexts closely related to family and reproductive issues. A netnographic approach has also been used to problematize sharenting supermoms in a neoliberal context, although the focus remains on mothers’ accounts rather than on netizens’ broader responses (Alkan et al., 2025).
Methodology
This study uses a qualitative approach, combining netnography and fantasy theme analysis within the framework of SCT. A qualitative approach was chosen because the study’s purpose was not to measure the frequency of opinions but to understand the symbolic meanings, narratives, and rhetorical visions that netizens formed in their responses to viral sharenting content. While previous studies often utilized surveys, this research adopts digital discourse analysis to capture real time symbolic convergence, offering a new interpretive tool for sharenting studies. Unlike existing studies that frequently rely on established tools for sentiment measurement, this methodology provides a new interpretive dimension by uncovering the collective fantasy themes within netizen discourse. This approach does not merely replicate standard analytical frameworks but adds a layer of depth by tracing how public consensus is symbolically constructed, thereby offering an original contribution to the methodological landscape of digital childhood research. Netnography was used to observe and analyze netizens’ communication practices in the digital space (Instagram comment sections) as a distinctive form of culture and social interaction. In this research, the digital space is defined not merely as a technical platform, but as a distinctive cultural and social environment where interaction is mediated by digital traces and persistent archives (Kozinets, 2020). It functions as a dynamic arena where collective identities are negotiated and moral boundaries are contested through symbolic dramas, allowing fantasy themes to circulate, converge, and eventually crystallize into a shared rhetorical vision among netizens (Olufowote, 2006).
A fantasy theme analysis within the framework of SCT was used to identify fantasy themes, types, and rhetorical visions that emerged from netizens’ comments on digital childhood and sharenting. In addition to netnographic data, this study utilized focus group discussions with experts (media experts, psychologists, Indonesian Child Protection Commission (KPAI) representatives, teachers, and influencers) to deepen the interpretation of netnographic findings and triangulate perspectives on the symbolic themes generated from the analysis of comments. This study focused on the Instagram platform, specifically on accounts and posts featuring viral content that includes children and categorized as sharenting Posts were categorized as sharenting based on specific criteria: they were publicly shared by parents or guardians, depicted daily activities or personal moments of children, and generated significant public engagement through netizen comments.
To examine the collected data, this study employed digital discourse analysis. This methodology was applied by systematically, identifying recurring linguistic patterns and symbolic cues within the comments. The data was purposively collected from an Indonesian digital community and aggregator account, @v0exgenz. Rather than acting as the original content creator, this account functioned as a digital aggregator that compiled and reposted the trending “Ara” case—a highly publicized sharenting incident that triggered intense public debate on parental digital boundaries. While @v0exgenz maintains a niche following of approximately 4,700 followers, it was purposefully selected because its specific reposted threads served as a highly concentrated digital arena, exhibiting a disproportionately high density of active public engagement and moral policing regarding this specific phenomenon. In qualitative netnography and case study designs, purposeful sampling prioritizes the contextual richness and depth of localized communal interaction over raw follower metrics; thus, these findings do not seek statistical generalization but offer deep, transferable insights into netizen subcultures. The final dataset consists of 3,300 netizen comments extracted from these public posts. The inclusion criteria required that the comments be written primarily in Indonesian or local dialects and directly address the parent-child dynamics displayed. The analysis followed a three-step process. First, contextual mapping was conducted, where comments were categorized based on the viral post’s narrative. Second, thematic coding was used to identify specific themes of collective condemnation and communal empathy. Third, convergence analysis was performed by applying SCT to observe how individual comments merged into a shared rhetorical vision. By focusing on the digital nature of the discourse, such as the use of hashtags, mentions, and emojis, this analysis allowed us to uncover the underlying social norms and digital public opinion formed within the Instagram comment sections.
To ensure the validity and depth of the analysis, this study incorporated a focus group discussion as a qualitative validation and expert triangulation method. The focus group discussion process involved participants who were purposively selected based on their professional expertise to verify the credibility of the identified fantasy themes and to provide broader contextual insights into the sharenting phenomenon. The diverse background of these experts, including media experts, psychologists, Indonesian Child Protection Commission (KPAI) representatives, teachers, and influencers, allowed for a multi-dimensional cross-verification of the netnographic findings., allowed for a multi-dimensional cross-verification of the netnographic findings. This triangulation process ensured that the fantasy themes derived from Instagram were rigorously evaluated against professional, ethical, and clinical standards of child welfare and digital media ethics. The detailed profiles of the focus group participants are presented in Table 1 below.
Data analysis was conducted in stages, using NVivo 12 Pro (Jackson & Bazeley, 2019) as the primary tool for managing and analyzing qualitative data. NVivo is a computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) designed to help researchers organize, analyze, and find insights in unstructured data like open-ended comments. The benefit of using NVivo in this study is its ability to handle large volumes of netnographic data efficiently, ensuring a rigorous and systematic coding process for identifying recurring fantasy themes (Alam, 2020). However, it is important to note that while NVivo enhances data management and visualization, it does not perform the analysis itself; the interpretive depth and theoretical application of SCT remain dependent on the researcher’s analytical lens. The analysis technique followed the principles of fantasy theme analysis within the framework of SCT. All comments were imported into NVivo 12 Pro.
Ethical Considerations
This study adheres to the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), 2019) and the online research ethics recommendations of the Internet Researchers Association (Markham & Buchanan, 2012) All data were collected from digital public spaces (Instagram) without interfering with the user experience, and individual identities were masked to maintain privacy. Although the data is publicly accessible, masking identities is crucial to respect the users’ perceived privacy, as they did not originally broadcast their comments for research purposes. This approach aligns with the principle of harm minimization, ensuring that interpreting the data did not negatively impact the subjects studied. The analysis procedure followed the principles of contextual integrity and harm minimization, as recommended in the AoIR guidelines, to ensure that interpreting the data did not negatively impact the subjects studied.
To enhance credibility, triangulation was employed by combining qualitative (thematic) and quantitative (node frequency) analyses. The coding process was carried out independently by two researchers, then compared and discussed extensively until a complete consensus was reached to ensure consistency in the thematic classification. In addition, the researchers maintained reflexivity by recording analytical memos during the study (Saragih et al., 2024). These memos were systematically integrated into the final analysis as a reflective tool to refine the development of fantasy themes. Specifically, the notes taken during the coding process helped the researchers move beyond surface-level descriptions of netizens’ comments to deeper interpretations of the underlying rhetorical visions, ensuring that the theoretical application of SCT remained consistent with the observed digital interactions.
Results and Discussion
Findings
The dataset for this study comprised a total of 3,300 netizen comments extracted from five viral Instagram posts on the @v0exgenz account. These comments exclusively represented the voices of general social media users, excluding any direct replies or comments from the original poster to ensure an unbiased analysis of public discourse. The posts were purposively selected based on their high engagement rates (such as significant comment volume) and their specific focus on controversial sharenting content. The data extraction and comment collection were systematically conducted between March 1 and April 1, 2025, capturing the complete thread of digital public opinion within that specific timeframe. These data points predominantly consisted of unstructured text expressing digital public opinion, frequently accompanied by emojis that served as symbolic cues to reinforce emotional sentiments, such as anger, sympathy, or sarcasm. In line with the framework of digital public opinion, these expressions were analyzed to identify patterns of collective condemnation toward ethical breaches and communal empathy toward the children involved (Steinberg, 2017). While the majority of the data was textual, the analysis also captured shared links and mentions within the comment sections, which functioned as dramatizing messages that allowed fantasy themes to circulate and converge. Ultimately, this convergence of digital public opinion formed a rhetorical vision that reflected the digital community’s shared moral standards regarding sharenting.
To provide maximum analytical transparency, the interpretive data analysis of the 3,300 extracted comments was executed via NVivo qualitative software using a structured, three-tiered hierarchical coding tree. The corpus was systematically categorized into two macro parent nodes representing key dimensions of SCT, which subsequently branched into specific child nodes. The systematic hierarchy of this coding tree, its corresponding frequencies, and its direct empirical illustrations are detailed in Table 2.
The inter-theme relationships established within NVivo reveal a highly dynamic and interdependent discursive trajectory. Matrix coding queries demonstrate that the overwhelming presence of the public condemnation domain (62.9%) structurally co-occurs with, and directly feeds into, the ethical-parental domain (35.0%). Rather than operating as isolated metrics, the collective moral curses and sarcastic bullying functioned as the primary “dramatizing messages” that scale up the community’s shared anxieties. This interpretive process illustrates how individual public anger crystallizes into the shared fantasy theme of “the commercialized child,” which subsequently forces a smaller but significant segment of the discourse (2.1%) to generate alternative counter-narratives and moral solidarity. This systemic linkage underscores that the qualitative coding process captures an active, shifting ecosystem of digital public opinion rather than a static set of numbers.
The Role of Instagram Affordances in Accelerating Symbolic Convergence
The crystallization of these thematic domains is heavily accelerated by Instagram’s unique technological affordances and architectural design. Features such as threaded comment replies and the “like” mechanism on individual comments do not merely serve as passive technical tools; rather, they function as digital catalysts that shape the velocity and visibility of public discourse. When a user posts a highly controversial comment reflecting moral panic or sarcasm, the platform’s algorithm prioritizes this high-engagement interaction, pushing it to the top of the comment section.
Threaded replies allow netizens to instantly group together, argue, and validate shared anxieties in structured micro-debates, effectively transforming isolated dramatizing messages into rapidly cascading fantasy chains. Furthermore, the accumulation of likes on critical responses lends collective legitimacy to public shaming, lowering the barrier for other users to join the moral crusade. Consequently, Instagram’s infrastructure, which actively engineers virality, plays a structural role in shifting private sharenting content into a highly visible, national-scale moral arena, rapidly uniting disparate public responses into a cohesive rhetorical vision.
The Structural Progression of Symbolic Convergence
To systematically conceptualize how these individual netizen expressions transcend disconnected opinions, we mapped the structural progression of SCT within the Instagram ecosystem. Within this digital architecture, convergence operates through three distinct evolutionary stages of fantasy theme analysis, moving from micro-level individual text units to a macro-level collective consciousness. The systematic progression and its direct empirical illustrations are detailed in Table 3.
The analysis of this digital discourse reveals three predominant themes: negative social remarks and collective moral condemnation, ethical dilemmas regarding parental responsibility, and the dynamics of collective empathy. These discourses transcend individual opinions, shaping shared fantasy themes that eventually crystallize into a collective rhetorical vision within the Indonesian digital landscape, defining the moral boundaries of sharenting practices.
Negative Social Remarks, Collective Moral Curses, and Forms of Sarcastic Bullying: A Soft Assessment of Netizen Condemnation
The analysis of the dataset revealed that negative social remarks and collective moral condemnation constituted the most dominant discourse, accounting for 62.9% of the total netizen comments. Within this dominant theme, netizens engaged in what we describe as a collective moral curse, where the digital space transforms into an arena for judging parental behavior through shared indignation. This phenomenon is predominantly manifested through various forms of bullying and sarcasm directed at parents, such as “Why are you proud of this?” or “Using your own children just for Instagram clout and popularity is disgusting.” These dramatizing messages are considered dramatizing because they use emotionally charged language to paint a vivid picture of bad parenting, which reinforces the narrative of parental unworthiness. This dynamic creates a fantasy theme that explicitly labels parents as “exploiters.” Within the framework of SCT, these comments form a chain of fantasies that reinforce a rhetorical vision: that sharenting is an unethical practice deserving of social punishment.
This interpretation is further deepened by the results of the focus group discussion, a qualitative validation method used here to triangulate netnographic findings with expert perspectives. Experts, including child psychologists and media specialists, confirmed that sharenting has moved beyond a private matter into the realm of digital public opinion. In this context, the collective netizen discourse functions as a dynamic form of digital public opinion that actively reshapes social perceptions and establishes new moral benchmarks for digital parenting. As noted by P1 (a digital communication specialist), the boundaries between digital, social, and broadcast media are becoming increasingly blurred, allowing content involving children to move across platforms without adequate protection. This process reinforces a digital agenda-setting effect, shifting family documentation into an object of public consumption, which often leads to negative behaviors such as cyberbullying and aggressive public shaming. In this context, cyberbullying is defined as repeated, hostile digital communications intended to mock or degrade the parents’ competence, while aggressive shaming involves collective, targeted hostility that crosses the line of normal criticism. This phenomenon reflects contemporary digital culture, which (Doueihi, 2011) defines as a new dimension of civilization where digital technologies reshape social and moral norms.
In addition to hostile mockery and public shaming, many comments have the nuance of moral condemnation, such as, “Ya Alloh Kok bisa menceritakan sambil ketawa?” (Oh Allah, how come you can tell this story while laughing?). Religious expressions within these comments adds to the burden of moral panic, as it places sharenting not only as a personal fault, but as a violation of social and religious values. Here, it can be seen that the theme of fantasy develops towards children as innocent victims and parents as immoral perpetrators. The rhetorical vision that emerged portrayed sharenting as a moral threat, demanding social correction through public shaming. This vision is in line with the results of the focus group discussion. P2 (a child psychologist) specifically highlighted that the risk of children becoming victims of bullying is highly likely to arise, given that digital public opinion cannot be controlled. As P2 emphasized, children often become targets of public ridicule because parents directly record and upload vulnerable domestic moments without screening the potential psychosocial backlash or long-term consequences for the child’s digital footprint. In the context of sharenting, the lack of screening does not imply parental neglect of a child’s independent Internet use; rather, it refers to the parents’ own failure to critically evaluate how exposing their child’s private emotional distress could invite external peer-to-peer bullying and public moral policing.
Furthermore, not all negative responses are delivered harshly; some manifest as soft assessments. These are subtle yet critical feedback, such as the sarcastic remark “Bangga banget orang tuanya” (So proud of the parents) which ironically questions why the parents feel proud of such actions. Another example is “Jangan membiasakan kesalahan menjadi pembenaran” (Do not let the wrong become a justification), which warns against normalizing bad parenting for digital content. "These comments show a subtler variation of the dramatized message, yet they still lend legitimacy to the chain of negative fantasy. This situation was also highlighted by one of the micro-influencers in the focus group discussion, P6, who noted that some comments were not overtly rude but remained deeply critical. As P6 observed: “Perhaps not directly, but there are often responses that provide feedback but with slightly harsh comments.”
The thematic analysis further reveals how expressions of pride regarding children in the digital space are frequently accompanied by ambivalent tones, shifting between praise and moral innuendo. A deeper look into the text search queries for the keyword “proud” (Bangga) shows that it frequently correlates with critical and judgmental remarks from netizens. For instance, the word often appears in social evaluations such as “anaknya licik tapi orang tuanya bangga” (the child is sneaky but the parents are proud). This pattern demonstrates that public recognition in sharenting contexts is not always positive; rather, the term “proud” is weaponized through irony to highlight parental complicity in normalizing deceitful or problematic digital content.
This pattern shows that “proud” is weaponized by netizens through sharp irony; it serves not only as an expression of affection but also as a marker of public morality used to judge parenting behavior. Under the SCT framework, this sarcastic pride builds a collective fantasy around exploitative parents and sneaky children. Netizens interpret this misplaced pride as a social justification for problematic digital content, turning these concepts into collective rhetorical symbols used to enforce moral boundaries and digital parenting standards in Indonesia.
Ethical Issues and Parental Responsibility: Child Exploitation and the Crisis of Digital Parenting
The second discourse identified in the dataset highlights the dimensions of ethics and parental responsibility, accounting for 35.0% of the total discussion. Digital platform users frequently position sharenting as a form of child exploitation for financial gain or digital popularity. Comments such as “The parents are looking for money through content,” exemplify the exploited children node and demonstrate a growing concern regarding the commercialization of childhood. Within the framework of SCT, this theme constructs a fantasy of the child as commodity. This narrative develops into a broader rhetorical vision where sharenting is positioned as an immoral practice of commercialization that prioritizes monetization over the child’s well-being.
This ethical concern is further validated by legal and social experts during the focus group discussion. As noted by P3 (a representative from the Indonesian Child Protection Commission), although legal frameworks such as the Child Protection Law guarantee children’s privacy rights, enforcement remains weak because the final decision often rests with digital platforms’ policies. This suggests that the legal reality has not kept pace with the dynamics of public morality emerging in the comments section. Consequently, in the absence of stringent legal intervention, collective netizen condemnation often functions as a surrogate social sanction, filling the regulatory gap within the Indonesian digital landscape.
Beyond monetization, digital platform users often highlight the quality of childcare and potential manipulation, focusing on critical comments such as “Model parenting apa yang bisa membuat orang tuanya bangga” (What kind of parental role model behaves like that to feel proud), or “Mendidik anak salah tetapi orang tuanya masih bangga” (Educating a child incorrectly, yet the parents are still proud). There are even comments judging parents who are perceived to manipulate children to generate specific expressions for the sake of content. This discourse shows that users expand the sharenting issue into a broader critique of parental responsibility, focusing on the quality of parenting and concern for the child’s development. In this rhetorical vision, parents are perceived to have failed in their protective role, even harming children through digital exposure. Critical remarks such as “Salah didik malah merasa bangga” (A misguided parenting model, yet still feeling proud) or “Kalo mau bikin anak terkenal nggak gitu caranya” (If you want to make your child famous, that is not the way) reflect this perceived violation of moral responsibility.
The convergence of these netizen comments demonstrates that the community perceives a blurred line between authentic sharing and instrumentalizing children for digital gain. Within the SCT framework, this collective data builds the fantasy theme of the manipulated child, where the child is collectively framed not as a participant, but as a prop in a staged performance. This pattern directly reflects how the digital community actively functions as a moral jury, utilizing their comments to question whether the child’s well-being is being sacrificed for algorithmic engagement. This shared indignation emerges from a perceived violation of parental protective responsibility, collectively transforming intimate family moments into commodified content. Ultimately, the emerging rhetorical vision within this discourse centers on the community’s critical evaluation of parental moral responsibility, framing the parents as failing their protective roles through excessive digital exposure.
In our dataset of comments, he term parents functions as a moral axis in the digital discourse; user comments directly attribute a child’s actions to the quality of parenting, using phrases like “Orangtuanya yang salah” (The parents were wrong), “Tidak bisa mendidik” (Unable to educate), or “Ajarannya yang keliru” (False teachings). This pattern confirms that the users view children not as autonomous individuals, but as moral reflections of their parents.
Within the SCT framework, this forms a new fantasy theme: parents fail to educate, which serves as the starting point for both collective condemnation and empathy. Interestingly, a moderate counter-discourse also appears through comments like “Jangan juga nyalahin ortunya” (Do not just blame the parents). These findings show that digital moral discourse is not entirely binary, but a space for value negotiation where users navigate the boundaries between individual and communal responsibility.
Moral Dynamics and Empathy: Counter-Narratives and Social Solidarity
While the previous discourses are dominated by criticism, a smaller segment of the data, accounting for 2.1% of the total comments, reflects moral dynamics and empathy. These comments represent a “genuine care” tone, such as: “Anak cerdas… yang menghujat merasa tersinggung” (Intelligent child… those who blaspheme are the ones offended) or “Anak secerdas ini di-bully” (A child this intelligent is being bullied). Within the framework of SCT, this segment forms an alternative fantasy theme: “the child as a subject to be protected” and “the parent as a party to be guided rather than punished.” This discourse is significant because it provides resistance to the prevailing moral panic. It builds a rhetorical vision of moral solidarity, suggesting that sharenting discourse is not merely an avenue for condemnation but also an opportunity for social reflection. Some users even provide moral advice and educational elements to foster digital social solidarity, such as: “Semoga ayah ibunya segera sadar dan bertobat, amin” (May the parents soon come to their senses and repent, amen). Although these remarks still contain critical nuances, they move toward an educational and restorative direction rather than purely punitive.
The distribution of this empathy is clearly reflected in the thematic data surrounding the word “kasihan” (pity). Unlike the associations with pride or parenting that are fraught with direct condemnation, the term “kasihan” highlights the specific dimension of empathy for children perceived as vulnerable in the digital space. Phrases such as “Kasihan anaknya dieksploitasi terus” (Pity the child, constantly exploited) or “Masih bocah, jangan dipaksa tampil” (Still a child, do not force them to perform) illustrate the emergence of moral solidarity with the child. This pattern shows that while netizens are expressing deep sympathy toward the child, the undertone of their remarks still serves as an indirect critique targeting parental behavior. This indicates that these digital platform users attempt to position themselves as guardians of communal morals, emphasizing the child’s fundamental right to protection while firmly pointing out the perceived exploitation.
Discussion
Digital Sharenting as Symbolic Convergence: Rhetorical Visions of Pride, Responsibility, and Empathy
This research utilizes netnography, a qualitative research methodology specifically designed to investigate social interactions and cultural patterns within contemporary digital communications. By applying netnographic observation to Instagram’s comment sections, this study systematically collected and analyzed netizen responses to identify recurring patterns of meaning.
The analysis reveals that sharenting practices in Indonesia generate a multifaceted landscape of meaning, characterized by a fundamental tension between private parental affection and public moral standards. By articulating these empirical results within the framework of SCT, it becomes evident that netizen comments serve as the foundation for shared fantasy themes. These themes coalesce into a collective rhetorical vision that defines the ethical boundaries of digital parenting. Through this approach, three primary interconnected discourses were identified: (1) pride, (2) parental responsibility, and (3) empathy.
The “Pride” Discourse: From Parental Affection to Moral Deviance
The thematic data shows how the word “bangga” (proud) often appears in highly ambivalent contexts. On the one hand, pride is genuinely expressed as a form of affection and appreciation for children’s achievements. However, this word is also frequently deployed through sharp sarcasm and irony as a form of moral criticism against parenting behavior deemed excessive or inappropriate.
Comments like “bangga padahal anaknya licik” (proud even though the child is sneaky) or “orang tua malah memamerkan kelicikan anaknya” (the parents even show off their children’s sly behavior) illustrate how expressions of affection in the digital space can transform into arenas of social judgment. In the perspective of SCT, this sarcastic use of pride serves as a fantasy theme that binds participants in a shared imagination of “exploitative parents” and “child victims of show off culture.” This theme develops into a collective rhetorical vision that positions sarcastic expressions of pride as a symbol of moral deviance in the practice of digital sharing.
Thus, the discourse of “proud” not only reflects domestic happiness but also serves as a marker of public morality, illustrating the boundary between expressing personal affection and social responsibility towards the child.
The Discourse of “Parents”: Moral Representation and Social Responsibility
The thematic analysis of the word “orang tua” (parents) demonstrates that netizens position parents as the primary moral epicenter when evaluating digital behavior.
The text data reveals a high frequency of evaluative phrases such as “orang tuanya yang salah” (the parents are wrong), “tidak bisa mendidik” (cannot educate), or “didikannya salah” (the teachings are wrong). These empirical results indicate that the Instagram digital community views a child’s digital presence as a direct moral mirror of their parents’ capacity to instill social values.
This theme of “parents” expands into a broader construct of communal responsibility. In the context of the Global South, specifically Indonesia, this reflects the logic of communal morality (Connell, 2007; Couldry & Hepp, 2018). Within this highly collectivist digital landscape, parenting is frequently treated not merely as a private matter, but as a public indicator of communal values and social harmony. Within the framework of SCT, these criticisms serve as a shared fantasy theme regarding the failure of the domestic sphere. However, the thematic data also captures a counter-discourse through more empathetic expressions like “jangan salahkan orang tuanya” (do not blame the parents), marking a sub-fantasy theme that competes to shape the collective meaning of parenting in the digital space.
“Pity” Discourse: Digital Empathy as an Alternative Morality
The thematic analysis shows that the word “kasihan” (pity) evokes a softer, more reflective emotional dimension. Phrases such as “kasihan anaknya dieksploitasi terus” (it is a pity that the child is being exploited continuously), “masih bocah, jangan dipaksa tampil” (they are still a child, do not force them to perform), or “hidupnya menderita” (their life suffers) show how the Instagram digital community positions children as vulnerable subjects who need to be protected from the pressure of digital exposure.
Within the logic of SCT, the term “kasihan” (pity) functions as a fantasy cue that triggers shared social solidarity with the child. This phenomenon highlights a specific form of digital morality, the informal ethical standards that emerge within social media interactions. Unlike offline morality, which is often bound by institutional or traditional structures, digital morality in this context is highly dynamic and affective. However, it is not a separate entity; rather, it is an extension of the local cultural identity. In Indonesia, the values of empathy, caring, and social protection are deeply rooted in communal traditions. These “offline” values are then articulated “online,” showing that digital morality in the Global South is not merely repressive or binary (right/wrong), but is a multifaceted expression of communal care that transcends the digital physical divide.
The manifestation of these values in digital environments is uniquely amplified by the dynamics of affective-communal engagement. Unlike offline interactions, where social correction is often private or restrained by physical social cues, online morality, driven by digital anonymity and viral dynamics, tends to be more performative and collective. In this study, the widespread condemnation of sharenting acts as a form of digital vigilantism, where the protective instinct for children is intensified by the speed of social media. This suggests that digital morality is an amplified version of traditional values, where the lack of physical barriers allows for a more rapid and aggressive convergence of netizen indignation.
Moral-Communal Dynamics in the Digital Space
The three discourses above, pride, parenthood, and pity, represent the three dimensions of social emotions that make up the moral ecology of sharing in Indonesia. The discourse of pride is a form of expression that can invite criticism. The discourse of parents affirms the family’s moral responsibility within the framework of social values. The discourse of pity presents digital empathy as an alternative morality.
All three show that Indonesia’s digital space is not just an arena for individual expression, but a space for collective moral negotiation, where online society symbolically participates in upholding social values. Through the chain of fantasy themes that are formed, the Instagram digital community plays the role of moral actors who, at the same time, supervise and mediate children’s representation on social media.
The results of this study show that sharenting in Indonesia is understood not only as an expression of parental pride but also as a controversial practice that triggers moral panic. The majority of netizen comments on Instagram reflect a discourse of negative social responses, in which parents are positioned as irresponsible and even exploitative towards children. This discourse is consistent with previous literature that has linked sharenting to the potential for moral panic, especially when the Instagram digital community judges parents to go beyond the boundaries of children’s privacy (Ouvrein & Verswijvel, 2019; Ugwudike, Lavorgna, et al., 2024; Ugwudike, Roth, et al., 2024)
However, this study also found that public discourse is not only dominated by stigma. The discourse on ethical issues and parental responsibility indicates that public criticism is expanding into more structural areas, specifically parenting and the monetization of children’s content. It aligns with the findings of Blum-Ross and Livingstone (2017) and Cory (2025), which indicate that the communitarian norms and social expectations inherent in parental roles often influence discussions of digital parenting. In other words, Indonesians not only condemn sharing as an individual act but also assess it within the framework of parenting ethics and the digital economy. These findings align with previous studies that have highlighted parental ethics regarding sharenting practices (Conti et al., 2024; Gotwald et al., 2024; Vizoso-Gómez, 2025).
Another important finding is the emergence of moral and empathy dynamics, albeit in small proportions. The expression of concern and moral advice indicates a counter-narrative to the dominance of moral panic. It confirms that online discourse is not homogeneous; there is always room for moral solidarity and educational reflection (Ferrara et al., 2024). Within the framework of SCT, this empathetic discourse forms an alternative fantasy chain that challenges the dominant negative rhetorical vision, and opens up opportunities for a more constructive discourse on digital parenting literacy (Jorge et al., 2025)
From a theoretical perspective, this study strengthens the relevance of SCT in understanding the dynamics of digital discourse. To develop this further, the research demonstrates that SCT’s concept of fantasy themes can be expanded within contemporary digital landscapes. While the theory was originally built on small group interaction, this study expands it by showing how these fantasy themes, specifically pride, parenthood, and pity, coalesce into a communal moral axis that governs public sharenting behavior. Furthermore, this development suggests that symbolic convergence in the digital context in Indonesia is not merely about group cohesion but serves as a collective mechanism for moral policing.
The analysis shows how dramatizing messages in the form of individual comments can develop into fantasy themes (e.g., “children as victims” or “parents as exploitative”) and then merge into collective rhetorical visions of sharing as a moral threat or a debated ethical practice. The application of SCT demonstrates the theory’s flexibility in analyzing discourse within contemporary, communally-centric digital spaces. By examining these interaction patterns on Instagram in Indonesia, this study successfully extends the application of SCT from traditional, small-group communication to larger online social media environments.
In the context of SCT, this process reflects how narratives, emotions, and recurring symbols in comment columns shape social understanding of the “ideal image of children” in the media. This process reinforces the phenomenon of agenda setting, making children’s content part of the virality cycle—shifting its meaning from family documentation to public consumption.
Research Limitations
While this study offers significant conceptual and empirical contributions to the study of SCT and the phenomenon of sharenting, several limitations warrant consideration. First, the comment data analyzed was sourced from viral content on Instagram over a specific concentrated period, extracted exclusively from the public threads of five viral videos hosted on a single alternative media and aggregator platform, @v0exgenz.This specific account served as the centralized digital arena and epistemic center of user interactions regarding the “Ara” case. (the viral Indonesian sharenting incident outlined in the methodology). This strict data window was chosen because it captured the peak volume of public interaction and maximum comment density following the viral transmission, resulting in a final dataset of 3,300 netizen comments that provide an authentic cross-section of Indonesian digital public morality. However, this means that the resulting interpretations were heavily influenced by the temporal context, algorithmic trends such as the prioritization of high engagement reels that favor controversial children’s content, and collective emotional biases that emerged at the time. In the context of SCT, this means that the symbolic convergence process identified reflects a situational rhetorical vision that may differ when analyzed in other cultural or issue contexts. This means that the resulting interpretations were heavily influenced by the temporal context, algorithmic trends such as the prioritization of high engagement reels that favor controversial content about children, and collective emotional biases that emerged at the time. In the context of SCT, this means that the symbolic convergence process identified reflects a situational rhetorical vision that may differ when analyzed in other cultural or issue contexts.
Data triangulation through focus group discussions with media experts, psychologists, Indonesian Child Protection Commission (KPAI) representatives, teachers, and influencers to provided depth of perspective across disciplines, this study did not involve the direct participation of children as subjects of discourse. The absence of children’s voices indicates an epistemological gap in understanding how individuals who are the objects of sharenting interpret their own digital exposure. Thirdly, because the research focused on public text comments, multimodal dimensions such as images, emojis, and non-verbal visual expressions have not been analyzed in depth. In fact, in digital communication, visual elements often have stronger symbolic power than written text.
Conclusion
In the regulatory context, insights from the focus group discussion—specifically highlighted by the representatives from the Indonesian Child Protection Commission (KPAI) and digital law experts— indicate that policy enforcement and platform responsibility remain weak, leaving child protection efforts more dependent on public moral awareness. This creates tension between the symbolic dimension (public narrative) and the structural dimension (formal regulation).
For further research, it is recommended to apply a multimodal netnography and cross-platform symbolic analysis approach to reveal how fantasy themes develop across text, visuals, and audio on platforms such as TikTok and YouTube. In addition, a child-centered digital ethnographic approach is needed to ethically integrate children’s voices into the construction of the discourse of digital childhood. This research opens a new direction for developing a theoretical model of digital fantasy ecology, placing the interaction among public emotions, algorithms, and children’s rights at the core of the study of symbolic convergence in the era of social media platformization. By understanding these dynamics, this research aims to contribute to the development of policies that are more responsive to children’s rights and ethical sharenting practices.
Beyond the scope of this study, the findings provide significant recommendations for the Indonesian legislative framework. This research suggests the necessity of refining the Personal Data Protection Law (UU PDP) and the Electronic Information and Transactions Law, to specifically address a child’s digital identity and the “right to be forgotten” for minors. To this end, this study suggests moving beyond traditional top-down regulations by introducing community-based digital ethics monitoring. A creative policy application would involve the creation of collaborative digital literacy programs that focus on communal moral responsibility. Instead of only targeting individual parents, these policies could support the development of platform-specific features that encourage a collective ethical reflexivity among netizens before they engage in viral sharenting discourse. Furthermore, by understanding the communal moral axis identified in this research, policymakers can design educational campaigns that resonate with local cultural values to promote more child-centered sharing practices.
Funding
This research was supported by the Directorate General of Higher Education (DIKTI), Ministry of Higher Education, Science, and Technology of the Republic of Indonesia through the Regular Fundamental Research Grant Scheme for the 2025 Fiscal Year (Master Contract No: 125/C3/DT.05.00/PL/2025; Institutional Contract No: 7925/LL4/PG/2025 and 110/LIT07/PPM-LIT/2025). The authors would like to thank DIKTI and Telkom University for the support provided for this study.