We all know the saying: it’s the most beautiful baby in the world! But the “world” of maternal love is no longer enough: 73% of European women, including 74% of French women, have already posted photos of their child on the Internet before their second birthday, and 26% within the first weeks. 13% have even uploaded their ultrasound. This figure reaches 34% among American women and 37% among Canadian women. The study, conducted by the antivirus publisher AVG, also shows that 7% of French children under two years old have their personal email address, and 2% have a social media profile. Facebook: socialization of the link. Its success lies in its almost instantaneous ability to connect people and break down barriers. A cheap remedy for the narcissistic deficiencies of men and women often weakened by a lack of recognition. However, must this recognition involve the forced acknowledgment of their offspring, regardless of future consequences? The baby’s photo will remain engraved on the Net, like a tattoo on the skin that bears witness to a personal and exceptional event. What about this scopophilic and saturating intrusion into the still wavering psyche of the newborn? How will they explain the transition through the virtual world to attest to maternal love? Does a “Facebooked” existence not remain prompted, if not dependent on the gaze of others? Highlighted by the site, the notion of sharing aims to alleviate guilt, which remains an expression of desire. With immediacy, which perfectly matches the pace of hyper-consumption: click, and you obtain. An illustration of infantile omnipotence.
Certainly, and not without some illusion, Facebook has managed to make globalization accessible at the human level, where multiple structures and powers have freed themselves from spatiotemporal distances and limits. A race that humanity struggled to follow. Facebook may constitute the individual counterpart to this gigantic dynamic. A counterpart that accompanies rather than resists.
Indirectly, these perinatal Facebook drifts reveal more general clinical pathologies of identity, connection, and attachment through Internet addiction. A magnificent paradox: will the parents who post their babies online today be the same ones consulting mental health specialists tomorrow, worried about their teenagers’ dependence on the web? For some addiction specialists, tobacco addiction begins with the first cigarette as it contains addictive substances designed to facilitate the “hooking” of the smoker. For the Internet and Facebook, could the repeated obligating behavior also replace pleasure? The best drug is the one that doesn’t present itself and is never perceived as such. Especially if the individual starts to believe that Facebook has become social life in itself, a life that cannot exist or develop outside the framework of this virtual network. They pretend to ignore a reality, the world surrounding them that they might one day discover with astonishment accompanied by a good dose of fear! Added to the risk of dependence are the dangers of affect dilution, the sidelining of emotion. The unexpected, irrefutable, disconcerting but so human emotion of an unanticipated encounter with another in flesh and bone. Only this last offers otherness that, in return, nourishes identity. On Facebook, this encounter seems largely sanitized.
Just as a Facebook geolocation feature now allows locating individuals within a meter, the online posting of babies on this network does not contribute to preserving intimacy. Those who accept the experience, acquiring this new feature out of simple curiosity, encourage the subsequent crossing of further boundaries. They should not then complain when abuse has been committed.
