Coco Rocha’s One-Month-Old Baby Has An Instagram Account: Is This The New Age Of Parenting?

Coco Rocha’s baby daughter Ioni may only be one month old, but she’s got a whole lot of social media presence.

And we’re not talking about making the occasional guest appearance on her model mama’s profile – this teeny tot has her very own Instagram account. With almost 30,000 followers.

The account doesn’t just feature regular snapshots of the baby – it comes with a first person narrative, too. Who knew a month-old baby could formulate sentences, complete with emojis?

Ioni keeps her fans up to date with her day-to-day happenings. You know, just the usual; cuddles with famous friend Jay Manuel, her nursery featuring in Vogue and gift arrivals from world-famous baby brands. Standard stuff.

The way things are going, if Coco and her hubby James Conran keep their daughter’s profile up to date until she’s able to take over it herself, Ioni may as well star in her own reality show. It will tally up to the same amount of exposure – which some would argue isn’t the best thing for a baby.

Ioni Conran is by no means the first baby to have her own Instagram, or social media, account. Some 40 per cent of millennial mums in the US have created one for their baby (there aren’t yet any similar stats for the UK), which is a HUGE number.

While Instagram accounts for babies and young children are undeniably cute, there’s a concern that they’re forcing these tots into a world of ‘likes’ and celebrity status that they didn’t sign up for. But, having said that, they would probably have the same amount of attention if their photos cropped up on their parents accounts.

Yahoo Parenting UK spoke to a number of parents about the pros and cons or setting a young child up with their own social media account and it’s clear that although there may well be some negative consequences to setting children up with public social media accounts, private ones can offer some benefits.

One dad, Kip Hakes, says he’s set up a Twitter account for his daughter to use in the future as he ‘wanted to reserve her name’ before it was taken as a handle for another user.

Author and mum Jack Monroe explained why she’s set up a social media account for her son.

“My social media is all very public,” says Monroe, who has almost 70,000 followers on Twitter. “I set one up specifically for friends and family to share photos of my son. It's locked-down, only approved 'friends' can see it, and I feel more secure knowing it's all there rather than on my social media where journalists trawl through it on a regular basis. It's unorthodox, but works very well for us.”

Monroe explained that as her son is only five-years-old, he doesn’t have access to the account. “It’s more like a secure storage unit for memories, [I’m] not planning on letting him loose on it any time soon!” she explains.

Another mum, Catherine Webb, said her children have Twitter accounts for educational purposes. “Both my [children] have closed twitter accounts and have had since birth, they both practise their typing on it,” she says.

But what age should a child start taking control of his or her own account?

A recent survey discovered that over half of children use social media by the age of 10, despite the fact that Facebook’s guidelines specify a person has to be 13 years olds to open an account.

Chances are most of those children’s parents don’t check what their child is posting on Facebook – or perhaps don’t even know that they have it.

Instagram’s restrictions are slightly different; basically you need to be 13 to set up an account but the app doesn’t actually ask you for your age when you sign up. Plus most parents tend to send up the account on the child’s behalf, therefore avoiding the restrictions entirely.

Nikki Barr, Yahoo UK’s head of social, says that it’s sensible for parents to use the private options available on social media accounts – to protect the child.

“Social platforms are for sharing things you’re personally proud of – and who isn’t proud of their children?” she says. “The issue lies with public access to these accounts and who can actually view them and what they're viewing them for.

“Making accounts private can help maintain safe boundaries, but it's important to remember that once an image is uploaded online, it's accessible to everyone and anyone, meaning you can never truly be sure that it isn't replicated or reproduced elsewhere – even when deleted.”

Does your child have his or her own account? What was your reason for setting it up? Let us know in the comments.

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