Sophie Kratsas was only a few hours old when she received her first email: a “welcome to the world” message from her father, Nick Kratsas. He had created an email account for his newborn daughter while still standing in the delivery room. This was 2014, and Mr. Kratsas, 44, had already noticed a dearth of unclaimed email addresses with a person’s full name without numbers, special characters or other concessions.
“I’m like, Man, if I can grab this for her now, eventually she’ll be able to use this when she’s ready for it,” Mr. Kratsas said. A few days later, he created a Facebook profile for Sophie so he and his wife, Heather, 41, could begin tagging her in posts and photos. When she’s old enough, they intend to turn over the email and Facebook accounts to her, along with the robust digital histories that come with them.
Sophie, now 9, is one of many children in her generation whose digital footprint precedes her physical one. In an age when teens and tweens are more online than ever, some parents find it just as important to invest in their offspring’s digital futures, like securing their email addresses, domain names and social media handles, as it is to invest in their finances and education.
“Both the digital and children are sort of symbolic representations of a future,” said Frances Corry, a postdoctoral fellow at the Center on Digital Culture and Society at the University of Pennsylvania. “And so putting those two things together is really salient and anxiety-provoking as people start to think about, What is the future going to look like for my child?”
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