How Young Is Too Young for a Digital Presence?

[Commentary] Some parents are already busy planning their kids’ online presence -- registering their babies for things like Facebook, web URLs, About.me pages, Instagram feeds, Twitter handles, Tumblr accounts and email accounts on Yahoo and Gmail, all within hours of their birth. It might be too early to call these behaviors a growing trend, but they’re certainly fueling a debate about how to handle children and their online lives. But there could be a risk here. Should you post photos of your children on sites that can be seen by anyone, or even on private profiles? If you give them Facebook accounts or email addresses, are you starting a data record for them before they’re old enough to know any better? Are you signing your child up for targeted advertising at age zero? If anything, a child today who grows up and discovers he has no photos on Facebook or Instagram might think of himself as an unloved anomaly. In an age of obsessive digital detailing, if a child grows up unrecorded, what is his identity at all?