They are called the “photocopters”. It’s the wall street journal who put this summer on the front page of these American parents who, once the children have gone to camp, spend their time detailing the pixels of each photo received to find out if their kids are doing well. They send these summer camp for three weeks, singing the praises of self-reliance. And here they are behind their screen to follow the camp from a distance, scrutinizing the slightest image. They are delighted that young people do not have Wi-Fi on site, while asking other parents: “Did you get any pictures, did you? »
Photocopter parents flourish at the intersection of two trends. On the one hand, thehelicopter parenting : with fewer and fewer children per couple and the feeling that the stakes are getting higher and higher, the parents hovering above the heads of their baby birds to eliminate any difficulties they might encounter. On the other hand, the possibilities of digital technology: it is increasingly easy for organizers of youth courses to take, store and distribute a large number of photos. Some platforms and apps used by the camps even allow, thanks to facial recognition tools, to send a notification to parents when a photo of their offspring is posted online, the authorization to use photos also being ticked automatically than to give medication. And that’s how parents go from ” No news, good news “ has “no news, I will reconnect later to have some”.
“We want that [les enfants] disconnect while receiving photos from them. It’s a strange contradiction.” points out author Devorah Heitner, whose book Growing Up in Public is due out September 12 in the US. The book tells how children’s lives now resemble one big streaming thread. Between their friends who watch them on social networks and the parents who wait for photos when they are away from home, the children “have the pressure to be visible all the time”.
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The benefits of these stays are no longer the same if they are documented live for parents, notes Lenore Skenazy, president of the Let Grow movement, which campaigns for an education that leaves children more autonomy. “Internships, camps, colos are great because of the transformations that we experience there. These places are like chrysalises: it is the place where children change, can no longer be the person they were. When they come out, they are told that they have changed, grown up, it is a formative experience. But the chrysalis is not supposed to have a window! » And on the return, the conversations will be very different if it is a child who tells his stay on his own or if it is his parent who questions him, on the basis of the photos he has seen.
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