Why Do Parents Overshare on Social Media?

MAUGHAN: Anyone who has you on their Christmas card list is so paranoid.

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DUCKWORTH: I’m Angela Duckworth.

MAUGHAN: I’m Mike Maughan.

DUCKWORTH + MAUGHAN: And you’re listening to No Stupid Questions.

Today on the show: what’s wrong with proud parents sharing photos and stories of their children online?

MAUGHAN: “Mom, you have ruined my life! Look at all the stuff that you’ve put out there about me.”

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MAUGHAN: Angela, we have a question that hits at the core of so many things we’ve talked about. Says this: “I hear a lot about parents oversharing information and photos of their children on social media these days. I’m absolutely guilty of doing this and justify it because it’s the way we stay in touch with so many friends and family members — near and far. With the start of a school year, we’re warned not to share the kid’s school, location, teacher name on a first-day banner, things like that. What is the actual level of threat to a child when a parent overshares? And if a parent has overshared and wants to stop, is it even worth it since so much information is out there that you can’t get back? Mandi.”

DUCKWORTH: Oh my gosh, I’m now thinking about the times that I have posted photos of Amanda and Lucy on Twitter, or whatever Twitter’s called now. X. Is that what Mandi’s talking about? Did I just commit oversharing?

MAUGHAN: I’m not going to say that you’re oversharing, but I think that’s sort of what she’s talking about is this idea that parents are posting children, right? The “sharenting” — the sharing as parents of our children on Instagram, and TikTok, and Facebook.

DUCKWORTH: Okay, so this term, “sharenting.” Is that what you just called it?

MAUGHAN: Yeah, so sorry — fair, that is, I think, the term Mandi’s referring to, where parents are sharing so much.

DUCKWORTH: I just want to say that “sharenting” is one of Stephen Dubner’s favorite things, a portmanteau. Take two words, stick them together. By the way, I haven’t done this in a long time, because they are now grown women. But I did. I’m not even on social media that much anymore. I have lots of opinions about social media, and most of them are negative. But anyway, so, I feel like maybe I committed this sin, like, 10 years ago though.

MAUGHAN: What I think is interesting to at least think through at the beginning is just how frequently it happens. I mean, I have a lot of friends who have created Instagram accounts, for example, under their minor children’s names, where they post things that their children are doing as a sort of journal of the childhood.

DUCKWORTH: This is like when people create accounts for their dog.

MAUGHAN: Yes, they’ve created an account on behalf of a child. The friends whose children I follow — this sounds so weird, but yes, I follow their kids, even though I follow the parents.

DUCKWORTH: And how old are they?

MAUGHAN: Like, an eight-year-old. It’s just sort of how a lot of these parents are choosing to document their children’s lives. There was an interesting article I was reading recently where this woman talked about how she had been writing about her child, because she was a blogger, journalist, and sharing things, photos, et cetera, over the course of the life of her child. When her child turned, I think it was 13 or 14, they bought her a laptop. Her daughter opens the laptop as a gift and says, “This is the greatest present I have ever received.” She runs into her room, opens it. First thing she does, Google herself, comes running back in and is like, “Mom, you have ruined my life! Look at all the stuff that you’ve put out there about me.”

DUCKWORTH: Which you can’t get back.  

MAUGHAN: I will say this. It wasn’t even anyone else. During the pandemic, I turned my hair into this, like, funny thing and posted a picture. I just stuck it all up kind of funny. And literally to this day, it’s one of the things that comes up, apparently, if you Google me. And I’m like, geez, Louise.

DUCKWORTH: Wait, you mean you put, like, gel in your hair and you did a kind of, like, ‘90s thing?

MAUGHAN: I don’t even think I put gel in it. I just made it all spiky and poofy because it was really long. It was really hard to get to a barber. Anyway, it’s a dumb example of where — that’s not even sharenting, but that’s where I posted a picture of myself that I certainly didn’t mean to become, like, a picture that’s always out there, but whatever. Yeah, I don’t know how to get rid of that.  

DUCKWORTH: You can’t get it back. It’s a good thing you’re gainfully employed.

MAUGHAN: And just to be fair, it’s a picture of my hair looking dumb. It’s not, like, a horrifying —

DUCKWORTH: Right. It could be worse.

MAUGHAN: What’s interesting that you bring up, though, is there are various laws in various countries that address the situation. So, in 2014 in Europe, Europe’s highest court ruled that internet providers must give users the, quote, “right to be forgotten.” European citizens can petition to have past information removed from the internet, including crimes committed as a minor, things like that, or at least hidden from Google search results, Bing search results, etc.

DUCKWORTH: Wait, is that possible? Can you do that?

MAUGHAN: It’s difficult to do, but in Europe especially, they’ve been able to really enforce this right to be forgotten, and people can kind of petition. France has really strict privacy laws. They’ve allowed for kids to be able to sue their own parents for publishing intimate or private details of their lives without consent. United States, we don’t have, shockingly, any protections like that.

DUCKWORTH: I will say this. You know, when you brought up “sharenting” and I, you know, looked this up, of course, as I am wont to do: there is this Journal of Pediatrics article in 2023 called “Online ‘Sharenting’: The Dangers Of Posting Sensitive Information About Children On Social Media.” It’s really a commentary. It’s, like, more of a opinion piece or a perspective. And apparently the commentary was prepared by the European Pediatric Association. And it says, “The purpose is to draw pediatricians’ attention to the growing practice of parents and families publicizing sensitive content about their children on internet platforms and the serious risk that potential abusers may intrude on their privacy and exploit data made unwittingly available on the web.” So, maybe Europe is a little ahead of us.

MAUGHAN: In many ways. But what I think is really interesting about what you’re bringing up is there are different risks, right? So, there are some who on, on one end will talk about, “Well, the real danger of ‘sharenting’ is that you have untoward actors who are looking at pictures of your family and can lead to negative things.” What I think you’re bringing up here —  

DUCKWORTH: Wait, like what? 

MAUGHAN: Like pedophilia. Do people start, you know, looking at — 

DUCKWORTH: They could, like, target your kid.

MAUGHAN: Right, you’re not posting anything inappropriate about your child, but, but still people go down a path of fantasizing or whatever, right? That’s an extreme, but I, I think more common is this idea of fraud. Now think with me for a second, about when you create an internet password, and then you have these safety or security questions. You know what I’m talking about? In case you forget.

DUCKWORTH: Yes, first pet. Where’d you go to elementary school? What’s your husband’s mother’s maiden name? Those kind of questions.

MAUGHAN: Exactly. And then, you think about the things we share online. Names, ages, dates of birth. “Happy birthday! Today is my daughter’s birthday.” Your home address, your place of birth, your mother’s maiden name, what school they go to, the name of their pets, the sports team — these are all the questions that are often in our security questions, and there are things that we’ve shared online. And so, the worry is that there will be massive fraud. In fact, Barclays is estimating that by 2030, they’ll have 7.4 million incidents per year of identity fraud based on sort of this oversharing, and they’re forecasting that “sharenting” will account for two-thirds of identity fraud facing young people by the end of the next decade, specifically because we’ve shared all of these things that lead to the questions one needs to answer to perpetuate fraud.

DUCKWORTH: Okay. So, there is this idea in science. It’s the following: when you do a study and it’s anonymous — somebody fills out a survey; you don’t know who they are — that would be called, like, minimal risk, right? Or even no risk. But then, the more you know about the person, and there is this concept of personally-identifiable information, P.I.I. — well that elevates the risk and then, you know, you need to make sure the person has full information, they may need to sign a consent form and so forth. What’s interesting is that typically personally identifiable information, it’s usually just the really obvious things, like: I know their full name. I know their cell phone number. I know exactly where they live. But what you’re raising is that, yeah, all of these kind of more like triangulating questions, like, “How do I know you’re really you when you log into the Barclays website to change your credit card number or to get a new card?” And it’s like, well, it’s also personally identifiable information to know the name of your dog, and to know your favorite food, and to know these things that — you know, for scientific research, it doesn’t occur to us that like, yeah, if you collectively know those things and those are the security questions, that’s also personally identifiable. 

MAUGHAN: Yeah. In fact, there are these skits that are meant to be funny and maybe not, where — I think it’s Jimmy Kimmel — will go out and interview people on the street, and then literally just ask, “So, what’s your dog’s name? What school did you go to?” And people just share it all. And then, it’s like, well, now I can get into anything. But you bring up a good point, that we have different protections. Like, HIPAA protects us — you know, this personally identifiable information. But HIPAA is a law regarding health. Can’t reveal health information.

DUCKWORTH: All those forms we have to sign, which I’m sure we read in detail before we sign, when we, like, check into the doctor.

MAUGHAN: Also, FERPA, the law that governs sort of what information you can share in an educational setting. We don’t have an equivalent in terms of parents’ social media or online posting.

DUCKWORTH: So, I have a friend of a friend. They have a kid. I remember when this kid was born,  and usually,   like, you’re so excited to share baby pictures and, you know, I don’t know, like, all the stuff that parents do, like, you know, “Hey, this is what they did this Tuesday.” It sounds like the friends that you have that have, like, a whole social media account. This couple forbade anybody in their social sphere from ever posting any likeness of this kid on anything, basically. In fact, even not wanting them to email pictures to each other. And at the time — this is now several years ago, I thought these people were crazy. I was like, “What paranoid person would be so anxious about what would happen with a kid picture that they posted to Facebook or texted each other?” And now — like, we haven’t brought up the fact that, you know, with artificial intelligence, like, you can say, like, “Who is this person?” The facial recognition capacity of artificial intelligence — like, I cannot believe what my phone can tell me. So, I now no longer think that person was paranoid, but maybe they could see the future in a way that I certainly was completely — I mean, honestly, even in this conversation, I’m like, “What? Barclays is saying that — what did you say? — two thirds of identity theft for that generation is going to be from their parents sharing on the internet?” Like, I’m blown away.

MAUGHAN: And look, I — I don’t know, I think that there’s a balance too. Because I’ll admit there’s a lot of joy in sharing with people that you love. The challenge is: where does it end and everything on the internet — minus a few right to privacy things, I guess — are there forever. So, Angela and I would love to hear your thoughts on posting information about children online. Record a voice memo in a quiet place with your mouth close to the phone and email it to NSQ@freakconomics.com and maybe we’ll play it on a future episode of the show. Also, while sharenting may be morally ambiguous, sharing the podcast is not. If you like the show and want to support it, the best thing you can do is tell a friend about it. You can also spread the word on social media or leave a review in your podcast app. 

Still to come on No Stupid Questions: Does Angela regret sharing stories about her children on this podcast?

DUCKWORTH : I have on occasion felt a sort of — is it regret? I don’t know. But it’s like a twinge of anxiety.

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Now, back to Mike and Angela’s conversation about “sharenting.”

DUCKWORTH: So if there are all these downsides of sharenting, maybe some of them more obvious than others, you do have to ask the question, why we do this. I know of some research on, you know, how parents behave with respect to sharing about their kids, whether it’s, you know, on social media or not. And I think the researchers who study this will say that there are a mix of motives. One is kind of showing off your own parenting. I think this sometimes at holiday time. Sometimes people just send cards that are, like, a photo of the family and “happy holidays,” and sometimes you turn it over and there’s like a C.V. It’s just like, “Here are all the accomplishments of my children in chronological order.” And I like to read those cards out loud to Jason when we get them, because they just, you know, make us laugh. I think that — 

MAUGHAN: Now anyone who has you on their Christmas card list is so paranoid.

DUCKWORTH: Maybe I “overshared” there, but it’s so true. And I think there is this motive to — I don’t know — to show that your family’s doing well, that, like, you’re an awesome mom or you’re an awesome dad. You know my dad was just egregious in this respect. I mean, he would tell people our SAT scores, you know, where we had gotten into college. I mean, really cringy stuff. Thank God there wasn’t social media at the time, because I can’t imagine those things going out into the world and not being able to, like, be rounded up and, like, put back into Pandora’s box.

MAUGHAN: On the plus side, how nice that your dad actually knew your SAT score. I bet most parents are like, “Ehh.”

DUCKWORTH: I don’t know. You think that’s a plus?

MAUGHAN: I don’t know. I’m just saying at least he cared.

DUCKWORTH: I guess. He did also ask me what grade I was in, so I’m not sure that my dad was, like, prioritizing the right information to know about his kids. But it really was —  I mean, look, the positive word for this would be “pride.” There’s pride in your own parenting. There’s pride in your children. But the negative word for this is “showing off.” And by the way, everything if you think about how it could be good, it’s one thing. If you think about how it could be bad, it’s another. You know, grit, well, “stubbornness.” Like, pride, you know, “showing off.” But I do think there is a parental motive to show your friends and family, and perhaps a wider circle, that your kids are great.

MAUGHAN: Yes. In a healthy environment, I think it’s good to have some level of, “Hey, I want to share this.”

DUCKWORTH: Do you post things about yourself that are some form of pride sharing? You know, just sort of like, “Hey, I’m proud of this. Look.” 

MAUGHAN: Yeah. I mean, I don’t think I think of it that way, but for example, I work for Smith Entertainment Group, who’s the parent company of the Utah Jazz, a couple of soccer teams, and recently purchased a new N.H.L. team called the Utah Hockey Club. So, when we did that and had our first game, I did post on Instagram.

DUCKWORTH: And why did you post?

MAUGHAN: Because, again, for me, Instagram is mostly like my own journal. I wanted to have the pictures, and the memories, and the beauty of the moment I did share with my coworkers. And it was sort of like a way to amalgamate all that stuff into a place that I could revisit it again.

DUCKWORTH: But can I ask you —  you’ve said this before, that your Instagram account is your journal, right? It’s like a photo journal.

MAUGHAN: Why don’t I just keep a private journal?  

DUCKWORTH: Well, yeah, I did want to ask you, like, you could, like, just save them to Google Photos. And I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with this, by the way. Most things that people do, I think, have multiple motives. I mean, even drinking coffee in the morning or something. It’s like, “Oh, it kind of wakes me up. I kind of like the taste. It’s sort of, like, a nice ritual. It’s warm.” You know, most things that human beings do reliably are for multiple reasons, not one reason. So, I’m not saying that it’s good or bad, but I’m wondering what reasons, plural, there might be for you choosing to document your life in your Instagram account?

MAUGHAN: I mean, I think there’s, one, documentation for myself; two, share it with the people that I love. We as humans want to share things, right? I mean, that’s also how we connect.

DUCKWORTH: Well, my point was there are multiple reasons, right? And I think wanting to share things is one reason, but pride is another. Those are, I think, different. I mean, they’re related but they’re different. You mentioned social connection, and I think that’s got to be a motive for these “sharenting” parents. But let’s talk about one of those motives: this drive to disclose. That is the exact phrase — “the drive to disclose” — that is used by two scientists at Carnegie Mellon, Erin Carbone and George Loewenstein. Erin I don’t know very well, but George I do know very well. He’s a professor of economics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon. One of the things that he’s well known for is saying that when economists think about human beings, they tend to think like, “Oh, human beings do things when they weigh that the benefits outweigh the costs, you know, considering the probabilities.” That’s, like, how an economist classically thinks that anybody decides anything — to drink coffee, to buy that coffee, to move to Salt Lake City.  But George has long argued that for so many things, that has to be incomplete — that we’re not doing these like cold, cognitive calculations. But in, in this article that I’m looking at, “Privacy Preferences and the Drive to Disclose,” that George and Erin co-authored, they explore the drive to disclose as a kind of primal instinct — not a cold, calculated, instrumental, like, “If I disclose information about my eight-year-old, then my neighbors will think this, and then, and then, and then,” but more just this like visceral need, like hunger or thirst or, you know, they also say like sex or whatever. Like, they’re, they’re basically saying that we can have this almost, um, nonverbal or, like, intuitive drive that, if you don’t meet that need, like hunger and thirst, there’s kind of this negative feeling, like this kind of charge. And then, when you do meet that need, the “drive to disclose,” you get rewarded, right? And, again, the same way it feels like to be really thirsty and to drink a glass of water. The ancient instincts are there because if you are an organism that doesn’t have that drive, you’re not going to survive. But when something has become an instinctive drive, it is enacted in you without the kind of calculation of the costs and benefits. We have drives to, for example, seek calories. Then you, you put together things that are, like, really high-calorie, like ridiculously high-calorie, like the concentration of calories doesn’t even exist in nature. And combinations that don’t exist, like, “Oh, I’m going to make something super high calorie. I’m going to put a lot of fat in it. I’m going to make it sweet with refined sugar and salty.” Like, you cannot forage for those things. They don’t exist. So, they become, like, hyper-palatable or hyper-rewarding. And I think what makes instincts so interesting — like, if the drive to disclose is an ancient instinct, what that means is that you will get an immediate reward signal from your brain from satisfying that need even if actually, in this particular situation, it is not for your long-term benefit. We have an ancient instinct for calories, for salt, but now we have this, like, modern environment that’s a mismatch. And maybe social media is a mismatch for the ancient instinct to disclose information about ourselves and our — you know, and for many parents, I think they feel like their kids are just, like, an extension of them. You know, it’s their family. So, the modern inventions have gotten us into trouble because those ancient instincts don’t change.

MAUGHAN: Right. Or they take a really, really long time to evolve.

DUCKWORTH: Not going to change in our lifetime. They are hardwired into your DNA.

MAUGHAN: Well, here’s, what’s maybe a little bit scary about that then, if you think of the implications of it, right? Because not only are parents sharing about their children because of this drive in a way that has been bastardized, but it’s also impacting the rising generation who suddenly want to become influencers. So, in a recent survey, one in three preteens said that being an influencer was one of their career goals. Eleven percent of Gen Z —  that’s people born between 1997 and 2012 — already describe themselves as influencers, and over half of Gen Z say they want to be influencers.

DUCKWORTH: Okay, so one in three preteens wants to be an influencer, and one in two Gen Z adults wants to be an influencer. Is that right? 

MAUGHAN: Yes.

DUCKWORTH: What the heck is an “influencer”?

MAUGHAN: Well, it’s a great question. It’s generally described as someone who’s influencing others online via their online persona. So, using TikTok or, or Instagram or one of these other platforms to, quote, “influence” people. 

DUCKWORTH: To, like, shape opinion? 

MAUGHAN: Yeah, or like you do your makeup tutorial, or you just do a dance and then other people do it. It’s interesting. There are some child influencers who are earning six-figure incomes from monthly subscriptions. They can make thousands of dollars by promoting various brands who pay them to promote on their social channels. So, with Instagram, for example, I believe that you cannot have an account until you’re at least 13 years old.

DUCKWORTH: That’s federal law, you know.

MAUGHAN: Yeah. Well, some states, like Utah, are trying to raise that even further.

DUCKWORTH: I think it’s somewhat arbitrary, by the way. I don’t know how they chose 13.

MAUGHAN: Well, the way around it is that parents can manage an account for their children.

DUCKWORTH: Look, I think this just reveals a lot about our human motives. I personally think it’s not, like, to blame or shame people who do it. It’s just to acknowledge that like, oh, those are human motives. No wonder you’re doing that, right? Maybe you shouldn’t do it. Like, the pediatricians in Europe have a point.

MAUGHAN: And maybe we shouldn’t eat Doritos every day. We’ve got to learn to curb these evolutionary instincts in a way that is beneficial to us instead of harmful.

DUCKWORTH: Right! I mean, in the article that I was telling you about by Erin and George at Carnegie Mellon, they point out that, like, hey acknowledging that there is a, maybe, primal drive to disclose doesn’t mean that you should just indulge in it. And they very explicitly say that, you know, look what we have to do with alcohol, or eating, or whatever. Like, you do have to use self control to make a more calculated, deliberate decision. But what I’m thinking about as we close out this conversation is Taylor Swift.

MAUGHAN: Because all things come back to Taylor Swift.

DUCKWORTH: Because all roads lead to Taylor Swift.

MAUGHAN: She is the current version of Rome.

DUCKWORTH: You know, when you describe these parents of, like, 8-year-old influencers — and I have to say, I’m feeling a little judgy, right? Like, does the 8-year-old really want to be doing this? I mean, maybe they do, but maybe they don’t. And I have to believe that there got to be, you know, some parents out there who, they want to be famous, they want to be influencers, and they’re not thinking about whether this is in the best interest of their kids or whether their kids deeply share that motivation. So, I want to contrast that with Taylor Swift. I love the song that she wrote when she was just a teenager called “The Best Day.” Have you ever heard it? Have you listened to all the Taylor Swift songs that there are?

MAUGHAN: No. This is where you’re putting me in a very vulnerable situation.

DUCKWORTH: I know. Now you’re going to get hated.

MAUGHAN: I have not listened to much of Taylor Swift.

DUCKWORTH: Oh, really? Okay. 

MAUGHAN: I’m so sorry.

DUCKWORTH:  I forgive you. But anyway, when she was just a teenager, she wrote this song and it was really an ode to her own mother, and it’s called “The Best Day.” And when she decided to kind of reveal the song to her mom, she made this compilation of home videos of herself, and her little brother, and the two of them with their mom, mostly. You know, there are a few shots with dad. So, here’s the thing I want to contrast. Taylor Swift with her own capacities, decided to put together this montage. She decided to then share it more publicly. I think it was first a YouTube video. Then, of course, Taylor Swift became Taylor Swift. She decided to post the pictures of her when she was five years old. And so, though I understand that there’s a drive to disclose, I understand that all people have a sort of pride motive, a need to connect socially. But when it comes to, like, your kids, maybe we could let our kids make that decision. I will say that I probably should have done this more myself. I wrote a lot about my own daughters in Grit before they were old enough to really give me permission to do that. So maybe I should have taken a page out of the Taylor Swift parenting playbook myself.

MAUGHAN: And you talk about Lucy and Amanda here on this podcast even a lot. Have you had negative backlash from them? What’s been their reaction to the book or this?

DUCKWORTH: I will be completely honest. I have on occasion just said something. Like, it wasn’t a thought. And I think I’m pretty high in the drive to disclose, right? Because look at me just, like, spilling the beans on Jason, on me, on the last time I talked to Lucy and Amanda about Sambas and what’s cool, but also, you know, more personal stories than that. And I have on occasion felt a sort of — is it regret? I don’t know. But it’s like a twinge of anxiety. I think what this conversation is making me think about is — I mean, we kind of live in a very sharing moment in history,  like vulnerability, sharing your story. I get it, I want to do it. I think there’s huge upside for everyone. But this conversation is making me think about whether in our drive to disclose and my drive to disclose, like, whether there could be some downsides that, frankly, I’ve been a little bit blind to.

MAUGHAN: Yeah. So, to Mandi’s question though, when we share our first day banner, when we share about our children online, I think it’s really interesting to always recognize, as you’ve brought up, that we have some primal evolutionary instincts that need to be checked in a modern world. I think there’s also a lot of things we have to think about like fraud, like consent, like what this will mean to the child when they wake up — like this one girl who opened up the laptop and said, “Mom, what have you been posting about me all these years?”

DUCKWORTH: “You ruined my life.”

MAUGHAN: And so maybe the lesson is next time before we hit share, we do pause and give ourselves a second thought to say, “Why am I doing this? Where is it going? And what might be the impact?”

DUCKWORTH: And what would Taylor’s mom do?

Coming up after the break: a fact-check of today’s episode and stories from our NSQ listeners. 

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And now, here’s a fact-check of today’s conversation:

Mike references a 2019 Washington Post piece by lawyer and writer Christie Tate entitled, “My Daughter Asked Me to Stop Writing About Motherhood. Here’s Why I Can’t Do That.” He gets some of the details slightly wrong. Tate gave her fourth grade daughter a laptop for Christmas. Her daughter looked up Christie Tate’s name — not her own — and that search  brought up the author’s many articles on parenting, with accompanying family photos.

The Jimmy Kimmel segment that Mike mentioned is a compilation of “man on the street” interviews from 2015. The production team asked pedestrians along Hollywood Boulevard to share their thoughts on cyber security. When prompted, many of the people who were interviewed not only shared personally identifiable information; they also readily revealed their actual passwords on camera.

Also, federal law does not ban children under 13 from creating social media accounts, but most social media platforms have chosen to restrict account creation for kids under 13 due to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule’s limitations on gathering data about children’s online activities. However, Meta and other companies have recently developed services for kids under 13, such as Messenger Kids and YouTube Kids. As Mike noted, Utah Governor Spencer Cox did sign legislation requiring parental permissions for anyone under 18 to use platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook, but a federal judge blocked the law from taking effect.

That’s it for the fact-check.

Before we wrap today’s show, let’s hear some thoughts about last week’s episode on how disguises affect our behavior.

Paul MICALLEF: Hi, Mike and Angela, just following up on your interesting talk on disguises and masking, I think it’s interesting to also point out that people who wear masks all the time — these are masks that we make up ourselves — can have a significant long-term effect on their mental health. I was diagnosed as autistic later in life. And looking back, the fact that I felt the need to wear a mask and pretend, and blend in, was not great — and is the case for many people who have undiagnosed autism or feel that they need to perform in front of others rather than being true to themselves.

Ofra OBEJAS: As a child therapist, what you call “costume” and I call “dress up” is an important tool in my work. I’ve had more than one child show up to a session dressed up head to toe as a police officer. You don’t need a PhD in psychology to figure out these children were expressing a wish to have power after someone took it from them. Angela refers to a disguise as allowing a person to be deceitful. I would rephrase a disguise as freeing someone to pretend they are who they wish they could be. In other words, to show their true self. 

Aidan NADELL: Hi, Mike, Angela, and Rebecca. This is Aiden Nadell from Ursinus College. I wear the Zack the Bear costume for my college. I want to be a professional mascot. And so, when I saw the title to this episode, it really made me smile. It made me think about what the mascot costume does for me in allowing me to be my true, energetic, unabashed self. I have a very high-energy personality and sometimes that can be too much for people, but it’s somehow acceptable when it’s under fur.

Ashwaq AL MASKERY: Hey, Angela and Mike, my name is Ishwaq. I’m from the Sultanate of Oman. I have been a content creator for the past 10 years and never once did I ever show my face in front of the camera or even in any public event that I was part of or presented in. I always find a creative way to hide my face — whether using a mask or anything else just to keep my identity secret, even though people know who I was in public. I think this gave me the opportunity to share my thoughts and opinions, and ideas, more freely — knowing that I wouldn’t be recognized in public very easily, unless somebody really notices my voice and recognizes me from my voice. Thanks again for the great episode.

That was, respectively, Ofra Obejas, Paul Micallef, Aidan Nadell, and Ashwaq Al Maskery. Thanks to them and to everyone who shared their stories with us. And remember, we’d love to hear your thoughts on sharenting. Send a voice memo to NSQ@Freakonomics.com, and you might hear your voice on the show!

Coming up next week on No Stupid Questions: What does it mean to be a narcissist, really?

MAUGHAN: “I want to be president, because I’m dang good at what I do and I’m the best person for the job.” 

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That’s coming up on No Stupid Questions.

No Stupid Questions is part of the Freakonomics Radio Network, which also includes Freakonomics Radio, People I (Mostly) Admire, and The Economics of Everyday Things. All our shows are produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. The senior producer of the show is me, Rebecca Lee Douglas, and Lyric Bowditch is our production associate. This episode was mixed by Greg Rippin. We had research assistance from Daniel Moritz-Rabson. Our theme song was composed by Luis Guerra. You can follow us on Twitter @NSQ_Show. And you can watch video clips of Mike and Angela at the Freakonomics Radio Network’s YouTube Shorts channel or on Freakonomics Radio’s TikTok page. To learn more, or to read episode transcripts, visit Freakonomics.com/NSQ. Thanks for listening!

MAUGHAN: You know, I guess there probably are some Taylor Swift haters, but I don’t want to meet them, and I don’t know any of them.