Do you have Facebook friends who share pictures of their babies – from sonograms to their infants’ births, baptisms and other baby-related content? Or those who create an online account for their babies, long before these babies can even see clearly?

These babies clearly have an online presence at a very early age. And it’s not surprising. With people easily using media to share information with others, sharing their babies’ information may sound harmless.

According to a study conducted by Research Now, 92 percent of all American babies have some form of online presence by the time they reach the age of two. It also revealed that children as young as six months have an online presence, including their own e-mail addresses.

Sure, these children may not even have an idea what computers are, how they work or have the skills to operate them, but it doesn’t mean that they couldn’t be a part of the online world.

The study, commissioned by antivirus maker AVG, was conducted among mothers with children under two years old to see when they began uploading pictures of their kids to the web.

According to the survey, the average age children acquire an online presence is six months, with more than 70 percent of mothers posting baby and toddler pictures online and sharing them through social networking sites.

The results were taken from 2,200 mothers of young children in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, U.K, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, and several other developed countries.

One-third of all U.S. mothers surveyed say they've posted pictures of their newborns online, while 34-percent admitted to posting sonograms of their kids.

By the time they are two, 81 percent of kids have what AVG CEO J.R. Smith called a “digital footprint.”

J.R. Smith said that he understands "why proud parents would want to upload and share images of very young children with friends and families," but thinks they should keep in mind that they're "creating a digital history for a human being that will follow him or her for the rest of their life."

Sources:
MSN
Switched
Engadget