There is a new pedagogy gaining ground in the digital streets, a pedagogy of public humiliation.
I stumble upon it more and more these days. Parents holding their phones not as a tool to capture memories, but as a weapon of shame. Parents who, in the name of love or discipline, have decided to document their children’s mistakes, tears, and vulnerability: not for family archives, not for private reflection, but for the world to consume, comment on, and share.
A few weeks ago, I fell upon a video that stayed with me longer than I would have liked. A teenage girl, inconsolable after a breakup, was crying her heart out. And her parents, her protectors, were laughing. Filming. Mocking her pain. Uploading it online for us to see. For us to laugh, maybe. For us to judge, certainly. I suppose the lesson they wanted her to learn was to “focus on her studies,” to not “lose herself” for a boy. But I kept wondering: why did the whole world need to be invited into that moment? Why didn’t love look like a warm tea, a silent hug, or a soft reminder that heartbreak is not the end of the world?
Last week, it was a different scene, but the same violence. A video gone viral of an African mother scolding her French-born son. The boy had apologized to a friend after his mother yelled at him, and his explanation cut deep: “Sorry, my mom is African.” A sentence loaded with the confusion of a child caught between two worlds. Instead of sitting with him to unpack the weight of being Black, African, and “other” in a society that demands constant translation, the lesson became another spectacle. Another online theatre of discipline.
And just today, yet another video: a mother reprimanding her six-year-old daughter who had cut up her dress with scissors. And I watched (not shocked, not outraged) just deeply sad. Sad about the banality of the scene. What child hasn’t cut their dress? Colored on walls? Broken something precious? What was the purpose of this digital punishment, except to invite strangers into a moment that should have stayed within the sacred walls of home?
This is not about perfect parenting. Who among us has not raised their voice, lost their patience, or made mistakes? This is about something else entirely.
This is about a world where childhood is no longer protected. Where the internet, with its infinite memory and its ruthless algorithms, has become a courtroom for our children's most intimate moments.
Do we not realize that the internet never forgets?
Do we not understand that the videos we upload today can follow our children for the rest of their lives, becoming memes, mockeries, or digital ghosts that resurface without warning? In a world where Artificial Intelligence is advancing faster than our ethics, where images can be taken, transformed, and re-shared without control, should we not be more cautious?
I am always here for a good laugh. I love humor. I love lightness. But I also believe in boundaries. I believe in protecting the sacred. I believe that not every lesson needs to be public. Not every moment needs to be shared. Not every mistake needs to be turned into content.
The internet we knew 20 years ago, where things would disappear, where digital traces could be erased, no longer exists. The spaces we are inhabiting now are permanent. They are searchable. They are replicable. And they are often violent.
Innovation is beautiful. I believe in it deeply. But innovation should never cost us our empathy. Progress should never erase our humanity.
So I wonder: how do we want to inhabit these new digital spaces we are creating? What kind of ancestors do we want to be for the children we are raising? What digital legacy are we leaving behind?
Because I know one thing for sure:
Love does not need an audience.
Respect does not require spectators.
And the most powerful lessons we teach our children are often the ones the world will never see.