Inside the weird world of running a social media account for your newborn baby

DJ Khaled, Michael Phelps, Khloe Kardashian, Serena Williams, Gabriel Union...These are some of the global superstars who launched Instagram accounts for their children and have steadily updated fans on the kids' progress - via the tot's own Instagram page.

The trend, which seems to have irreparably affected Kenyan celebrities too, seems to not have just begun a couple of years ago - it's been there for close to a decade now and, to many, appears to border on psychosis.

From the moment these kids are born, they are immediately thrust into the limelight and made into celebrities in their own right, hogging hundreds of thousands of dedicated followers in a matter of months.

As the tot begins to grow, the parents constantly update the world about every little step involved - from their first birthday, their first outfits, their first sporting event, their everyday clumsiness, as well as them finding their own path as a human being.

All the moments are captured and shared. Intent on building the page and raising their kid's profile, these adult celebrities constantly push their little one into everyone's face, sometimes turning the experience into a cringey, attention-seeking affair.

Kenyan celebrities are particularly notorious for this. From Tanasha Donna to Pierra Makena, Terence Creative to Vera Sidika, these Kenyan stars actively run their own children's Instagram pages, shuttling between their own adult accounts to those of their kids.

Since a little baby practically has no literacy, these pages are obviously run by the baby's famous parents and, in the case of Kenyan celebrities, it sometimes gets downright mortifying.

For instance, Vera Sidika's daughter Princess Asia Brown, who is only two years old, boasts over 130K followers on Instagram.

Soon after her brother was born, the Princess Asia Brown Instagram page shared a video of the young girl visiting her newborn brother in hospital. Her parents captioned it, "They wouldn't let me carry my little brother. (crying emojis) so unfair!"

And when the page shared a photo of Asia's refurbished bedroom, the caption went, "I'm in love with my room (heart emojis). Watch my room tour on YouTube."

Back in 2018, while speaking to a local publication, DJ MO, who shares daughter Ladasha with Gospel singer Size 8, explained the reasoning behind running your own child's Instagram account.

"We knew that Ladasha would potentially attract a lot of followers when we opened her account, but more so, we prayed that she would get roles as a child ambassador which has happened,” DJ MO said then.

"Before opening the account, Size 8 and I knew that there would be a huge following on her page with some even posting random comments, but we decided to look at the bigger picture. Either way, we would be posting Ladasha on our personal pages to an even bigger audience so why not just open a dedicated page for her so that we could still run ours?”

On his part, popular disc jockey DJ Creme de la Creme and his wife also opened their son Jamari's Instagram page but deleted it soon after, citing online trolls and privacy issues.

"As parents, everyone wants the best for their children, so when we opened Jamari’s account we were all about positive vibes and showing our son’s milestones. But then we realised that online trolls exist and we were not ready to have them on our son’s profile," he told the publication then.

Most celebrities, especially in Kenya, have said that the major reason they launch Instagram accounts for their tots is to create a brand out of the child and, eventually, take the tot's popularity to the bank.

Size 8's and DJ MO's daughter Ladasha quickly became a star in her own right, even inking several multimillion endorsement deals including with diaper company, Soft Care.

Despite the proliferation of the act, some parents have flatly refused to expose their children to the world in a way that is deemed a little too much and too 'out there'.

While speaking to a US media outlet, reality TV Kim Kardashian shot down the suggestion, saying that she would be 'terrified' of initiating such a move on her kids.

"I’m terrified. And, you know, I think that social media is one of the most important tools if you’re building a brand and to share your life, I think it’s really fun. But also, I didn’t grow up in a world of social media so I don’t want to over-expose my children,” she said.

Many years after making that statement, Kardashian's daughter North West, who she shares with rapper Kanye West, now has her own TikTok account - her father, however, has repeatedly voiced his opposition on the matter.

Kanye has gone on various rants blasting his ex-wife for allowing their pre-teen daughter to have social media. Back in June, she was even forced to remove the inappropriate videos of their 10-year-old daughter lip-syncing to Ice Spice lyrics, while cosplaying as the New York rapper.

"As soon as I saw the words, I was like, ‘Oh no, we're taking this down,'" Kardashian told Time magazine then. "I saw on the internet, people saying 'Kanye was right,' and maybe he was in that instance."

Back to the question of a parent posing as their child online, many social media users have repeatedly viewed the act as psychotic, with many castigating the parents for projecting their thoughts onto their children in the form of a narcissistic caption.

Back in April 2021, US rapper Safaree and his ex-wife Erica Mena's daughter's Instagram page shared a photo of the little girl alongside her influencer mother - but the caption sent shockwaves across the online gossip community.

The caption went, "My mommy is so beautiful. Sometimes I hear her and daddy in a closed room but I don't know what's happening in there. It sounds like wrestling but I love them both!"

Interestingly, the baby, Safire Majesty, was only one year old.

"People who create an Instagram for their kids and then share such a caption are sociopaths! You cannot convince me otherwise. Sharing anything in the first person on your own baby's social media page should be punishable by law!" one X user noted.

Whilst the somewhat weird trend appears to be here to stay, the constituency of people vehemently opposed to it has also continued to massively grow.