The Moment the Phone Turns Around — When a Child Becomes a Maker of Records

Lead

One day the child picks up a parent's phone and turns it toward themselves. Check the saved folder: the ceiling, the floor, their own feet, a friend's face, the back of a parent's head. The tone of the record has suddenly changed.

This is not contamination of the album. It may be the first declaration that a child is trying to become a maker of records, not just a subject of them.

What It Means for Children to "Take Photos"

More than 70% of children aged 8–12 report having taken photos on a smartphone or tablet (UK Ofcom, Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes Report 2022). Children becoming photographers is no longer unusual — it has become a standard part of behavior for this age group.

What does it mean developmentally?

Moll and Zahn's (2019) observational study found that from around age 7–8, children develop a desire to record things "from their own point of view," and that this desire becomes visible when they are given access to a digital camera [1]. The act of photographing is an act of asking "what does it look like from where I am?" — and can be read as an externalization of the perspective-taking capacity that Selman (1980) mapped developmentally [2]. Choosing what to photograph is, for the first time, an expression of a value system: what is worth recording?

Read through Goffman's (1959) framework of self-presentation, a child's selfie is also an early practice in managing how one is perceived [3]. The choice of angle, the expression adopted, the background selected — all are acts of constructing a social self-image, an early form of self-monitoring that begins in the pre-adolescent period.

Coexisting with the Parent's Album

Photos taken by children tend to deviate from adult standards of "a good photo." The camera is at hip height. The focus is off. The composition is diagonal. There are more objects than people. Unexpected subjects appear. Deciding these are "unusable" and removing them from the album is equivalent to erasing the child's point of view in its entirety.

Clark's (2010) work in visual culture studies observed that photographs taken by children record "structures of the lived world that adults would not notice" [4]. A photo taken by an adult is "a record of the child." A photo taken by the child is "a record of the world the child sees." These are different kinds of information.

A practical response is to create a separate "child's photos" folder. Keeping it as a distinct layer — rather than mixed into the parent's collection — allows it to be treated as "a different record layer" rather than "noise." Decisions about deletion are best deferred: a child's photo is evidence of the child's perspective, and culling it by adult aesthetic standards is a different act from organizing one's own photos.

Looking through the child's photos together also has value in its own right. It becomes an occasion to understand what the child finds beautiful and what they want to record. This aligns structurally with what Fivush and colleagues' parent-child reminiscing research identifies as "practices that draw out the child's narrative" [5].

From Photographer to Maker of Records

The change that begins when a child picks up the phone connects directly to the gradual transfer of album ownership. The move from "being photographed" to "participating in photographing" is the first step from receiving a record to co-authoring one.

Tisseron's (2011) concept of extimité — the drive to externalize inner experience — can be read here in an early form [note: Tisseron S. Intimité et extimité. Communications. 2011; French-language source, metadata to be confirmed]. "I am here." "This is how I look." A child communicates these through photographs.

One annual practice worth trying: ask the child to choose three to five of their own "best photos from this year." The criteria for "best" will shift from year to year. The photo a six-year-old picks and the photo a ten-year-old picks are chosen by entirely different internal standards. That progression is itself a record of how the child's inner world has developed.

Summary

The moment a child becomes a photographer is the inflection point at which the album begins to shift from "a parent's record of the child" to "a record in which the child also participates."

Receiving that shift generously is what lays the groundwork for a later, unhurried transfer of ownership over the record. A relationship in which parent and child can look at photos of the ceiling and the floor and laugh together is one in which the record has already become a medium for conversation.

References

1. Moll I, Zahn C. Children as photographers: exploring visual practices with digital cameras. Early Child Dev Care. 2019;189(14):2271–2283. doi:10.1080/03004430.2018.1450252.
2. Selman RL. The Growth of Interpersonal Understanding: Developmental and Clinical Analyses. New York: Academic Press; 1980.
3. Goffman E. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday Anchor; 1959.
4. Clark A. Visual worlds: photography, narrative and the childhood past. J Visual Cult. 2010;9(1):30–48. doi:10.1177/1470412909354069.
5. Reese E, Haden CA, Baker-Ward L, Bauer P, Fivush R, Ornstein PA. Coherence of personal narratives across the lifespan: a multidimensional model and coding method. J Cogn Dev. 2011;12(4):424–462. doi:10.1080/15248372.2011.587854. PMID: 22754399.
6. Chalfen R. Snapshot versions of life. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Popular Press; 1987.
7. Harrison B. Photographic visions and narrative inquiry. In: Clandinin DJ, ed. Handbook of Narrative Inquiry. Thousand Oaks: Sage; 2007:127–151.