Ah, here it comes, louder than ever: the latest exhibition from the Wi-Fi-fed, self-proclaimed sage of pseudo-parenting. A post so performative it arrests the scroll, demanding scrutiny: Are we witnessing ingenuity, or something far darker cloaked in plywood and Instagram filters?
Behold: the ten-year-old, a junior artisan, entrusted with a saw, a drill, and a “wooden phone” that exists less as a functional device than as a spectacle for adult spectators. According to the proud narrator:
"This is the only phone our little one has 😁 Completely eco, zero harmful radiation, zero addiction. He said he needed it to listen to music. He made it himself with a board, a saw, and a drill. Our older son still doesn’t have a phone. He hasn’t made one 😂"
Pause. Rewind. Digest. And then shiver.
Child Safety vs. Social Performance
Developmental psychology is clear: children aged ten are in a critical phase of executive function development, risk assessment, and understanding consent (Diamond, 2013). Asking a child to handle a saw and a drill, ostensibly for “eco-friendly ingenuity,” circumvents all safety protocols and imposes adult expectations onto a body and mind unprepared to evaluate risk fully. The veneer of play or self-expression masks coercion: the child learns that labour, risk, and personal achievement exist for the applause of an audience.
Psychological Implications of Performative Parenting
According to research in child development (Grolnick & Ryan, 1989; Deci & Ryan, 2000), autonomy is crucial for intrinsic motivation. Here, autonomy is illusory—the child’s task is curated, framed, and displayed. Internalised obligation replaces curiosity; anxiety about performance replaces joy; the concept of self-worth becomes transactional, measured in likes, hearts, and social approval rather than personal satisfaction. This is not mentoring—it is instrumentalisation of the child for adult validation.
The post masquerades as eco-minimalist creativity, but the drill becomes a symbol, the plywood a prop, the child an unwitting ambassador of a curated online persona. What might appear to followers as ingenuity is, in developmental terms, a seed of internalised obligation, performance anxiety, and commodification of self.
Sibling Dynamics and Implicit Hierarchies
The older sibling’s absence of a phone—“He hasn’t made one 😂”—introduces subtle but powerful social hierarchies. Obedience, industriousness, and visibility are rewarded. Research on sibling comparison (McHale et al., 2012) demonstrates that such framing fosters perfectionism, shame, and rivalry that may persist into adolescence. The child is trained to equate public performance with parental approval, creating fertile ground for identity struggles, internalised pressure, and conditional self-esteem.
Imagine the child’s inner world: a constant spotlight of expectation, a subconscious ledger of approval earned only through visible productivity. The subtle message is clear: your worth is measured by others’ admiration, and personal safety, consent, or hesitation are irrelevant.
Marketing Masquerading as Pedagogy
The post is not a family anecdote—it is content engineered for mass consumption. By curating the child’s labour for social media, the parent teaches: visibility trumps safety, optics trump ethics, curated image trumps reality. Followers are encouraged to celebrate not skill or ingenuity, but the aesthetic of child exploitation: a ten-year-old handling power tools to produce content for adult applause.
Algorithmic reinforcement compounds the problem: attention equals reward, which reinforces risk-taking and performative behaviour in both child and adult. This is a digital-age feedback loop of coercion and virtue signalling, disguised as parenting ingenuity.
Long-Term Consequences
Longitudinal studies indicate that children exposed to performative, audience-directed labour may develop self-presentation anxieties, heightened perfectionism, fragile self-esteem, and a transactional sense of self-worth (Harter, 2012; Prinstein & Giletta, 2016). Coupled with the physical risk of power tools, the child experiences dual-layered stress: one external (safety hazards), one internal (psychological conditioning to perform for approval).
Ethical Considerations for Observers
Before anyone clicks “heart,” ask: are we applauding actual skill, or complicity in the commodification of a child? Are we endorsing creativity, or tacitly approving detachment from responsibility, child safety, and ethical parenting?
The theatre of online virtue may be charming, witty, or amusing—but when children become props, the performance is exploitative, regardless of intent.
A Call to Critical Observation
To all observers—even the most eager devotees: pause. Consider the child behind the plywood phone, the drill, the saw, the Instagram post. Recognise the interplay of developmental risk, coercion, and performative virtue. Applause for this act is not harmless; it signals that child safety, mental health, and integrity are secondary to adult image-making.
Because clicks are cheap. Likes are trivial. But child safety, psychological well-being, and moral responsibility are priceless.
And if we fail to question this, we are complicit in a performance that may haunt the child far longer than any social media “achievement” will ever shine.
References for the Curious Observer
- Diamond, A. (2013). Executive functions. Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 135–168.
- Grolnick, W. S., & Ryan, R. M. (1989). Parent styles associated with children’s self-regulation and competence in school. Journal of Educational Psychology, 81(2), 143–154.
- Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227–268.
- McHale, S. M., Updegraff, K. A., & Whiteman, S. D. (2012). Sibling relationships and influences in childhood and adolescence. Journal of Marriage and Family, 74(5), 913–930.
- Harter, S. (2012). The construction of the self: Developmental and sociocultural foundations. Guilford Press.
- Prinstein, M. J., & Giletta, M. (2016). Peer relations and developmental psychopathology. In Developmental Psychopathology (3rd ed.). Wiley.