“Account run by mom/dad”: An ecosystemic five-country study of musically gifted children’s social media exposure and visibility

Guadalupe López-Íñiguez

doi:10.29329/jsomer.125

Authors

Guadalupe López-Íñiguez Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki, Finland https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4428-1356

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29329/jsomer.125

Keywords:

Care Ethics, Digital Childhood, Gifted Music Education, Privacy Rights, Talent Development, Social Media

Abstract

This study examines how social media exposure and visibility are negotiated within the ecosystems of musically gifted children enrolled in elite music education programmes. Drawing on interviews with 79 participants across five countries, including gifted children, parents, teachers, and institutional leaders, and an illustrated vignette prompting depersonalised reflection, the study conceptualises platform visibility as a relational and systemic phenomenon embedded in contemporary music careers. Using Care Ethics and Systems Thinking, the analysis examines how visibility is negotiated across five dimensions of care. Findings show that social media participation is understood as opportunity, professional necessity, and risk. While adults often view online visibility as beneficial for career development, gifted children report self-surveillance, perfectionism, anxiety, dependence on external validation, and concerns surrounding privacy and consent. Care is distributed across families, institutions, audiences, and platform infrastructures, yet strained by systemic pressures prioritising visibility, engagement, and exposure. The study introduces the concept of accelerated visibility trajectories to describe how artistic development, identity formation, public evaluation, and professionalisation become compressed within algorithmic feedback systems. It further conceptualises star syndrome as the compounding developmental effects of early visibility and sustained public exposure in gifted populations undergoing intensified training and digitally mediated talent development. The findings contribute to research on platformised cultural production, digital childhoods, and gifted education by showing how algorithmic visibility restructures childhood musical development. The study argues that existing ethical and child-protection frameworks remain insufficient for platformised environments, with gifted children facing distinctive risks, and calls for greater collective responsibility across families, institutions, and platform governance structures.

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