The University of Canberra's newly announced Centenary Research Professor, Deborah Lupton, says too often parents forget to consider the privacy and dignity of their children in the flush of parental pride or mirth that precedes posting something on social media.

But Professor Lupton warned there were major implications to thrusting children into the digital realm before they could take control of their own identity, and they could grow up with a huge online presence for which they had never given consent. Even primary school-aged children deserved to be consulted about online content relating to them.

Professor Lupton is a specialist in digital sociology. She said research was needed to understand the issues related to effectively forcing a social media presence upon children before they were able to give their consent.

''We are now taking our first steps into the digital world long before we learn to walk in the physical world - already it seems normal, but it is actually extraordinary,'' she said.

''It is now typical for an Australian to begin to have a digital presence before they are even born, with the customary ultrasound photo posted to Facebook by the expectant mum or dad. Nobody knows what the implications will be of documenting and publishing every milestone of children from the foetal stage through to their birth and beyond. We need to consider how this public profile may affect children later in their lives, given the permanence of digital records.''

Professor Lupton has joined the university's news and media research centre as one of the university's Canberra's first Centenary Professors. But she is also the mother of two girls and described herself as a ''rampant social media consumer''.

Professor Lupton said she tried to be conscious of the way her daughters would feel about her posting their images online.

She asked both her eight-year-old and her 15-year-old whether certain photos were OK.

When her eldest wanted to sign on to Facebook at the legally allowable age of 13, she agreed on the proviso they could be Facebook friends so she could see what her daughter was posting.

But she warned parents also needed to respect their children's privacy, so she didn't friend her daughter's friends and did not tag her on her own posts without asking permission first.

Most importantly, Professor Lupton maintained strict privacy settings on her page so that a simple Google search would not reveal her children's names or photos.

''In the end it comes down to a privacy and consent issue,'' she said.

''As parents, we have to take responsibility for the digital presence we create for our children. So the naked baby photo may look cute now, but how is that going to make your child feel when they are a teenager or during a job interview?''