Children, consent, and control in Persian social media

Background: Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X have redefined the norms of sociality, identity performance, and participation in the public sphere.Aims: This study examines how Persian-language users on X negotiate the visibility of children in online spaces through affective discourse and vernacular governance.Methodology: Analyzing 2,392 posts, we identify seven thematic formations—ranging from family blogging and sharenting to screenshot-based mockery, celebrity child cultures, and rights-based critiques. Using a hybrid methodological approach combining high-recall data retrieval, supervised multi-label topic modeling, and sentiment–intensity analysis, we map how practices like quote-tweeting and screenshotting structure public debates around parental branding, childhood agency, privacy, and consent. Central to this ecosystem is the culturally specific figure of “Arat’s father”, a discursive shorthand for the commodification of childhood under platform economies.Findings: The findings reveal a layered affective landscape where humor, outrage, and pedagogical neutrality coexist, enabling users to police age norms and negotiate ethical boundaries in real time.Conclusion: This study reveals how ordinary users in Iran and Persian-speaking contexts regulate childhood visibility through platform affordances, emotional repertoires, and normative claims. It also proposes a reproducible pipeline for analyzing culturally specific digital publics with methodological transparency and ethical sensitivity.