One in five of 1,000 millennial parents canvassed in a recent survey said they had changed - or thought about changing - their baby's name based on available internet domain names.
This suggests that millennials - those aged 24 to 38 years old - understand the importance of truly "owning" a personal online presence, and are taking their children's future digital identity into account when selecting a name, South China Morning Post reports. That is according to Roger Chen, senior vice-president of Asia-Pacific for GoDaddy - the world's biggest domain name registrar, with 17 million customers and 70 million domain names - which commissioned the survey.
As an example, take fictitious parkerfuller.com. Parker's parents can grow the site with family photographs or a blog "to share the family's journey." Then, someday when Parker is older, the site will morph into his own and he can use it as a professional platform.
GoDaddy's survey, Chen says, indicates that "seven percent of millennial parents bought their child's domain name before they were born, and nearly 19 percent bought their child's domain name after they were born."
Their responses were compared with those of 1,000 Gen X parents (39- to 53-year-olds) also questioned. Gen X was less inclined to worry about whether the relevant dotcom was free; 48 percent of millennials felt it important their offspring have an online presence early in life, compared to just 27 percent of Gen X respondents.
There are several reasons why millennials may believe an online presence is so vital - important enough to have their own domain name. Many are looking at college and job applications years down the line; 48 percent cited job seeking as a potential future use for their child's website.
These people are much more comfortable online than older parents. The average child of millennials has 107 photos of themselves posted online before they can walk; one in two millennial parents pin that first ultrasound image to the intangible notice board of the web, Kopitiambot reports.
Odette Umali, the founder of Gordon Parenting in Hong Kong, is not surprised by any of this. Millennials, she says, are very tech-savvy, and this trend shows their "involvement and competitiveness" as parents. "It is an increasingly competitive world and millennials are reacting to it and thriving in it," she says.
Chen says: "Millennial parents are native internet consumers; less than 4 percent reported not having any kind of online [presence for] their children, as a way to digitally preserve childhood memories, as well as a useful tool into adulthood."
