Hallelujah! Two-year-old Ben has just eaten a mouthful of yucky carrot cunningly disguised as a face on his lunch plate, now for all to see on Facebook.

Meanwhile, under the Twitter hashtag #whatamess, Eliza, three, is just this minute enjoying an ice cream at the park. While an Instagram pic of eight-month-old Theo’s peachy bottom is all the evidence needed that his nappy rash is much better, thank you.

Scroll down any social media feed and it won’t be long before you come across similar examples of ‘sharenting’ – precious moments that parents feel are too good not to keep to themselves. Indeed, if you have kids yourself, there’s a good chance you’ve also contributed to some of the one million messages UK mothers and fathers post each month about their offspring.

Today, the average parent will post 1,000 images of their first child by the time they’re five, according to a survey of 2,000 social media users by the charity The Parent Zone.

Sharenting? More like over-sharenting…and it now starts earlier than ever, with the ultrasound photo uploaded straight from the scan. When the ‘likes’ come rolling in, we are set on a slippery slope of believing everything about our offspring is so fascinating that we keep it going until they hit Freshers’ Week.

'Getting dozens of ‘likes’ for our kids’ photos isn’t enough for our increasingly inflatable parent egos'