TORONTO - It will likely be a few more years before her children will send out emails, instant messages and tweets, but Michelle Branco has already given them a head start in establishing their digital footprint.

She has set up Gmail accounts for her six-year-old daughter and four-year-old son to ensure they'll be able to have email addresses bearing their names, which are increasingly difficult to obtain.

"When I mentioned that (I did that) to someone the other day they said, 'I hadn't even thought of that,"' said Branco, who runs the blog www.mamabear.ca covering subjects including breastfeeding, parenting and health.

"For a lot of people it doesn't even cross their minds, whereas because I'm in it all the time, some of this stuff seems more important to me than it might to the person that doesn't use it."

After attending a recent panel on social media and the family, the Toronto mother decided to register domain names for her children as well.

"Honestly, I'd never even thought of it before and I thought, 'You know what? That's probably not a bad idea,' so I went out and did it the next day," she said.

"I thought, 'You know, it's something that I can reserve for them now, and if they want to use it later they can use it. And if not, it's only 10 bucks a year, so it's not a lot of money wasted," she added, noting that the kids may want to have a future online presence with a dot.com or blog.

Registering email accounts for children isn't a new concept for Benjamin Errett, first-time father to a baby girl.

"It's actually a bit of a family tradition when we have a new kid to set up a Gmail account for them and then CC them on getting together," said Errett, managing editor of features at the National Post and author of the memoir "Jew and Improved: How Choosing to be Chosen Made Me a Better Man." "In the event they can actually get to that when they grow up, it will be amusing to see."

Many children already have an online presence early on from parents posting images or videos of their little ones on social media pages or sharing them with loved ones via email and digital photo albums. Yet by registering customized accounts, domain names and profiles in their names for future use, some tech-conscious parents are giving their kids a digital jump-start.

An online survey for Internet security company AVG released last fall found 81 per cent of kids under the age of two currently have some kind of digital profile or footprint, with images of kids posted online. In Canada, that percentage surpassed the average, at 84 per cent. Canadian moms ranked first among respondents who uploaded prenatal scans online at 37 per cent.

The research conducted by Research Now polled 2,200 mothers in North America, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and the U.K.

While the percentages of mothers who registered online accounts in their babies' names were comparatively lower, Canadian moms polled topped the averages in those categories.

Nine per cent of Canadians gave their baby an email address, compared to seven per cent overall. Meanwhile, eight per cent of Canadian moms gave a social network profile to their tyke, compared to the overall average of five per cent.

Rebecca Brown is creative director and founder of marketing and media company Bunch Family, which started off producing unique events for parents and kids in Toronto. Bunch Family co-presented "The Social Family: How Social Media is Changing Family Life" panel during Social Media Week in Toronto.

"When people want information about us for jobs, they're looking for our digital footprint," said Brown.

"That's a legacy, that's a thing to have and to grow into is your own domain name, a Twitter handle with your name, a Facebook profile with your name. And those things will probably become increasingly rare as more and more people are using those channels and those social media platforms."

Whether registering a domain name, email account or online profile, for some parents, helping children establish an online presence is comparable to an RESP -- something that's there for them when they need it, said Brown, mother to a six-year-old son and two-year-old daughter.

Also, there may be some parents using such tools to archive photo, video and anecdotal content for their children to share with friends or family, she noted.

"Whether or not those tools are the tools that everyone is going to be using (in the future), right now really everyone is on there," Brown said.

"It's sort of like you're stamping space out for your kid because the likelihood is in 20 years they won't be able to register a domain in their name. That domain will not be available. Ditto Twitter. Ditto Facebook."

Toronto psychotherapist Alyson Schafer said she doesn't think parents' early enthusiasm in digital media is any different compared to enthusiasm for education, potty training or other milestones.

"I think we're just sort of hyper-parenting in all areas," she said. "I think they just think that it's like the same way you can get a wooden footstool that steps up to the bathroom tap with your name put on it. ... I think that's just the digital way of customizing now."