The [long] article goes on to talk about how information about kids and others can be posted by other sites, too, like school sports scores, class work, etc., which is also a bit creepy. But I’m stuck on the idea of parents posting hundreds of pictures of their kids from the sonogram to first steps to toilet training-- for the kids to find later… this seriously creeps me out. I’m not a parent, don’t have siblings, and I’m not on Facebook or any other social media sites. I do have a Twitter account, but I use that mostly to tweet grammatical errors to the authors of articles that I read online (when I’m not pulling the wings off of flies).
Do y’all have an opinion on this? Do you have self-imposed rules/boundaries about posting pics of your kids or other family members on various social media outlets? I’m a stranger to that strange land, but curious.
I don’t think parents should post pictures of their kids in a public way. On Facebook with a friends only setting, is ok but not like on public setting or god forbid Instagram. Honestly, parents who constantly post photos of their children annoy the hell out of me. I see it as nothing but an attempt to get as much attention as possible.
My own daughter has very few pictures on my FB mostly because since she was about 6 she’s hated it when I post her photo online. So I’ve more or less respected her wishes on that but still occasionally post a really nice or funny picture. I’d say, at nearly 11 years old, she’s go less than a dozen pictures on my FB.
A cousin we helped raise has been doing this but basically just for a couple years now; both her kids are under 3. I’m not sure I am totally against having some images, almost like a scrapbook, but the 3-7 times a week stuff is just odd. Moment Garden (?) can get almost an addiction for some parents and some of the subject material needs to be more thought out on the part of the parents.
The part that I find the most offensive about this is posting all these pictures before your kids are at an age to have any say about it at all. And then, like the kids in the article, the find out that there are already hundreds of pictures that strangers have been looking at. Are these parents not giving a thought to the fact that these pictures will be on the internet forever? Do the post with the child’s real name and city?
I agree about the “me, me, me” attention-getting part being creepy, but it’s like they don’t realize that the kids are sentient beings who will one day have an opinion about having been on public display practically from the moment of conception.
I’m of the generation that grew up with tiny black and white photos (with the scalloped edges), glued onto the black pages of a big album. Now kids have videos of themselves emerging from the womb (I might not be exaggerating…). My parents didn’t do home movies, so I didn’t see a video of myself til I was in graduate school. (It was a shock!)
Am I overreacting? I have no frame of reference for this.
From the other side of this, I’ve been posting pics of my kids on Facebook for years, as a way of sharing the photos with friends and family (all my posts on there are friends and family only)
My daughter is now 13, though, and I show them to her now before I post them, and if she says no, I don’t post it. Since I’m doing that with her, I do with my younger son Henry now as well, even though I didn’t when she was his age (he’s 9). He usually says no, so I don’t post them.
I post pics of my kids, but don’t do so publicly. My Intagram is private, and all FB posts are to a select group of people, mostly aunts and cousins and old friends. To me, done this way (selectively) it’s basically a modern-day photo album. I daresay the only people who go back and look at old pics of my kids are me and my wife and dad and kids. They enjoy looking back at the old pics (they’re 10 and 8). And there’s nothing embarrassing (no potty pics or naked booties), just some vacation pics, holiday pics, milestone pics, first day of school pics, etc.
I think this is one of the best (if not THE best) uses of FB. This way everyone can see the pics without the round-robin letter or printing multiple Christmas-letter copies of photos, which are glanced at and never looked at again. My friends who have large, scattered families use FB this way, and it’s great, provided everyone has their privacy settings locked down.
My son was 9 or 10 when I joined Facebook. With rare exception, I let him know I was going to post a picture and if he didn’t want me to, I didn’t. He rarely said no.
On the other hand, MY mother sometimes posts pictures of me on Facebook that I don’t want, without asking me first. Some from my child- and young adult-hood, some more recent. She also writes stuff that I don’t always want everyone to know about. We have had to talk about this from time to time.
As for others, I think privacy setting are a very good idea, and that parents should absolutely defer to their children’s preferences on what pictures and details of their lives should be on social media. Even if it’s something like, “I’m going to post a picture of you from X event; let me know which one,” it’s better than just posting any old photo.
Yeah, we don’t do it, and where we can, we try to prevent organizations (schools, sports teams, churches, etc…) from posting our kids online as well. Of course this isn’t a 100% effective policy, and occasional photos of them in group settings get posted now and again.
Our thinking is that it’s ultimately their choice to be online or not, and we don’t want to build some kind of online presence for our kids before they’re able to choose to do that for themselves. Too many parents who post a lot of kid pictures on Facebook seem to be doing some kind of virtue signaling or “keeping up with the Joneses” through their kids- gee, look at their oh, so cute coordinated outfits, or whatever. It’s like their way of proclaiming that they’re awesome, and good parents and whatever. As if their children don’t make messes and misbehave, etc… We don’t really care to show off or whatever on Facebook in any event, so this whole kid-as-prop thing is pretty repellent.
Also, the paranoids in us figure that the less of them that’s seen or mentioned online, the better.
My daughter created an album for my granddaughter, and it’s Friends Only. Before the baby was born, we talked about limiting her presence on line. The pictures are pretty much what one used to pull out of one’s wallet back in the olden days… except there are a lot more because digital is cheaper than getting film developed.
I try not to post too many either - I don’t want to be *that *grandmother.
Maybe I’m being paranoid but ISTM you should stop posting frequent public pictures of children when they start going to school. Maybe on special occasions. And always after the event. You never know who ends up seeing them. Can you set Facebook to restrict to whom viewers can share your pictures? Or prevent sharing altogether? Firstly there’s long-term identity theft, and then there’s the risk a predator might take an interest. The latter is low, of course, but you never know.
On a more serious note, I have some relatives whose family includes a mentally disabled teenage daughter, and their photo album included a picture of her standing next to Clifford, The Big Red Dog - with her hand over his crotch. Unfortunately, someone found this picture and it started to go bacterial, at which time they removed all the pictures of this daughter from their social media pages.
To give you some idea of how disabled this girl is, she’s 15 and does not appear to be aware of the existence of social media, and she will never be able to live independently.
Well one thing for sure is that in about 25-30 years when we have a new Supreme Court nominee, there will be no question about photographic or video evidence of their character during high school and college. It will all be there forever.
Not just a lot more and cheaper but seen (or potentially seen) by hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people over a lifetime.
Okay, thank you. **This **is what I’m talking about. And why I asked the question. And not just predators, although that’s scary enough. But these pictures stay around forever. When your kid applies for a job, or gets nominated to the Supreme Court.
The possible flip side is that having no digital presence is also seen as a bit suspect by some. I can see it being the future version of the ‘long form birth certificate’, why is there no record of this politician before the age of 18?!?
One of my friends has decided that each of his kids get one annual picture posted, taken and posted up around their birthday, and generally of them looking happy in some pretty location. Nothing else (although I’m sure he has more he ain’t sharing), until they’re old enough to get a reasonable say. Seems a fair enough compromise, if strict.
Because he’s alien spawn! Or an android! Or both! But, yeah, I see your point. It’s like how not having a credit card and paying cash for everything makes people suspicious in today’s world.
That sounds sensible and well thought-out. I don’t think a parent would regret sharing too little, but they might regret sharing too much.
Do you extend this attitude to other areas of life? If your family doctor recommends a medical procedure for your child, do you allow your pre-teen child to have veto power over that decision? Do you allow your child to decide what type of vehicle they want to ride to school in?
There is a reason why society does not allow children, even older children, to simply be on their own–their brains are not yet developed to the point where they can make wise decisions on many things. They do not yet have the life experience that is necessary for certain things. It is the role of parents to make decisions, and it is the role of children to willingly and gracefully accede to those decisions.
There are situations where young children CAN make decisions regarding things like medical treatment. Maybe the child has protuberant ears, and the parents want this remedied, but the child isn’t bothered by it? (Not an uncommon thing.) The child’s wishes are DEFINITELY considered regarding serious illness; I’ve heard of kids as young as 6 saying that they didn’t want any more cancer treatment, and these wishes must be respected, after much discussion of course, and it’s not uncommon for the child to be doing the right thing, because the treatment they were getting was futile and their QOL for the time they have left would be higher without it.
On a lighter note, I remember something I saw on Facebook, a shared post from a dad who found his teenage son’s computer on and wrote, on the boy’s page, “My son is not going to ‘roll a fatty with his boyz’ and he won’t ‘beat on a ho’s azz’ either. He’s an honor student in AP classes who was afraid of the dark until he was 12 and cried at the end of ‘Marley and Me’.”
I’ve gotten very desensitized to this. Ten years ago a woman would frequently modify her avatar, photos small in dimension, of a toddler who was of some familial relation. It did sometimes make me uncomfortable, in such a way you just can’t put your finger on precisely why. One time I brought up the subject to her in a rude manner to suggest this was morally wrong even though I didn’t really believe that. Now that I see what people will put out there on social media, my feelings are detached unless there is an apparent hazard pertaining to a photo or video that would affect a child’s welfare. If I had nieces/nephews and my sister was careless with privacy settings when posting photos of them, a certain level of personal discomfort would probably return, probably oscillating back and forth over time.
