I always think that if someone consistently has a profile picture of something other than themselves (kid, pet, car, etc.), they are hiding for some reason. Maybe they don’t like the way they look, maybe they don’t want to be found, but I just think they’re hiding behind their kid.
I think the child endangerment angle is just kind of silly.
FYI, I’m a parent, and I have pets and a cool car.
Ha! My kid is already ugly, which is why I don’t worry. Or use her picture as my FB profile pic.
Reading the other responses to this thread, it appears some people put a lot more thought into theirs and other people’s profile pics than I would have thought. To some of us it is just a picture, not a statement.
If you’re asking opinions then yeah, it does kinda make me think your posts will be a lot of what your kid ate for breakfast. But whatever, it’s not a contest, not everything on facebook has to be witty and intriguing. My photo is just me sitting on the grass. Someone emailed me and said “Here you need a profile pic.”
I think it kinda works if the photo says something about you. Like the kid is in a life vest, in a canoe, and you love camping and go every summer.
I’m also not seeing the danger with pedophiles. The chances that some random stalker will pick your kid’s photo, of all the pictures of 3 year olds on the internet, seems to me to be in the range of miniscule to none.
No facebook account, so I really do not have a dog in this fight, however upon reading the posts, I sort of have to agree that the pic on your FB account should be you, any age or something very specific to you [beer label, baby panda or baby penguin] that is very identifiable. If you have family pix you like, put them into an album for browsing. Lock it down if you are worried about the images being used to target you, your family or your property [I have heard people being concerned of pictures of their homes showing expensive art and electronics being used to target the home for robbery]
Heck, my profile picture on the forums for eve online are actually my character picture … I don’t think the guys I play with have any idea what I look like, except for the friend from Romania that met mrAru and I in Germany for vacation.
Bingo.
I have a couple albums on my FB page which contain some pics of my kids. My profile pic is a cow.
It has to be the exact same picture. It’s not going to match the same face in different pictures.
Yup, I’m a guy.
I didn’t really think about that. I have her pic up because I like seeing her pic every time I log into FB. Perhaps I’m lazy though, I could go to the photo album or whatever, I suppose. I do feel kind of weird seeing a picture of my face up every time I log in.
I don’t have a problem with it. One of my favorite FB friends has her daughter’s pic as her profile pic (when it’s not the two of them), and I don’t think the kid is any any unusual danger. Of course, her privacy settings are such that only friends can see her on FB.
In what sequence of events could this endanger your child?
If a pedophile saw this, all they know is that you have a child. News flash: you’re not the only one on Facebook who does.
If the pedophile knows you, he already knows you have a child.
If the pedophile doesn’t know you, what is he going to do? “Gee, that person 300 miles away has a child. I’ll drive out to molest her, because there aren’t any children any nearer to me.”
Otherwise, I would prefer to see a profile picture of the person in the profile, so I know what they look like.
Hm…I’m not hiding behind my kid and I don’t mind the way I look. I have pictures of myself on my FB, but I can’t really say why I don’t prefer to have a picture of myself up.
Maybe it’s something I should explore. I know it has something to do with the idea that I just don’t like seeing pictures of myself. It’s not that I’m ugly or anything like that. I’ve actually recently lost a lot of weight recently and I feel that is quite an accomplishment. Maybe it’s something residual though.
I do have an estranged brother who I’ve tried to contact (not through FB, and he’s refused all contact - primarily physical mail) and it might have something to do with that as well.
For those of you who think that there is still anything resembling online privacy, you need to check out the latest tool of the stalkerazzi - Spokeo.com
I always knew MJ had a reasonable approach to child rearing!
I probably think of it as hiding because I’m tempted to do it myself. I don’t like photos of myself either, but I force myself to use a personal photo because I know how frustrated I get when I can’t find someone or see the people I’m friends with. A lot of my Facebook friends are old friends from high school, and I really like seeing what they look like now. I really don’t care about their kids.
I think it depends on what you use Facebook for. Most of my “friends” on FB are family, immediate and extended. We’re spread all over the world and Facebook is a great way for us to keep up with each other. This is my primary use, as opposed to connecting with long ago friends and classmates. I do have a few friends who are childhood friends, college friends, and local friends (who mostly have kids the same age as mine), but my “audience” is mostly people who are more interested in seeing my kids’ pictures than me :). I have a picture of me up right now, but I’ve also had cartoons of random things, wedding pictures (from a decade ago), childhood photos of me, and pictures of my kids.
The more that I think about this, the more that I think it might be related to hiding. I have videos of myself on the net and multiple pictures. Yet, on social network places I tend not to put up photos of myself.
I think I would be irritated if my brother was trying to look me up and found some photos of me. I’m not sure why though. I mean, it might be because I can’t find pics of him and it’s some sort of elaborate ‘tit for tat’ type thing.
I think I might force myself to post a pic this weekend or something. Get over the taboo.
What does being a parent have to do with it? It’s supposed to be a picture of you. Would you put a picture of your child on an online dating profile? As your passport photo? As part of an acting resume? It’s not creepy, it just misses the point. If I were a parent my profile picture would probably be a picture of me with my child.
I have a kid. I also have an identity, a life, and a face of my own.
Honestly, I find it irritating as hell when people’s facebook profile pictures are of their kids. I don’t mind if your kid is IN the picture, but your profile picture should be of you. Of course, I usually wind up hiding people who use their kids as their profile picture, since as a rule all their status updates are also about their kids, and I don’t care. If I did, I’d be facebook friends with their kids.
This x 1000.
I have two kids who I adore. They are free to start their own FB sites (my daughter has one now).
I’m always a little skeeved out by someone who has a picture of their kid(s) as a profile pic for two reasons:
I’d just be confused if I saw that.
Though I saw a lot of people using symbols or photos or other things. I used to do that myself. That I don’t mind, but using an actual person that you know seems to miss the point since that kid could just have their own Facebook profile.
Pretty much this on the endangering part. Sure, some random stranger could find out that you have a kid, but I really don’t see how that puts your child in any appreciable risk. Really, if they have enough information to figure out that it’s you without your picture, then they can easily find out all kinds of other information.
And more, say they hook up that picture to some other information. How will that endanger her? So maybe they find out she goes to a certain school, but so do hundreds of other kids. So, unless they are specifically targetting you, then I don’t see how it’s dangerous and, as I said above, if they are specifically targetting you or your, there are much easier ways to find out useful information about you.
I also dont’ get why it’s somehow skeevy. How is it indicative that someone has no role outside of being a parent? If I have a picture up of myself at a particular party, does it indicate that I must be a drunk? If I have a picture up of me at the Rennaissance Festival, does it mean I have no life outside of some nerdish obsession with that time period? Any picture can only represent a portion of who one is, so I really don’t get how it somehow shows a lack of a personal identity in some cases, but not others.
As for whether it’s stupid or weird… meh. It’s supposed to represent you, it doesn’t have to look like you. If you’re a parent, then your child is certainly representative of an aspect of who you are, so I don’t see what’s wrong with it.
Further, for those concerned that it will make you harder to search, unless your name is John Smith, I don’t see how it makes it that much more difficult. First, many people will look a lot different now than they did whenever that person knew them. If you’re 10-15+ years out of high school, then it’s not unlikely that a picture of you is no help to them. In the few cases that I was looking for someone from high school, I found it much easier to figure out who was who based on common friends and what networks they were in, and not the picture. If they’re someone you knew when you’re a kid, then chances are it’s no help at all.
Besides, chances are they’ll get a handful of people that fit a particular set of search parameters and, of those, they can eliminate several based on their pictures or other information and they’re done to a small number of possibilities. At that point, if they’re not willing to send a short message like “hey, I’m so-and-so and I think I might know you from such-and-such, but I couldn’t tell from your picture.” If they’re not willing to do that, then chances are they’d just be one of those random friends that you never talk to anyway, in which case, who cares?
TLDR: No and no.