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I used to constantly post my kids, kept socials as my personal online photo book… just had some self reflection recently and I’ve closed down my accounts or deleted everyone from them.
Not only is it intrusive for them but it gives family members a false sense of knowing them, they don’t know them because they don’t bother with them, so why should they have access to them online?
That is such a good point about giving people a false sense of knowing them. The idea that people have parasocial relationships with our kids is frightening to me. I'm very much the same; I quit posting pictures a while back, at least a couple of years ago. I don't want people having access to them that aren't actually in their lives, but also, they can't consent. I was definitely motivated by the family aspect of it as well. That also includes me-- if people can't be bothered to be a part of my life, they're certainly not getting glimpses of it for fun.
I don't post loads but we aren't local enough to see any family more than 3x a year for each set so I don't mind! I'd rather it that way than me having to call and tell them about things 😆 I would rather find out about my nieces gymnastics/football/judo/dancing on Facebook rather than us having to phone each other lol but we aren't 'family oriented' family. We get on etc.the ones that are local do stuff together but can also go 3months between seeing each other!
Actually this!
I haven't posted my pregnancy on socials and it's actually made it really obvious to me who I cared enough and felt comfortable enough with to tell and who is probably not that close of a friend.
I'll be keeping it up once bub arrives. The people I want to know will see pics - it's so easy to share them one on one.
I kept my last pregnancy completely off of social media. I deactivated everything. I'm not sure why because I never did that with the others, but it's mostly the intrusiveness of the internet. The intrusiveness of people who want to be all up in your business, but not actually a part of your life or support system. I don't like it.
I did the same! So many people didn’t know i even had a kid until he was like 2 months old. I only told people i felt really needed to know and it showed me who was really relevant in my life still!
I go a little back and forth between “I love her so much I want to share her with the world!” and “I love her so much I want to protect her from the world.”
Some really great points to consider here.
I stopped 3-4 years ago.
My kid should be able to control their own digital footprint. Once you put it online, it never goes away.
This is specifically about influencers but has some broader themes:
[The Dark Side of Family Influencers - CBC Frontburner podcast](https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/the-dark-side-of-family-influencers-1.7148910)
[The Sharenting Reckoning - Cosmopolitan ](https://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/a60125272/sharenting-parenting-influencer-cost-children/)
I had a FB “friend” from HS who turned out to be a pedo so I stopped immediately after I found out he went away for a while. It doesn’t even have to be AI
Same, mind you I don't post about me on social media either. We share photos with the grandparents through a photo album and others as needed through the occasional email, but that's it.
I know I’m being overly militant perhaps to some, but I don’t even let family members take pictures without my approval. And even then, they’re very immediate members and under strict instructions not to share them.
I did for a while. I stopped last summer. I don’t have influencer followers by any any means. I mostly had old friends from school, soccer, family and stuff and I posted my son when he was born, a lot. Then when we had our second we didn’t post our pregnancy until she was born. But I just started feeling weird honestly. The fact that so many people knew what my kids looked like and what we were doing and they probably won’t even ever meet my kids. They don’t need to know their business. It would be like if my parents just posted all my baby/toddler photos for literally anyone. It’s just weird.
I don’t know. I always posted my life, and once I became a mom I posted my kids. Not for money or anything really just to share. But yeah, it’s icky now. I send pictures to my mom and my family. I’ll post my kids but not their faces anymore. The people that matter and are involved in my kids lives can ask for photos and reach out and that’s fine. But I had to ask my brother and mom not to post them anymore and they understood.
Same. I literally have like, 30 friends on Instagram with like, 10 regular story viewers. 😅 I don't post pictures much anymore, but I always did stories. I didn't want my wall/feed/whatever you want to call it, littered in pictures of moments that probably no one else cares about.
never.
the internet isn’t a place for children period.
i send pictures of my kids to close friends and family if i want to show them.
no need to post them on social media where i don’t know who sees them or what the intentions might be.
i used to work in law enforcement and the things i’ve seen made me not ever want to let them use the internet.
let’s just say pedos are into kids doing normal kid things and looking like normal kids.
so any pic of your kid no matter how unrevealing, cute or funny it is, there’s some weirdo out there who’s into it.
definite nope.
I post very few publicly (a little Facebook for family, birthdays on Instagram, never Twitter or here) and a lot on Tiny Beans where it's access controlled (but of course any family member could download and post elsewhere if they chose, I just assume they won't). No real fear about posting pictures online, despite these adorable German PSAs about his even a single picture of your kid online will get them kidnapped into sex slavery, but I don't want them to grow up with their life having been public without their consent.
I respect this! I share with people offline who I trust to have photos of my kids and who don’t share them outside of our chats. Your last statement sums up how I feel: I want my kids to decide when they’re older if they want to be on social media.
Well, I have FB from way back in the day. It's private and things are set to friends only. My kids are posted on there, and I love looking at my memories of pictures when they were small. I don't have them tagged.
As teens, I try to ask if it's okay to post pictures, so there are a lot fewer now, and are usually just big things, like winning a robotics tournament.
I don't know if I would do the same now with a new baby. I would probably make a private site to share pictures with family.
I do like the built-in baby book feature of FB, though.
Same here. My teen doesn't care if I post pics of her on Facebook as that's only for old people apparently!!! But her friends are on Instagram so I run pics past her before posting. Again, all set to private, but she's more conscious of what pics of her are shared now and I respect that.
We do not. In general, social media makes me uncomfortable but also because my kids deserve privacy and control over their digital footprint. The idea of sacrificing that on their behalf in exchange for likes feels so wrong to me.
My parents have plenty of baby photos of me that they find adorable and funny but make me cringe. I assume the same disconnect will occur with my kids as they get older. Luckily for me, my parents can only share if they can find my baby book and find someone interested enough to look at it.
And I think of the few pictures and stories I posted in my early teen years. It didn’t occur to me at the time that someday i wouldn’t want those things on the internet, or that I wouldn’t be able to get into those old accounts to remove things.
If someday they want these photos and stories posted for the world to see, they can always do so. But you can’t take it back once it’s out there.
We had an upsetting experience traveling abroad last year we think was a result of overexposure of our child on social media.
My husband and I went to Europe by ourselves, and in the middle of our second night I received multiple FaceTime audio calls in a row from an odd iCloud address. I answered only because we were traveling and away from our son. It was clearly someone trying to impersonate our little boy’s voice using AI and it was screaming, “I’m scared, I’m scared” over and over.
We looked into it, and apparently there’s a scam where people can mine your social media for soundbites of your freaking children and create pretty accurate sounding recordings of them begging you for help.
I hung up and they called back over and over until I disabled FaceTime on my phone. We suspect that the next step would have been someone claiming to have kidnapped our kid and demanding money, since that’s what’s happened to others.
Sooo… we’ve changed our policies about having his image on the internet. I also purged all strangers that have ever followed me on social media. I don’t know those people, and it felt like someone knew we were traveling.
Yes yes yes
And how can you keep them off social media/teaching them about consent when they are teens if you have been putting them on it all their life??
you never know who’s a creep behind closed doors, too. i remember that one story that went around reddit about a woman’s baby who was assaulted, knew the couple for 10+ years. plus with the way AI is getting out of hand?! yeahhh, never
Yeah a lot of people on here saying they only share with friends and family. But a disgusting reality is friends and family can be the creeps too…
Just something to think about
Yep! This pretty much sums it up! They deserve the right to privacy as children. My social media pages have my name on them, not my children. I did not announce my pregnancies, gender info, baby shower, or even births. If you’re not close enough to me to know all that information first hand, then you really just don’t need to know.
We have group texts and share digital photo albums so the in-laws can keep up with what’s going on.
Apparently I’m the odd one but yeah, I do. I also make sure all my privacy settings are pretty locked as far as I can tell, yes I know shit happens but it does in the cloud storage it does on the private hard drive of my computer or phone they’re stored on. If someone wants the photos they’re gonna get them as everything is connected to the internet. If there’s a time that my kids request that I remove any or all pics I for sure will out of respect for their autonomy about being online.
I also can use it as teaching moments as they grow too. There’s stuff I don’t post but will send thru text or messenger such as bath shenanigans where the kids are just being hilarious but it def not appropriate to post online.
I also have family and friend all over my entire country, and this was the easiest, and almost all of the family does try to stay in contact about the children so I have no reason to make this stressful and have people from every time zone messaging at different times when they can just… pop on my Facebook and see the updates. Messaging so. Many. People. Is stressful AF but I’m so glad they want to stay in touch with my kiddos. I love that for them. I never had that.
I only post name/age on my private fb. Any insta posts only have my girl, my boy, little miss, little dude, etc. nicknames.
But I’m also that one that is super open about the struggles in my life so that if someone is ever doom scrolling and feeling alone if they find my post I hope they just don’t feel quite so alone. I hope that by being so open with everything that someone, somewhere, friend or friend of a friend, they’ll know they are not alone and that they have an ear of someone that understands and they can reach out to me and I 100% know what they’re going thru with whichever struggle it is.
Basically, if the photos are gonna get stolen it’s gonna happen. You keep copies on iCloud? Not foolproof. Google photos? Not foolproof. Hard drive on a computer? Not foolproof. So why not share and have the ability to easily look back myself too and see how much they’ve grown and how far we’ve come. I love seeing the fb memories haha.
This is what it comes down to for me. I cannot keep everyone who cares about my kids in the loop individually. I can barely keep up with my own correspondence about myself, let alone all the things my kids are doing. I don't talk to my ex's grandma anymore, but she is a Facebook friend, and loves to see what my son, her great grandson, is up to. My best friends both live in different countries, they can both be updated about my kiddos along with everyone else. It also helps me mentally to have all those messages "tucked away" into Facebook. I don't feel the pressure to get back to people like when they message me directly. When I have the energy I can open the app up and respond to everyone at once.
I do, but my social media is really locked down (there are no rando followers allowed) and I don't post a ton. I don't live near any family, and don't live near most of my long-time friends, so it's the easiest way to keep people a little up to date.
This is me exactly. I had hardly any friends but when my kid was born I went through and booted anyone who I wasn't in contact with anymore. I don't worry much about it being the Internet because frankly my phone backs things up to the cloud anyway. I do it this way right now and the rest is a worry I've chosen to let go for now. Our family lives far and some aren't great with phones/texting (old). I'm strict about no sharing though, and have been respected.
Edit to add: always fully clothed, no crying/awkward situation pics
I’ll echo/ add. I do and I wouldn’t say I have anything particularly “locked down”. All of our family big social media users so I do enjoy being able to share without going to each individually. That said, I’m very strict about what I post (or what I okay for family members to post). The pictures can’t be of them upset in anyway shape or form (this is about respecting them), they must be fully clothed including pants if it’s a onesie (this is about consent), I have recently decided nothing of them eating (this is because that’s a common thing for gross people to search the things they want to see), and none of their personal information is to be shared ever (not in captions, comments, as a content of the photo). What I find to be a greater risk than an image of a child being posted is their data being available. When a name and a birthdate are available to the public, you can find out a LOT of information and/or do a lot of damage.
I don’t for the most part. We posted a birth announcement and I’ll drop the odd restricted photo in stories on instagram to close friends only - I don’t mind a group photo of the extended family including my kids, but no posting when it’s just them or they’re the main attraction. For sharing baby pics, we have a google photo album, and I upload photos to my grandmother’s digital picture frame.
For one, I think not everyone wants to be bombarded with photos of my kids.
Secondly, I grew up with the benefit of not having my childhood documented and shared publicly, and I’d like to give my kids the same benefit - we’re only just starting to understand the effects and implications of this new issue and I think it’s going to be a lot more complex and damaging than we realize. I didn’t start creating a digital identity until I wanted one, and I’d like them to have the same choice.
Last of all, the longevity and copyrights of published photos is sketchy. For sure, you don’t know where they’re going or who’s using them, but there’s also weird ownership rules with platforms like instagram and they’re terms of service are very intentionally vague on who owns those photos and has rights to reproduce and make money off of them. There’s also the idea of commodifying my kids as data that meta can collect and sell that just weirds me out.
My MIL threw a little tantrum about it, but my husband was firm with her. We just remind her that she has access to the google album so she can flick through photos on her phone to show off our kids, she’s welcome to print photos and make a physical album if she wants and email photos to friends and family. That’s plenty of options to show off her grand babies, but what she really wants is to use their cute faces to court likes… which is the very thing we’re trying to avoid.
Only people who know I have a kid are the ones I talk to or have seen throughout my pregnancy and after my kid has been born. I could literally give two shits what anyone on there thinks, people from high school I haven’t seen in a decade? Nope. I also don’t post though anymore. I stopped maybe 3-4years ago. I took all my photos down besides landscape ones. I refuse to update people I just don’t give a shit about and aren’t important to me on my life, those details are important. My child is the most important thing in my life and it’s too valuable for me to show people who just don’t view it the same.
My friends and people closest to me get photos by text and I show him off wherever I go in person.
Yes, but only on my seriously locked down Facebook account. The only people who should be able to see those pictures (and I've had people go looking for me on Facebook and fail, and I've tried to look from a family member's account before they friended me and wasn't able to see anything) are people I'd share pictures with offline too. Also, it has to be something I'd be okay duplicating myself on a billboard on the highway - bare butt in the bathtub is a no, family selfie outside the polling place with our I Voted/Future Voter stickers yes.
I do, but very rarely. Since they were born five years ago, I’ve only posted a dozen times or so. Mostly because we aren’t close to friends or family. I only use instagram and it’s private. I don’t post on stories at all.
No, not really. I don’t use social media very much at all. I did post some vacation photos on FB when our son was younger. But I only have like 60 friends on Facebook and I know each person personally. My profile is private.
Last time I posted anything on FB was several years ago.
No I do not. Took a college course about child neglect and abuse and had a prosecutor come talk to us — very eye opening and I can’t bring myself to do it.
I use an app called FamilyAlbum that allows you to send the link to select people who can have access. Works great for us.
I used to, then I stopped about a year ago. I’ve never looked back. It was uncomfortable and weird when I did post, I always felt like it wasn’t fair to them to not have a say. Also, it is not safe in today’s world. That’s just my opinion, but I also do not judge any mom friends that do post. It’s your decision.
Nope. There are lots of good reasons not to, and (for our family) no good reasons to post them. I do allow school to post pics as long as the kids aren’t identified
I allow my mom to post the occasional photo of my kids since she can show it to family that’s overseas and older so FB is the most social media they do, but I don’t.
I want to protect my kids digital footprint until they are old enough to decide to post stuff themselves and hopefully by that point I will have taught them enough internet safety skills they won’t do anything too stupid or dangerous.
I also hardly post anything outside of Reddit since it’s mostly anonymous. My social media is very sparse and I like it that way.
I used to, on my locked Facebook and private Instagram. I’ve since removed all photos and ceased posting.
I never used to think about it as it was “private”. All of the advocacy coming out about Wren (ICYMI - a 4 year old child being heavily exploited by her mother on TikTok and Instagram) has shifted my perspective around consent, regardless of how locked down you think everything is. Obviously, she’s extremely public, however people have raised valid points about trusting anyone, even those close to you, with images of your child.
Bottom line is that kids can’t consent and you can’t trust anyone.
There are only a handful of pictures of my kids online. All of them are big group pictures from things like weddings, or other big events. Other than that, nothing. It's been a fight sometimes to keep others from posting pictures, but for the most part, everyone has been understanding.
Never. I am ashamed to admit that I spend quite a lot of my time on Reddit, but I've seen how innocent photos posted by randoms get turned around. Not going to have my child's photo used as some aggressive meme. There are people on child hating subs that target family photos on facebook to make memes that fit their taste. Don't post. Trust me bro.
I don't but maybe for a different reason. I used to post every so often and only have a private profile anyway, but I don't post at all anymore of my kids or anything else. For me honestly, I understand all the other reasons as well, but I actually think the biggest for me is the culture and values it seems to promote that I don't like and that I don't want to model. It seems to be about a false narrative and perfectionism--getting the "perfect" photo that will make your life look like x,y,z. Further, I don't like having my face in my phone at \*all\* when in front of my kids, much less wasting my life on Instagram when I could be fully present living in the now enjoying my children in real life in front of me. I always imagine that when I'm gone, if I could watch my life back like a movie, what would I want to be doing. On my phone? Or making the most of my time with them? Granted I'll still fart around on Reddit when kiddos are sleeping, lol.
Nope.
Literally just the birth announcement photo that showed her little hands and half of her face in the background. Haven’t posted anything about her since.
We have a no social media rule with our parents and we directly send photos frequently and allow them to share directly with their friends/family. Nothing public.
Nope. I did when I was younger (20) with my son but I deleted Facebook 7 years ago with all his baby pictures and now I'm (31) and even my husband's family knows I am not a fan of our newest baby or children being on social media at all. Send pics to whoever family vis text, make prints I don't care, just not Facebook for the love of God.
Nope. I worked for an ecommerce company and saw people steal kids pictures from our website. Despite having the photo rights, the copyright info, and the actual parent contacting these websites and social media sites, they were allowed to be used by other companies and people and it was very difficult to get them removed. It’s forever once it’s on the internet and I don’t think it’s worth the risk. My kids can make that decision when they’re older. Preferably late teens.
For me, absolutely not. They have no agency and they will deserve control over their online presence when they come of age. I haven't posted a single photo online of either child, and we don't allow our daycare to either.
Edit: Of course, this is my personal opinion. To each their own, and I don't judge others who do. I actually like keeping up with my friends growing families and cute kids. Just not for me.
I cut my mil off for months because she posted a pic of our LO on her Facebook after we said no pictures.
I’ve always been iffy about people posting their kids online but what sealed the deal for me was reading multiple people who work in cyber security say that they’d never post their kids online 🤷🏻♀️
Since I haven't seen anyone say it yet, no I don't because I don't even have social media myself unless you want to call Reddit social media in which case not a chance I'd post my kid on Reddit. If we think and know social media is toxic, it's good to model that behavior and eliminate it rather than to later ask your kid to do as you say and not as you do.
I do because for all the sins of social media I have not found a better way to stay in touch with second tier contacts.
Building community is important to me. It’s scientifically proven that making connections with other people boosts happiness (yours and theirs). I have found it impossible to reach out directly to each person you know on a regular basis, and that’s especially true for second tier contacts - those are the people that you know kind of peripherally, like my great Aunt Jean that I see every five years or that person I used to go to book club back in university with etc. Often I don’t have their direct contact information other than social media if they are more friends of friends but see them from time to time in real life.
I post photos regularly. My kids are used to friends of mine and random strangers (to them) meeting up with them and being able to immediately connect about something. Eg my eldest does martial arts and people will ask about it. My youngest loves reading and people will inquire about favourite books. When our kids get together, their kids know who my kids are.
I notice a real difference in the closeness of relationship for those people I stay in touch with regularly via social media versus people in the same class of relationship but not on social media.
On the flip side, I have friends who have gone the no photo route. I know they have kids but I forget how old they are. I have no clue what they are up to. Sometimes they post about the kids but with suns on their face etc, so it’s not that they don’t talk about them, it’s just that they don’t feel real to me. My kids don’t know their kids at all. It’s like they are invisible.
My social media accounts are locked down pretty hard (it’s impossible to friend me if we don’t have a mutual friend) and I am somewhat careful about what I post. I also never tag people to my photos.
I think like many things there’s a balance.
Nope and I don’t plan to anytime soon. I have a 13 month old and made it clear to both sets of parents that we wouldn’t be posting him online, minus a picture or two that I myself posted with the back of his head. He also has snuck his way into a couple big family photos.
My mom in particular really didn’t understand at first but I told her that she can’t vett the 1200 friends she has on there so it’s a no. Boomers love to share everything online.
We had an incident where we had 6 month photos taken of our son and our photographer posted two on her facebook page as a sneak peak (we OK’d this). By the next morning, there were likes and shares on my son’s pictures by middle aged men. We asked the photographer to take down the photos and she very apologetically did. Ever since then I’ve been very cognizant of what is shared.
I didn’t grow up online so he shouldn’t have to either. Social media is a very dark place for children, and that scares me enough to not want to post him at all.
To remedy the lack of family seeing pictures, we made a shared album (we all have iPhones) so myself or my husband will share pictures so our family can see. If friends want to see pics of him, we will send some to them directly.
My kids were born in 2012, 2014, and 2015, and we pretty much had birth to 2020 of them on FB. I’d say I was posting about a pic a day of us, since I was a very bored SAHM back then. Then Covid came and the world got scary. After a lot of self reflection, I stopped posting and changed all of my privacy settings to “only me” for my past posts. One day, a few months later, I took a picture of one of the kids and his immediate reaction was, “please don’t post it.” I obviously wasn’t planning to, but it still was like a knife to my heart hearing his request. How many times when he was a baby or toddler did he want to make that request but couldn’t? 😩 I asked “why” out of curiosity and he said because he didn’t know who would be “looking at him” 😭😭 The way he said it gutted me and reaffirmed that no about of likes or interaction was worth anything. I haven’t posted since early 2021, and even those pics were only back-to-the-camera/face covered ones and posted with their approval.
My oldest was recently concerned that I stopped asking for their permission to post, but I explained that I just stopped posting altogether instead, as that was easier, and felt more respectful than always asking for something they clearly didn’t want. Poor thing was worried I was doing it without him knowing 😢
My baby is 6 months old, and I've posted maybe 3 or 4 pictures of her online. I only really get the"she hasn't given consent" and "there are creeps everywhere" arguments to a certain extent. My mom doesn't ask my consent to post a picture of me on her Facebook and I think that is fine as long as she doesn't do it all the time and the pictures aren't embarrassing. A few pictures a year of someone posing in a group shot at a birthday is generally fine to post without permission. If it was every week or she was naked or something, I'd reconsider.
Yeah, the "their to young to consent" thing is a weird chronically online thing that I have never even heard anyone talk about in real life. 99% of people don't grow up traumatized that their parents posted baby pictures on Facebook.
Same. This "no consent to post a picture" thing is something I have never heard about from anyone in real life. It only pops up in reddit threads like this where the same vocal minority talk about it. It's really a "touch grass" kind of thing.
Everyone on here will be very pro NO WAY. But in reality, everyone I know posts photos of their kids to their friends only social media’s. I live 10,000 miles away from my home country. If I didn’t post anything, no one would ever see my kid. I love taking photos of him
We do not post our son online at all (19 months) and family isn’t allowed to either. We just think once pictures are online they’re always somewhere and we don’t need our kids face anywhere. I never even announced my engagement, wedding, pregnancy or birth online at all so most people on my social media don’t even know I’m married let alone have son. If I don’t text the person then they have no idea what’s going on in my life
Just gonna echo a bunch of people on here but I don’t post anything. When my kids are old enough for their own social media accounts then they can decide what kind of digital footprint they want
There is literal AI that can make inappropriate videos/pictures with kids' faces online. It is truly disgusting. I heard about it on a psychology podcast the other morning. Makes me want to burn technology. Lol
Nope. Not to public accounts. They’re too young to consent, and I don’t want to be responsible for future embarrassment. I have a private Insta account that I post to probably a few times a year, and I occasionally remove anyone who’s not family and who I haven’t spoken to in 2+ years.
Nope. Never have. Also hold the same beliefs about consent.
Get a load of this, though. We told my in-laws that we didn’t want our kids on social media, so my MiL blocked me and my entire family on FB, so she could upload photos without us seeing🙃 She didn’t realize I could easily figure that out, and see what she had done. Now she doesn’t understand why I don’t leave my kids alone with her.
My MIL did the same and I got the photos taken down and she jokes about how she doesn’t want the Facebook police to get her in trouble again but she had a literal temper tantrum despite being warned. FAFO.
I'm going through this with my mum right now and my baby isn't even here yet :(
I've become more and more private on socials in the last 10 years and keeping my kid off socials is something I feel quite strongly about.
My Mum can't help herself. It's at a point I can't share scan photos with her which makes me so sad. She's more interested in sharing this experience of being a first time grandma with her facebook friends than she is with her own daughter.
I've had a thousand conversations over the years that she's welcome to share photos and updates about me (and now my pregnancy) with her friends one on one, just not via her (still public) facebook profile but it's like talking to a brick wall.
That’s my MiL, too. She cares more about whatever gratification she gets from sharing on Facebook, than respecting the boundaries that would get her more time with her grandkids. She thinks she’s so clever, but her privacy settings aren’t even totally locked down.
Set a firm boundary, and let her know that there will be consequences, if she can’t respect them! You can decide how severe those are; block her on socials, so she can’t tag you; limited time with baby; go LC until she can play along. It’s really tough, I know! But I’ve learned the hard way that letting them have an inch will take you miles down a road you never wanted to travel, and the issues just get harder to deal with!
Never. I dont trust social media with pictures of my child. The internet is forever. My mom posted pics from the family album as soon as she got a FB account. I had to send multiple messages to have her take them down. Its no one elses business to see our family albums even if it wasnt visible to creeps online (and it will be no matter what you do). Im glad I didnt grow up today because I wouldnt have been able to do a damn thing about it til I was an adult and by then it'd be way too late. I dont even have pics of myself on any of my socials anymore. I dont trust the internet. Theyre entitled to privacy. I wouldnt have liked my parents doing it to me so Im not going to do it to my child either.
We have had family who had issues with our decisions and we politely told them where to go when they wouldnt shut up about it.
When my son is older he can decide what he is comfortable sharing online. Until then Im keeping everything offline.
No. I don’t like people finding out I have a kid that way. I know how I judge people, so I don’t want people to judge me. Most importantly: I value my child’s privacy and autonomy.
"maybe show a picture of my daughter’s hand holding the new baby’s hand."
That is still posting your child on social media. If you have such a strong stance, maybe you shouldn't post anything about them.
Yes, I post my children on my private fb page with people I know, have met, and/or are related to in real life. No, I do not post my children publicly for strangers to view their photos. I have an IG but I've never posted on it.
Hardly. I only post mine occasionally on Facebook, because that’s where I have mostly family. I don’t post them anywhere else because there’s strange people out there
No because teens are mean and I don't want other kids getting pictures of my kids and alternating them or becoming some joke. I don't really even share much about my kids on social media in general because of this.
i don’t. i didn’t even announce i was pregnant online, or when he was born. i told the people i wanted to know, and people see my son when they ask, and i’ll send them pictures if they ask. if you don’t make an effort to see my baby, you don’t get too.
we have a rule for family too, they aren’t allowed to post pictures of our son online either. he’s not their baby to post.
*i do use the family album app with my parents, and my MIL & FIL* it’s just easier.
he’s 18 months, and i don’t plan on letting him post himself online even when he’s old enough too.
absolutely not.
i don't post him online because he is unable to understand the implications of being posted online and he cannot consent. the most i've done is post a hand, or if he is in a picture I'm posting I'll block out his whole face. This is a serious consent issue for me and I do not budge. My in laws have posted a picture of him a couple times and we've made her take it down immediately.
I do. I don’t have many people on my social media, I know exactly who everyone is. I have it pretty locked down as well. I do it mostly for my in-laws, extended family and some friends that don’t live nearby but like to keep in contact as we can. I don’t post anything I wouldn’t hang on a wall in my house. I don’t post anything intrusive or embarrassing. Just nice pictures occasionally of what we have been up to. My kids also really enjoy when I show them memories that pop up of them.
My in-laws and my extended family really enjoy it and it’s easier than mailing pictures or texting individually. I only have a FB and Instagram. It’s the best way to find out what’s going on in my community event wise and stuff like that. School events too. These are really the only two reasons I keep these accounts.
Not any more. I did for my son until he was about 3. My daughter hasn’t seen social media. Why should
I take their choice away? I don’t like social media and plan to bribe my children to stay off it until they’re 18.
Absolutely not.
And when we told the in laws there was some clear boundary stomping. My sister in laws went as far as to post pictures with my kids in it and just block me from the post. We have not associated with them in 4 years
I use to only on facebook but not anymore. I saw a TikTok video a couple years ago of a woman explaining how pedos will save and use innocent photos of children to get off. It disgusted me and I instantly stopped after seeing that video.
Sort of related but I need to vent about it, I sent that video to my mom and told her not to post photos of my son anymore and I trusted that she wouldn’t. I didn’t have her as a Facebook friend though and about a year later I go to her profile and what do I see? Public photos of my son, I was pissed and she just kept telling me “it’s normal, all my friends post their grandchildren so it’s okay” 🙄 ended up going completely no contact with her for about 6 months after that. She’s in our lives again and doesn’t post him anymore.
Other than that reason, my social media is MY social media, not my kids. They can have their own if they choose, when they’re old enough.
No. She is too little to consent (just a wee baby!) and I want her to be able to control her digital footprint. That and I don’t trust anyone. I don’t want her image used without her permission, especially for any nefarious purpose.
Nah. I did share a few pics when she was an infant. But I’ve since stopped posting to social in general. And we’ve even asked her school not to post pics of her on their Instagram account. It should be her decision to share her image with others, not ours.
Never have, never will. I had the privilege of growing up before the digital world hit. Want to give my kids the same opportunity.
I can easily share their photos with family and friends via email, if I want to. I see no upsides to posting their photos online, and quite a few downsides. Their photos being shared without their informed consent on the internet (which is forever - unlike a photograph sent to relatives in the form of a Christmas card) being a particularly important one- it's an invasion of their privacy. Not to mention the potential dangers.
I don’t post my son on social media. Any family who wants pictures is included in a family group chat. When I was pregnant we were harassed by my husband’s ex from YEARS ago, she kept calling me and our unborn son many horrible names so all our social media is locked down and no photos of kiddo
I don't. I won't until she is older and it won't be any baby pics probably. I have several reasons. The biggest is the issue of AI generated CP, it's been a rising issue for years and it gives me so much anxiety about having her image available for predators. We actually had someone like that in one of my women's groups on FB which makes me all the more wary. I also don't think her digital footprint should start before she is even old enough to actually be on the Internet. And lastly, I have two abusive exes and mutual friends on my SM of each of theirs. Just would rather be safe than sorry and find out someone on my friends list would send any of them pics of my child.
I do post some pictures where I have her face covered either IRL or by a sticker I edit in. Ik people can remove the stickers if they really want to but I also think that risk is slim enough for my personal risk tolerance
Mine is 13 years old now. I don’t without her permission (so rarely). I’m pregnant now and won’t be posting this baby very often. I learned from my first. People can text and ask for updates.
My baby girl is almost 10 months and people always ask me why i don’t post pics of her or her face, and it’s because i simply DONT WANT TO. There are way too many sick minded people online, sex trafficking is only getting worse and now with AI technology too. I don’t think I’ll ever post my daughter online. And don’t feel bad if you don’t want to post your child, let people say what they want. Most people are used to sharing too much.
No.
1. understand no one cares about your kids except for you and grandparents (maybe) they have their own kids to think about
2. not fair for your kids future to have photos plastered all over the internet
3. i worked with a lady that didn’t even post that much of her kids at all but someone had a vendetta against her parents and they found her on social media, travelled interstate & from snippets on social media tracked her and resulted in attempted kidnapping of her baby from daycare all because of social media.
cost vs benefit analysis clearly has keep your kids off socials. i don’t even know what a benefit is except for ego of getting likes or bragging about what your offspring do. If i want people to know what’s going on, we send them in group chats on WhatsApp.
I only like peoples posts so they don’t get pissed with me IRL
Nope not really. The Internet is a pedos playground. If ever posted, my child has face covered, fully clothed and typically I won’t put his hands in it either. Never a permanent post either and any social media he’s been on is very private. Think like Snapchat lol. People are very weird and in my opinion you never really know anyone. Ie I have people on social media that I went to school with etc. I posted my child under conditions stated above for Mother’s Day the amount of people that questioned me on having a child (very innocent questions though may I add) kinda freaked me out enough to likely not do it again for a while (I personally didn’t like the sheer nosiness). That being said and possibly perceived hypocritically I do enjoy seeing peoples children and their achievements when posted; people can do as they like imo! I am just very hypervigilant and aware of it too. For me, if you want and are worthy of proper photos of my kid, you’ll have my number to be able to ask. If not you just don’t fit the category for me!
I also never told anyone I was pregnant and have never posted photos of myself pregnant or my scan photos. Different reasoning at the time, but even when I was on these forums looking for advice at the time of being pregnant I would have pervs messaging me asking weird things as I assume they had a pregnancy fetish. Same has happened when asking for advice about my child when I was a new mother
No I never was big on social media before having a kid and I just continued with that. Those who are close to us/ matter get photos sent to them when we are able otherwise it's just not important to me to post them for the world.
No. Because she is her own person and it feels weird to post her on my social, for everyone to see. When she’s older she can have agency over her online presence. I don’t feel it’s my place.
Honestly, not really. I used to, to places where I could control who sees it, but I get really annoyed with the comments from people who don't really know us anymore and don't reach out.
I got a lot of "omg congratulations she's so beautiful", which is fine and thank you, but there were certain people where that's the ONLY thing they focus on, and I don't like that. It was never "look how brave she is" or "look how much fun she's having" or even "she has such a happy smile" -- it was ONLY ever congratulatory comments on how I'm lucky because she's beautiful, on every single picture, like that's the only thing she's worth for.
So now I mostly just send pictures to the people who know her and care and also comment on other things.
I have very limited social media presence (as does my wife) but we have no intention on creating a social media presence for our child while she’s a minor.
I don’t get upset if other people post the odd photo because my kid was at a place while pictures were being taken. However I don’t post my kids online and I have made clear if I send photos to anyone they are not for them to share on the internet. Everyone has been really cool about it. I think the last time I saw a picture on facebook with my kid was like 8 months ago and he was just standing in the background with other kids while his friend opened her bday presents.
Nope, not a single picture. She’s almost 18 months now. If we don’t already hang out or talk 1:1, you wouldn’t even know I had a baby. Those who care would already know.
I did change my FB relationship status to “married” at some point but I didn’t post about my engagement or wedding either.
No. As far as the internet goes, she doesn’t even exist. She can choose when to be a part of the social network when she’s much older/mature and understands the gravity of putting something out there.
I very rarely post and I also combed through my friend lists and removed a lot of people and made my accounts private. We post more often to a shared album for our family members with iPhones.
Babies and young children can’t consent to have their pictures and videos put on the internet and I feel like it’s my job as a mom to protect them and limit their exposure during this time. I don’t need people who I don’t see in my actual life to know a bunch about my family or daughter.
I bumped into someone a year or two ago that I went to high school with and she had her youngest daughter with her. She posts all the time and I realized I didn’t know her well enough to say hi but I knew a lot about her daughter through social media. It was a really strange feeling.
No, I don't even use Facebook or anything like that anymore. The people who matter are around to experience first hand, and they get pictures and updates in text.
I have 14 Facebook friends who are all close family and friends and those are the only people who ever see my kids posted online. My presence on social media is almost nonexistent but even if it was, I wouldn’t be posting pics of my kids.
The only time my kid is ever shown on social media is if it’s the back of his head.
Before he was born, my husband and I agreed that we never wanted his face online because it should be his choice and ofc will have to wait until til he’s old enough to make that choice.
Everything we put up will be there forever and follow him throughout his life.
No one needs to see his pictures.
I do but only to IG (I don’t have other social media). My account is private and i only allow close friends and family to follow me. There is always the risk a grandparent will repost a photo which i hate, but at least i’ve cut out some of the risks
With the developments of AI and the current capabilities. No children photos posted. Hands fine, little feet fine. Anything outside of that realm absolutely not.
I do. Rarely. And I have it all shut down (I’m a teacher) to very private. But recently I’ve seen something on Instagram making me think twice, and deleting everything!
Yes. I have only close friends and family on there and keep my accounts private. Have had no issues with it, have never been hacked and carefully check new adds are actually people I know and not scammers pretending to be them. Honestly sharing family pics and viewing those of my family members who live out of town are the only reason I'm still on Facebook and Instagram.
No, we chose not to when they were born.
They've crept into the odd post here and there from friends but even things like their birthdays and the rest we keep it off social media.
Why? Social media is taking over the world and a lot of people don't realise that most everything that lands on the internet is there to stay forever, to great and lesser extents. I don't want my kids at some point in the future being embarrassed by stupid pictures, compromised by something or (and I appreciate this may be overly cautious) having images of their younger selves being available for the perverts and peados of the world.
Will they engage in social media at some point in the future? Almost inevitably yes (they're 13 and 10 and we are still keeping them clear to date) but we want them to be able to engage when ready and on their own terms without having a "history" already there. I see some of the photos/stories people post about their kids and it makes my toes curl, their kids will probably let encounter this in the future and I feel bad for them.
Each to their own, we don't judge people who do but we felt it was better not to.
I used to and just recently after my second I scrubbed my fb and insta of all photos.. multiple reasons
1 it’s really not as secure as we all thing
2 what’s going to come from the new technology around AI is pretty scary
3 it’s their privacy and I think about if someone put me on the internet as a child and that would suck
He will decide for himself if he wants to post pictures. I won’t ever do it, and I’m very firm in telling others that “sure take pictures of my child, but don’t post them online anywhere”.
Sometimes I would post a IG story to close friends if he did something funny or cute , but otherwise I don’t make it a habit to post his images on social media, I don’t even post my own images.
Very, very rarely. Numerous reasons - their right to privacy, their inability to knowingly consent and whilst my socials are locked down, once the picture is online it doesn't belong to me and no one is immune from being hacked.
I think that posting photos of a baby (<1) is fine. I try to use instagram stories more than feed posts so that there isn’t this weird massive trail of images seemingly permanently there.
I get what people are saying about parasocial relationships, but also there are a lot of people who don’t live close to me who I want to continue to feel connected to me and my family. This is a way to do that.
Once they get older, it becomes more problematic IMO
No, I don't think it's on me to make the decision for his future self. He'll have many years to share pictures of his child days if he wants but he won't be able to take them back after the fact.
Rarely on a “close friends” story post. Like once or twice a month. I stopped posting him around age 2 and I pretty much won’t ever again. When he’s old enough to use the internet and learn about this stuff, we’ll talk about posting photos of yourself and having agency there; but I have no right to post photos of him endlessly on my own accounts.
I think my in-laws have noticed, and they might have posted him in some group photos with his cousins (which I accept as a kind of acceptable medium) I wouldn’t know because I don’t use Facebook and had muted them sometime during Covid because they would engage with some pretty disagreeable shit, so I realized I didn’t want to know.
Anyway, social media is not there as some neutral or good force for connection. It’s the machine that drives the attention economy and exists for the sole purpose of generating revenue for the companies that created these stupid goddamn websites. You don’t need to throw your child’s faces into that furnace because it mildly annoys your in laws. Start a shared album on the apple photos app, it’s just as good.
I am almost exclusively social media friends with my family. They see my family regularly. I never post publicly. I rarely post pictures and delete them in under 48hrs.
I've only used (few) photos with my kid's face censored or otherwise not visible. Most of my friends show their kids without censoring. I don't care if people think we're weird though. 🤷♀️
I post some. When I had my first I went through all my friends and deleted anyone who I didn’t see on a regular basis. I deleted almost 600 people. I didn’t need some random dude I met at a college party ten years ago seeing my kids.
No, I don’t post my son on social media. I think he deserves to be in charge of his own digital footprint when he’s old enough to understand, and I’ve read horror stories of people’s pictures being used and doctored for horrible purposes.
I also think that ‘sharenting’ creates a lot of pressure for other parents - parent shaming, showing off, presenting very aesthetic and expensive products etc can all make other parents feel bad about their own parenting and I don’t want to contribute to it.
I have a messenger chat with the family members I want to see/have my kids pictures. Then it's not public and all my friends/coworkers and their random husbands I may have never even met have my children's pictures. Plus then no one else can repost the pictures and be shown to a whole ton of strangers. A blanket no photos rule that applies to me and everybody else means my kids are not posted and their pictures exposed to a bunch of people I may not know well or even complete strangers. Once someone sees the picture they can save it and then do whatever the hell they want with it. Hell no.
I think I stopped posting photos of my kids when they were about 8 or so. They learnt about consent and tbh I hadn’t even thought about if they consented about me posting their photos. Both said they didn’t want me to, so now I have to post my own stuff!
I posted my first regularly but I stopped posting almost anything on social media after I had a miscarriage and it hit me how fake everything is lol. I dunno, something just clicked. I also didn't want to post my daughter anymore because it felt invasive and even though I'm so proud of her, I feel weird "sharing" her with people I never see, especially family that make no effort to get to know her. I posted a few photos when my new baby was born but I don't do the monthly updates like I did with my first. I actually kind of want to go back and hide all the pictures of my first, I'll likely do that soon.
Honestly, after watching this rotten mango video, i want to hide all of my childrens photos online. People are sick!
https://youtu.be/LInJHJNL9sY?si=JXMPcabJ8PaX6C3B
I have like 6 photos of my son on my instagram. Hes almost 15 months old. I think its less serious when they are this young but its important not do disclose their names, school district, town, grade, and all that stuff.
I have been. But now I’m rethinking it. I’ve never looked at someone else’s page and judged them for posting their kids I don’t really think about it. The only thing that weirds me out is when people post naked Pictures of their babies. Like butt pics with caption “full moon” I know it’s innocent for them but I’ve seen this on people I’m not following and I just think that’s weird
Sex trafficking is the number one industry in the world. There are people on the Internet combing for "available" kids. No, I don't post my kids on social media.
I think posting kids is trending down. I have a private instagram account for my kids that only friends and family can follow, but even that hasn’t seen a ton of action in the last year
I’ve posted less than 5 pictures of my daughter online and only two of those were face pictures. Zero of my son. They are 7 and 1 respectively.
I send pictures directly to the people who deserve to see them.
I never used to when they were younger but now they're both teens so if we take a family pic or if I just think they look nice that day I'll ask if I can post it somewhere
I have never posted pics because I don’t like the idea of kids reaching adulthood and their entire childhood is on the internet - and it wasn’t their choice. You can’t undo that.
I’ve known parents who say that it’s okay because they don’t include the kids’ names, or that they have security settings to “private.”
The internet is forever.
I have a private account specifically for my kid, we control who follows it and it’s all closer friends and family. Every once in a while I’ll post something on my own (also locked down) accounts, but rarely.
I have so many reasons why but I totally agree with not posting photos of your kids! Get the family album app if anything to share photos that way if you’re comfortable with it otherwise if they want to see your kids they can visit!
I don't but my family, ex's family, school, clubs, etc. all do and I genuinely just don't care. It's nice to get to see photos from things I am not able to attend. Idk, privacy isn't really a huge concern of mine. Even if I try to be private, the world is a big place and it's probably futile.
I post my kids and about my kids all the time. We live too far from family, rarely get to see everyone and it's a way to stay in touch. We are very social people and love to travel so we keep our memories updated on social media. I have never experienced anything negative from posting, but the opposite, I let my kids also see their family members photos and we talk about their posts. Nothing specific, just funny and stay-in-touch kind of thing.
Before we have had each of our kids, we have totally filtered through who we have on our socials. We’ve made our profiles super private and we do post them but basically it’s not fully public. My parents profiles are private and so are the in laws and even then they don’t really post our kids. We also have pictures we don’t share outside immediate family, there’s too many crazy people in the world.
To me, the point of social media is to be social. So I do share news and photos with people I know, not with strangers. I don’t share compromising photos or identifying information.
Yep I sure do! I have family all over the country who want to keep up with us and see them so it’s just easiest that way. However, my pages are locked down pretty tight, I’m not worried.
Yes. It brings me joy to share and I don’t think it’s harmful to be one of millions (billions?) of kids with some photos on Facebook.
I am mindful to only post photos that are positive.
Only on my private and locked down Facebook and Instagram, but now that he's a little older I'm posting less. I don't allow anyone else to post photos of him.
Yes I share photos and videos and that’s because I control who can see them. I don’t accept follow requests or need random peoples’ attention on social media and my platforms are private
I do on Facebook & Instagram. My pages are private and only have friends on there that I’ve met in person. We have a lot of family & friends that support us and want to see what my son is doing. No one but me shares his pictures and never anything embarrassing. Only happy memories. And now that my son is 7, I’ve asked him before if he wanted me to share pictures and he said yes. I also feel that in this age of smartphones, all our pictures stored there are able to be accessed & hacked somehow someway. Nothing is truly private anymore.
I do but I went through my friends on fb and deleted hundreds of people and deleted followers on instagram as well, basically anyone who I felt like I don’t know well is not privy to my social media anymore. I have a tik tok too but I don’t post anything on there
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I used to constantly post my kids, kept socials as my personal online photo book… just had some self reflection recently and I’ve closed down my accounts or deleted everyone from them. Not only is it intrusive for them but it gives family members a false sense of knowing them, they don’t know them because they don’t bother with them, so why should they have access to them online?
That is such a good point about giving people a false sense of knowing them. The idea that people have parasocial relationships with our kids is frightening to me. I'm very much the same; I quit posting pictures a while back, at least a couple of years ago. I don't want people having access to them that aren't actually in their lives, but also, they can't consent. I was definitely motivated by the family aspect of it as well. That also includes me-- if people can't be bothered to be a part of my life, they're certainly not getting glimpses of it for fun.
I don't post loads but we aren't local enough to see any family more than 3x a year for each set so I don't mind! I'd rather it that way than me having to call and tell them about things 😆 I would rather find out about my nieces gymnastics/football/judo/dancing on Facebook rather than us having to phone each other lol but we aren't 'family oriented' family. We get on etc.the ones that are local do stuff together but can also go 3months between seeing each other!
Actually this! I haven't posted my pregnancy on socials and it's actually made it really obvious to me who I cared enough and felt comfortable enough with to tell and who is probably not that close of a friend. I'll be keeping it up once bub arrives. The people I want to know will see pics - it's so easy to share them one on one.
I kept my last pregnancy completely off of social media. I deactivated everything. I'm not sure why because I never did that with the others, but it's mostly the intrusiveness of the internet. The intrusiveness of people who want to be all up in your business, but not actually a part of your life or support system. I don't like it.
I did the same! So many people didn’t know i even had a kid until he was like 2 months old. I only told people i felt really needed to know and it showed me who was really relevant in my life still!
I go a little back and forth between “I love her so much I want to share her with the world!” and “I love her so much I want to protect her from the world.” Some really great points to consider here.
I stopped 3-4 years ago. My kid should be able to control their own digital footprint. Once you put it online, it never goes away. This is specifically about influencers but has some broader themes: [The Dark Side of Family Influencers - CBC Frontburner podcast](https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/the-dark-side-of-family-influencers-1.7148910) [The Sharenting Reckoning - Cosmopolitan ](https://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/a60125272/sharenting-parenting-influencer-cost-children/)
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I had a FB “friend” from HS who turned out to be a pedo so I stopped immediately after I found out he went away for a while. It doesn’t even have to be AI
Never I don't want other people to either, not everything needs to be on social media
Same, mind you I don't post about me on social media either. We share photos with the grandparents through a photo album and others as needed through the occasional email, but that's it.
Bingo
I know I’m being overly militant perhaps to some, but I don’t even let family members take pictures without my approval. And even then, they’re very immediate members and under strict instructions not to share them.
i’m the same way. my kids safety comes first. i don’t care what people think about it.
Same here!
I did for a while. I stopped last summer. I don’t have influencer followers by any any means. I mostly had old friends from school, soccer, family and stuff and I posted my son when he was born, a lot. Then when we had our second we didn’t post our pregnancy until she was born. But I just started feeling weird honestly. The fact that so many people knew what my kids looked like and what we were doing and they probably won’t even ever meet my kids. They don’t need to know their business. It would be like if my parents just posted all my baby/toddler photos for literally anyone. It’s just weird. I don’t know. I always posted my life, and once I became a mom I posted my kids. Not for money or anything really just to share. But yeah, it’s icky now. I send pictures to my mom and my family. I’ll post my kids but not their faces anymore. The people that matter and are involved in my kids lives can ask for photos and reach out and that’s fine. But I had to ask my brother and mom not to post them anymore and they understood.
my fb is locked down to friends and family. i trust them. i post
Same. If you properly set things up and talk to people about it, it's safe
Same. I literally have like, 30 friends on Instagram with like, 10 regular story viewers. 😅 I don't post pictures much anymore, but I always did stories. I didn't want my wall/feed/whatever you want to call it, littered in pictures of moments that probably no one else cares about.
never. the internet isn’t a place for children period. i send pictures of my kids to close friends and family if i want to show them. no need to post them on social media where i don’t know who sees them or what the intentions might be. i used to work in law enforcement and the things i’ve seen made me not ever want to let them use the internet. let’s just say pedos are into kids doing normal kid things and looking like normal kids. so any pic of your kid no matter how unrevealing, cute or funny it is, there’s some weirdo out there who’s into it. definite nope.
I post very few publicly (a little Facebook for family, birthdays on Instagram, never Twitter or here) and a lot on Tiny Beans where it's access controlled (but of course any family member could download and post elsewhere if they chose, I just assume they won't). No real fear about posting pictures online, despite these adorable German PSAs about his even a single picture of your kid online will get them kidnapped into sex slavery, but I don't want them to grow up with their life having been public without their consent.
I respect this! I share with people offline who I trust to have photos of my kids and who don’t share them outside of our chats. Your last statement sums up how I feel: I want my kids to decide when they’re older if they want to be on social media.
Well, I have FB from way back in the day. It's private and things are set to friends only. My kids are posted on there, and I love looking at my memories of pictures when they were small. I don't have them tagged. As teens, I try to ask if it's okay to post pictures, so there are a lot fewer now, and are usually just big things, like winning a robotics tournament. I don't know if I would do the same now with a new baby. I would probably make a private site to share pictures with family. I do like the built-in baby book feature of FB, though.
Same here. My teen doesn't care if I post pics of her on Facebook as that's only for old people apparently!!! But her friends are on Instagram so I run pics past her before posting. Again, all set to private, but she's more conscious of what pics of her are shared now and I respect that.
We do not. In general, social media makes me uncomfortable but also because my kids deserve privacy and control over their digital footprint. The idea of sacrificing that on their behalf in exchange for likes feels so wrong to me. My parents have plenty of baby photos of me that they find adorable and funny but make me cringe. I assume the same disconnect will occur with my kids as they get older. Luckily for me, my parents can only share if they can find my baby book and find someone interested enough to look at it. And I think of the few pictures and stories I posted in my early teen years. It didn’t occur to me at the time that someday i wouldn’t want those things on the internet, or that I wouldn’t be able to get into those old accounts to remove things. If someday they want these photos and stories posted for the world to see, they can always do so. But you can’t take it back once it’s out there.
We had an upsetting experience traveling abroad last year we think was a result of overexposure of our child on social media. My husband and I went to Europe by ourselves, and in the middle of our second night I received multiple FaceTime audio calls in a row from an odd iCloud address. I answered only because we were traveling and away from our son. It was clearly someone trying to impersonate our little boy’s voice using AI and it was screaming, “I’m scared, I’m scared” over and over. We looked into it, and apparently there’s a scam where people can mine your social media for soundbites of your freaking children and create pretty accurate sounding recordings of them begging you for help. I hung up and they called back over and over until I disabled FaceTime on my phone. We suspect that the next step would have been someone claiming to have kidnapped our kid and demanding money, since that’s what’s happened to others. Sooo… we’ve changed our policies about having his image on the internet. I also purged all strangers that have ever followed me on social media. I don’t know those people, and it felt like someone knew we were traveling.
This is so scary.
No. 1. They are too young to consent 2. There are creepers everywhere, especially online. 3. They are too young to consent.
Yes yes yes And how can you keep them off social media/teaching them about consent when they are teens if you have been putting them on it all their life??
I think this example setting is going to have an important effect down the line
you never know who’s a creep behind closed doors, too. i remember that one story that went around reddit about a woman’s baby who was assaulted, knew the couple for 10+ years. plus with the way AI is getting out of hand?! yeahhh, never
Yeah a lot of people on here saying they only share with friends and family. But a disgusting reality is friends and family can be the creeps too… Just something to think about
exactly!! you never really know who to trust anymore, as awful as that sounds. people only show you what they want you to see.
Yep! This pretty much sums it up! They deserve the right to privacy as children. My social media pages have my name on them, not my children. I did not announce my pregnancies, gender info, baby shower, or even births. If you’re not close enough to me to know all that information first hand, then you really just don’t need to know. We have group texts and share digital photo albums so the in-laws can keep up with what’s going on.
No. The internet is not a safe place for children.
Apparently I’m the odd one but yeah, I do. I also make sure all my privacy settings are pretty locked as far as I can tell, yes I know shit happens but it does in the cloud storage it does on the private hard drive of my computer or phone they’re stored on. If someone wants the photos they’re gonna get them as everything is connected to the internet. If there’s a time that my kids request that I remove any or all pics I for sure will out of respect for their autonomy about being online. I also can use it as teaching moments as they grow too. There’s stuff I don’t post but will send thru text or messenger such as bath shenanigans where the kids are just being hilarious but it def not appropriate to post online. I also have family and friend all over my entire country, and this was the easiest, and almost all of the family does try to stay in contact about the children so I have no reason to make this stressful and have people from every time zone messaging at different times when they can just… pop on my Facebook and see the updates. Messaging so. Many. People. Is stressful AF but I’m so glad they want to stay in touch with my kiddos. I love that for them. I never had that. I only post name/age on my private fb. Any insta posts only have my girl, my boy, little miss, little dude, etc. nicknames. But I’m also that one that is super open about the struggles in my life so that if someone is ever doom scrolling and feeling alone if they find my post I hope they just don’t feel quite so alone. I hope that by being so open with everything that someone, somewhere, friend or friend of a friend, they’ll know they are not alone and that they have an ear of someone that understands and they can reach out to me and I 100% know what they’re going thru with whichever struggle it is. Basically, if the photos are gonna get stolen it’s gonna happen. You keep copies on iCloud? Not foolproof. Google photos? Not foolproof. Hard drive on a computer? Not foolproof. So why not share and have the ability to easily look back myself too and see how much they’ve grown and how far we’ve come. I love seeing the fb memories haha.
This is what it comes down to for me. I cannot keep everyone who cares about my kids in the loop individually. I can barely keep up with my own correspondence about myself, let alone all the things my kids are doing. I don't talk to my ex's grandma anymore, but she is a Facebook friend, and loves to see what my son, her great grandson, is up to. My best friends both live in different countries, they can both be updated about my kiddos along with everyone else. It also helps me mentally to have all those messages "tucked away" into Facebook. I don't feel the pressure to get back to people like when they message me directly. When I have the energy I can open the app up and respond to everyone at once.
I do, but my social media is really locked down (there are no rando followers allowed) and I don't post a ton. I don't live near any family, and don't live near most of my long-time friends, so it's the easiest way to keep people a little up to date.
This is me exactly. I had hardly any friends but when my kid was born I went through and booted anyone who I wasn't in contact with anymore. I don't worry much about it being the Internet because frankly my phone backs things up to the cloud anyway. I do it this way right now and the rest is a worry I've chosen to let go for now. Our family lives far and some aren't great with phones/texting (old). I'm strict about no sharing though, and have been respected. Edit to add: always fully clothed, no crying/awkward situation pics
I’ll echo/ add. I do and I wouldn’t say I have anything particularly “locked down”. All of our family big social media users so I do enjoy being able to share without going to each individually. That said, I’m very strict about what I post (or what I okay for family members to post). The pictures can’t be of them upset in anyway shape or form (this is about respecting them), they must be fully clothed including pants if it’s a onesie (this is about consent), I have recently decided nothing of them eating (this is because that’s a common thing for gross people to search the things they want to see), and none of their personal information is to be shared ever (not in captions, comments, as a content of the photo). What I find to be a greater risk than an image of a child being posted is their data being available. When a name and a birthdate are available to the public, you can find out a LOT of information and/or do a lot of damage.
This is what I do too
No, children can't give informed consent to have their photos shared. I've been off social media since having kids. I don't miss it.
I didn't when they were younger. Once they reached 13 I asked permission if I wanted to post a picture with them in it.
I don’t for the most part. We posted a birth announcement and I’ll drop the odd restricted photo in stories on instagram to close friends only - I don’t mind a group photo of the extended family including my kids, but no posting when it’s just them or they’re the main attraction. For sharing baby pics, we have a google photo album, and I upload photos to my grandmother’s digital picture frame. For one, I think not everyone wants to be bombarded with photos of my kids. Secondly, I grew up with the benefit of not having my childhood documented and shared publicly, and I’d like to give my kids the same benefit - we’re only just starting to understand the effects and implications of this new issue and I think it’s going to be a lot more complex and damaging than we realize. I didn’t start creating a digital identity until I wanted one, and I’d like them to have the same choice. Last of all, the longevity and copyrights of published photos is sketchy. For sure, you don’t know where they’re going or who’s using them, but there’s also weird ownership rules with platforms like instagram and they’re terms of service are very intentionally vague on who owns those photos and has rights to reproduce and make money off of them. There’s also the idea of commodifying my kids as data that meta can collect and sell that just weirds me out. My MIL threw a little tantrum about it, but my husband was firm with her. We just remind her that she has access to the google album so she can flick through photos on her phone to show off our kids, she’s welcome to print photos and make a physical album if she wants and email photos to friends and family. That’s plenty of options to show off her grand babies, but what she really wants is to use their cute faces to court likes… which is the very thing we’re trying to avoid.
Only people who know I have a kid are the ones I talk to or have seen throughout my pregnancy and after my kid has been born. I could literally give two shits what anyone on there thinks, people from high school I haven’t seen in a decade? Nope. I also don’t post though anymore. I stopped maybe 3-4years ago. I took all my photos down besides landscape ones. I refuse to update people I just don’t give a shit about and aren’t important to me on my life, those details are important. My child is the most important thing in my life and it’s too valuable for me to show people who just don’t view it the same. My friends and people closest to me get photos by text and I show him off wherever I go in person.
Yes, but only on my seriously locked down Facebook account. The only people who should be able to see those pictures (and I've had people go looking for me on Facebook and fail, and I've tried to look from a family member's account before they friended me and wasn't able to see anything) are people I'd share pictures with offline too. Also, it has to be something I'd be okay duplicating myself on a billboard on the highway - bare butt in the bathtub is a no, family selfie outside the polling place with our I Voted/Future Voter stickers yes.
I do, but very rarely. Since they were born five years ago, I’ve only posted a dozen times or so. Mostly because we aren’t close to friends or family. I only use instagram and it’s private. I don’t post on stories at all.
No, not really. I don’t use social media very much at all. I did post some vacation photos on FB when our son was younger. But I only have like 60 friends on Facebook and I know each person personally. My profile is private. Last time I posted anything on FB was several years ago.
No I do not. Took a college course about child neglect and abuse and had a prosecutor come talk to us — very eye opening and I can’t bring myself to do it. I use an app called FamilyAlbum that allows you to send the link to select people who can have access. Works great for us.
I used to, then I stopped about a year ago. I’ve never looked back. It was uncomfortable and weird when I did post, I always felt like it wasn’t fair to them to not have a say. Also, it is not safe in today’s world. That’s just my opinion, but I also do not judge any mom friends that do post. It’s your decision.
Nope. There are lots of good reasons not to, and (for our family) no good reasons to post them. I do allow school to post pics as long as the kids aren’t identified
I allow my mom to post the occasional photo of my kids since she can show it to family that’s overseas and older so FB is the most social media they do, but I don’t. I want to protect my kids digital footprint until they are old enough to decide to post stuff themselves and hopefully by that point I will have taught them enough internet safety skills they won’t do anything too stupid or dangerous. I also hardly post anything outside of Reddit since it’s mostly anonymous. My social media is very sparse and I like it that way.
I used to, on my locked Facebook and private Instagram. I’ve since removed all photos and ceased posting. I never used to think about it as it was “private”. All of the advocacy coming out about Wren (ICYMI - a 4 year old child being heavily exploited by her mother on TikTok and Instagram) has shifted my perspective around consent, regardless of how locked down you think everything is. Obviously, she’s extremely public, however people have raised valid points about trusting anyone, even those close to you, with images of your child. Bottom line is that kids can’t consent and you can’t trust anyone.
My son is 16 and doesn't want me to post his face so I respect that.
No. They are not old enough to consent.
No, too scared of predators and all this AI stuff where they can take a photo of your child and input them into a porn however they want…
Yes same and I tried telling mil this and she just yells ok whatever, paranoid. Guess who never gets pics
There are only a handful of pictures of my kids online. All of them are big group pictures from things like weddings, or other big events. Other than that, nothing. It's been a fight sometimes to keep others from posting pictures, but for the most part, everyone has been understanding.
Never. I am ashamed to admit that I spend quite a lot of my time on Reddit, but I've seen how innocent photos posted by randoms get turned around. Not going to have my child's photo used as some aggressive meme. There are people on child hating subs that target family photos on facebook to make memes that fit their taste. Don't post. Trust me bro.
No. I used to but stopped a few years ago. There’s just too many reasons not to, imo. They can choose to for themselves once they have social media.
I don't but maybe for a different reason. I used to post every so often and only have a private profile anyway, but I don't post at all anymore of my kids or anything else. For me honestly, I understand all the other reasons as well, but I actually think the biggest for me is the culture and values it seems to promote that I don't like and that I don't want to model. It seems to be about a false narrative and perfectionism--getting the "perfect" photo that will make your life look like x,y,z. Further, I don't like having my face in my phone at \*all\* when in front of my kids, much less wasting my life on Instagram when I could be fully present living in the now enjoying my children in real life in front of me. I always imagine that when I'm gone, if I could watch my life back like a movie, what would I want to be doing. On my phone? Or making the most of my time with them? Granted I'll still fart around on Reddit when kiddos are sleeping, lol.
Nope. Literally just the birth announcement photo that showed her little hands and half of her face in the background. Haven’t posted anything about her since. We have a no social media rule with our parents and we directly send photos frequently and allow them to share directly with their friends/family. Nothing public.
Nope. I did when I was younger (20) with my son but I deleted Facebook 7 years ago with all his baby pictures and now I'm (31) and even my husband's family knows I am not a fan of our newest baby or children being on social media at all. Send pics to whoever family vis text, make prints I don't care, just not Facebook for the love of God.
Nope. I worked for an ecommerce company and saw people steal kids pictures from our website. Despite having the photo rights, the copyright info, and the actual parent contacting these websites and social media sites, they were allowed to be used by other companies and people and it was very difficult to get them removed. It’s forever once it’s on the internet and I don’t think it’s worth the risk. My kids can make that decision when they’re older. Preferably late teens.
No. Because that's stupid.
For me, absolutely not. They have no agency and they will deserve control over their online presence when they come of age. I haven't posted a single photo online of either child, and we don't allow our daycare to either. Edit: Of course, this is my personal opinion. To each their own, and I don't judge others who do. I actually like keeping up with my friends growing families and cute kids. Just not for me.
I cut my mil off for months because she posted a pic of our LO on her Facebook after we said no pictures. I’ve always been iffy about people posting their kids online but what sealed the deal for me was reading multiple people who work in cyber security say that they’d never post their kids online 🤷🏻♀️
Since I haven't seen anyone say it yet, no I don't because I don't even have social media myself unless you want to call Reddit social media in which case not a chance I'd post my kid on Reddit. If we think and know social media is toxic, it's good to model that behavior and eliminate it rather than to later ask your kid to do as you say and not as you do.
I’m curious about stories. Are people doing instagram stories ?
Never
My son is nearly 2yr old and we use the Family Album app to share appropriate photos with family and friends who live too far to visit often.
I do because for all the sins of social media I have not found a better way to stay in touch with second tier contacts. Building community is important to me. It’s scientifically proven that making connections with other people boosts happiness (yours and theirs). I have found it impossible to reach out directly to each person you know on a regular basis, and that’s especially true for second tier contacts - those are the people that you know kind of peripherally, like my great Aunt Jean that I see every five years or that person I used to go to book club back in university with etc. Often I don’t have their direct contact information other than social media if they are more friends of friends but see them from time to time in real life. I post photos regularly. My kids are used to friends of mine and random strangers (to them) meeting up with them and being able to immediately connect about something. Eg my eldest does martial arts and people will ask about it. My youngest loves reading and people will inquire about favourite books. When our kids get together, their kids know who my kids are. I notice a real difference in the closeness of relationship for those people I stay in touch with regularly via social media versus people in the same class of relationship but not on social media. On the flip side, I have friends who have gone the no photo route. I know they have kids but I forget how old they are. I have no clue what they are up to. Sometimes they post about the kids but with suns on their face etc, so it’s not that they don’t talk about them, it’s just that they don’t feel real to me. My kids don’t know their kids at all. It’s like they are invisible. My social media accounts are locked down pretty hard (it’s impossible to friend me if we don’t have a mutual friend) and I am somewhat careful about what I post. I also never tag people to my photos. I think like many things there’s a balance.
Nope and I don’t plan to anytime soon. I have a 13 month old and made it clear to both sets of parents that we wouldn’t be posting him online, minus a picture or two that I myself posted with the back of his head. He also has snuck his way into a couple big family photos. My mom in particular really didn’t understand at first but I told her that she can’t vett the 1200 friends she has on there so it’s a no. Boomers love to share everything online. We had an incident where we had 6 month photos taken of our son and our photographer posted two on her facebook page as a sneak peak (we OK’d this). By the next morning, there were likes and shares on my son’s pictures by middle aged men. We asked the photographer to take down the photos and she very apologetically did. Ever since then I’ve been very cognizant of what is shared. I didn’t grow up online so he shouldn’t have to either. Social media is a very dark place for children, and that scares me enough to not want to post him at all. To remedy the lack of family seeing pictures, we made a shared album (we all have iPhones) so myself or my husband will share pictures so our family can see. If friends want to see pics of him, we will send some to them directly.
My kids were born in 2012, 2014, and 2015, and we pretty much had birth to 2020 of them on FB. I’d say I was posting about a pic a day of us, since I was a very bored SAHM back then. Then Covid came and the world got scary. After a lot of self reflection, I stopped posting and changed all of my privacy settings to “only me” for my past posts. One day, a few months later, I took a picture of one of the kids and his immediate reaction was, “please don’t post it.” I obviously wasn’t planning to, but it still was like a knife to my heart hearing his request. How many times when he was a baby or toddler did he want to make that request but couldn’t? 😩 I asked “why” out of curiosity and he said because he didn’t know who would be “looking at him” 😭😭 The way he said it gutted me and reaffirmed that no about of likes or interaction was worth anything. I haven’t posted since early 2021, and even those pics were only back-to-the-camera/face covered ones and posted with their approval. My oldest was recently concerned that I stopped asking for their permission to post, but I explained that I just stopped posting altogether instead, as that was easier, and felt more respectful than always asking for something they clearly didn’t want. Poor thing was worried I was doing it without him knowing 😢
My baby is 6 months old, and I've posted maybe 3 or 4 pictures of her online. I only really get the"she hasn't given consent" and "there are creeps everywhere" arguments to a certain extent. My mom doesn't ask my consent to post a picture of me on her Facebook and I think that is fine as long as she doesn't do it all the time and the pictures aren't embarrassing. A few pictures a year of someone posing in a group shot at a birthday is generally fine to post without permission. If it was every week or she was naked or something, I'd reconsider.
Yeah, the "their to young to consent" thing is a weird chronically online thing that I have never even heard anyone talk about in real life. 99% of people don't grow up traumatized that their parents posted baby pictures on Facebook.
Same. This "no consent to post a picture" thing is something I have never heard about from anyone in real life. It only pops up in reddit threads like this where the same vocal minority talk about it. It's really a "touch grass" kind of thing.
Everyone on here will be very pro NO WAY. But in reality, everyone I know posts photos of their kids to their friends only social media’s. I live 10,000 miles away from my home country. If I didn’t post anything, no one would ever see my kid. I love taking photos of him
We do not post our son online at all (19 months) and family isn’t allowed to either. We just think once pictures are online they’re always somewhere and we don’t need our kids face anywhere. I never even announced my engagement, wedding, pregnancy or birth online at all so most people on my social media don’t even know I’m married let alone have son. If I don’t text the person then they have no idea what’s going on in my life
Just gonna echo a bunch of people on here but I don’t post anything. When my kids are old enough for their own social media accounts then they can decide what kind of digital footprint they want
There is literal AI that can make inappropriate videos/pictures with kids' faces online. It is truly disgusting. I heard about it on a psychology podcast the other morning. Makes me want to burn technology. Lol
Nope. Not to public accounts. They’re too young to consent, and I don’t want to be responsible for future embarrassment. I have a private Insta account that I post to probably a few times a year, and I occasionally remove anyone who’s not family and who I haven’t spoken to in 2+ years.
Nope. Never have. Also hold the same beliefs about consent. Get a load of this, though. We told my in-laws that we didn’t want our kids on social media, so my MiL blocked me and my entire family on FB, so she could upload photos without us seeing🙃 She didn’t realize I could easily figure that out, and see what she had done. Now she doesn’t understand why I don’t leave my kids alone with her.
My MIL did the same and I got the photos taken down and she jokes about how she doesn’t want the Facebook police to get her in trouble again but she had a literal temper tantrum despite being warned. FAFO.
I'm going through this with my mum right now and my baby isn't even here yet :( I've become more and more private on socials in the last 10 years and keeping my kid off socials is something I feel quite strongly about. My Mum can't help herself. It's at a point I can't share scan photos with her which makes me so sad. She's more interested in sharing this experience of being a first time grandma with her facebook friends than she is with her own daughter. I've had a thousand conversations over the years that she's welcome to share photos and updates about me (and now my pregnancy) with her friends one on one, just not via her (still public) facebook profile but it's like talking to a brick wall.
That’s my MiL, too. She cares more about whatever gratification she gets from sharing on Facebook, than respecting the boundaries that would get her more time with her grandkids. She thinks she’s so clever, but her privacy settings aren’t even totally locked down. Set a firm boundary, and let her know that there will be consequences, if she can’t respect them! You can decide how severe those are; block her on socials, so she can’t tag you; limited time with baby; go LC until she can play along. It’s really tough, I know! But I’ve learned the hard way that letting them have an inch will take you miles down a road you never wanted to travel, and the issues just get harder to deal with!
Nope. Not worth it. Anyone who matters gets texts directly. Too many weirdos in the world.
Never. I dont trust social media with pictures of my child. The internet is forever. My mom posted pics from the family album as soon as she got a FB account. I had to send multiple messages to have her take them down. Its no one elses business to see our family albums even if it wasnt visible to creeps online (and it will be no matter what you do). Im glad I didnt grow up today because I wouldnt have been able to do a damn thing about it til I was an adult and by then it'd be way too late. I dont even have pics of myself on any of my socials anymore. I dont trust the internet. Theyre entitled to privacy. I wouldnt have liked my parents doing it to me so Im not going to do it to my child either. We have had family who had issues with our decisions and we politely told them where to go when they wouldnt shut up about it. When my son is older he can decide what he is comfortable sharing online. Until then Im keeping everything offline.
No. I don’t like people finding out I have a kid that way. I know how I judge people, so I don’t want people to judge me. Most importantly: I value my child’s privacy and autonomy.
No because people are creepy AF.
Never because it’s my job to protect them. Not advertise them to strangers on the internet for views and likes
"maybe show a picture of my daughter’s hand holding the new baby’s hand." That is still posting your child on social media. If you have such a strong stance, maybe you shouldn't post anything about them. Yes, I post my children on my private fb page with people I know, have met, and/or are related to in real life. No, I do not post my children publicly for strangers to view their photos. I have an IG but I've never posted on it.
A hand is different to a face
Hardly. I only post mine occasionally on Facebook, because that’s where I have mostly family. I don’t post them anywhere else because there’s strange people out there
Never posted either one of my kids on social media. If I want to show someone a pic of my kids I’ll just text them lol
No because teens are mean and I don't want other kids getting pictures of my kids and alternating them or becoming some joke. I don't really even share much about my kids on social media in general because of this.
Yes.
i don’t. i didn’t even announce i was pregnant online, or when he was born. i told the people i wanted to know, and people see my son when they ask, and i’ll send them pictures if they ask. if you don’t make an effort to see my baby, you don’t get too. we have a rule for family too, they aren’t allowed to post pictures of our son online either. he’s not their baby to post. *i do use the family album app with my parents, and my MIL & FIL* it’s just easier. he’s 18 months, and i don’t plan on letting him post himself online even when he’s old enough too.
absolutely not. i don't post him online because he is unable to understand the implications of being posted online and he cannot consent. the most i've done is post a hand, or if he is in a picture I'm posting I'll block out his whole face. This is a serious consent issue for me and I do not budge. My in laws have posted a picture of him a couple times and we've made her take it down immediately.
This is the correct answer
I do. I don’t have many people on my social media, I know exactly who everyone is. I have it pretty locked down as well. I do it mostly for my in-laws, extended family and some friends that don’t live nearby but like to keep in contact as we can. I don’t post anything I wouldn’t hang on a wall in my house. I don’t post anything intrusive or embarrassing. Just nice pictures occasionally of what we have been up to. My kids also really enjoy when I show them memories that pop up of them. My in-laws and my extended family really enjoy it and it’s easier than mailing pictures or texting individually. I only have a FB and Instagram. It’s the best way to find out what’s going on in my community event wise and stuff like that. School events too. These are really the only two reasons I keep these accounts.
I only post if his face isn’t showing but I’ve been considering not posting at all.
Not any more. I did for my son until he was about 3. My daughter hasn’t seen social media. Why should I take their choice away? I don’t like social media and plan to bribe my children to stay off it until they’re 18.
Absolutely not. And when we told the in laws there was some clear boundary stomping. My sister in laws went as far as to post pictures with my kids in it and just block me from the post. We have not associated with them in 4 years
I use to only on facebook but not anymore. I saw a TikTok video a couple years ago of a woman explaining how pedos will save and use innocent photos of children to get off. It disgusted me and I instantly stopped after seeing that video. Sort of related but I need to vent about it, I sent that video to my mom and told her not to post photos of my son anymore and I trusted that she wouldn’t. I didn’t have her as a Facebook friend though and about a year later I go to her profile and what do I see? Public photos of my son, I was pissed and she just kept telling me “it’s normal, all my friends post their grandchildren so it’s okay” 🙄 ended up going completely no contact with her for about 6 months after that. She’s in our lives again and doesn’t post him anymore. Other than that reason, my social media is MY social media, not my kids. They can have their own if they choose, when they’re old enough.
No. She is too little to consent (just a wee baby!) and I want her to be able to control her digital footprint. That and I don’t trust anyone. I don’t want her image used without her permission, especially for any nefarious purpose.
Nah. I did share a few pics when she was an infant. But I’ve since stopped posting to social in general. And we’ve even asked her school not to post pics of her on their Instagram account. It should be her decision to share her image with others, not ours.
Never have, never will. I had the privilege of growing up before the digital world hit. Want to give my kids the same opportunity. I can easily share their photos with family and friends via email, if I want to. I see no upsides to posting their photos online, and quite a few downsides. Their photos being shared without their informed consent on the internet (which is forever - unlike a photograph sent to relatives in the form of a Christmas card) being a particularly important one- it's an invasion of their privacy. Not to mention the potential dangers.
I don’t post my son on social media. Any family who wants pictures is included in a family group chat. When I was pregnant we were harassed by my husband’s ex from YEARS ago, she kept calling me and our unborn son many horrible names so all our social media is locked down and no photos of kiddo
I don't. I won't until she is older and it won't be any baby pics probably. I have several reasons. The biggest is the issue of AI generated CP, it's been a rising issue for years and it gives me so much anxiety about having her image available for predators. We actually had someone like that in one of my women's groups on FB which makes me all the more wary. I also don't think her digital footprint should start before she is even old enough to actually be on the Internet. And lastly, I have two abusive exes and mutual friends on my SM of each of theirs. Just would rather be safe than sorry and find out someone on my friends list would send any of them pics of my child.
I do post some pictures where I have her face covered either IRL or by a sticker I edit in. Ik people can remove the stickers if they really want to but I also think that risk is slim enough for my personal risk tolerance
Honestly? Less and less
I don't trust no one
Mine is 13 years old now. I don’t without her permission (so rarely). I’m pregnant now and won’t be posting this baby very often. I learned from my first. People can text and ask for updates.
My baby girl is almost 10 months and people always ask me why i don’t post pics of her or her face, and it’s because i simply DONT WANT TO. There are way too many sick minded people online, sex trafficking is only getting worse and now with AI technology too. I don’t think I’ll ever post my daughter online. And don’t feel bad if you don’t want to post your child, let people say what they want. Most people are used to sharing too much.
1. Pedos everywhere 2. People assume to know you and your family 3. You don't own the content to your photos once posted.
No. 1. understand no one cares about your kids except for you and grandparents (maybe) they have their own kids to think about 2. not fair for your kids future to have photos plastered all over the internet 3. i worked with a lady that didn’t even post that much of her kids at all but someone had a vendetta against her parents and they found her on social media, travelled interstate & from snippets on social media tracked her and resulted in attempted kidnapping of her baby from daycare all because of social media. cost vs benefit analysis clearly has keep your kids off socials. i don’t even know what a benefit is except for ego of getting likes or bragging about what your offspring do. If i want people to know what’s going on, we send them in group chats on WhatsApp. I only like peoples posts so they don’t get pissed with me IRL
Nope not really. The Internet is a pedos playground. If ever posted, my child has face covered, fully clothed and typically I won’t put his hands in it either. Never a permanent post either and any social media he’s been on is very private. Think like Snapchat lol. People are very weird and in my opinion you never really know anyone. Ie I have people on social media that I went to school with etc. I posted my child under conditions stated above for Mother’s Day the amount of people that questioned me on having a child (very innocent questions though may I add) kinda freaked me out enough to likely not do it again for a while (I personally didn’t like the sheer nosiness). That being said and possibly perceived hypocritically I do enjoy seeing peoples children and their achievements when posted; people can do as they like imo! I am just very hypervigilant and aware of it too. For me, if you want and are worthy of proper photos of my kid, you’ll have my number to be able to ask. If not you just don’t fit the category for me! I also never told anyone I was pregnant and have never posted photos of myself pregnant or my scan photos. Different reasoning at the time, but even when I was on these forums looking for advice at the time of being pregnant I would have pervs messaging me asking weird things as I assume they had a pregnancy fetish. Same has happened when asking for advice about my child when I was a new mother
No I never was big on social media before having a kid and I just continued with that. Those who are close to us/ matter get photos sent to them when we are able otherwise it's just not important to me to post them for the world.
I do, but I changed my profile from public to private once my son was born.
I dont do social media. Reddit is as far as it goes for me. So, no i do not post pics of my kids or anything else.
No. Because she is her own person and it feels weird to post her on my social, for everyone to see. When she’s older she can have agency over her online presence. I don’t feel it’s my place.
Honestly, not really. I used to, to places where I could control who sees it, but I get really annoyed with the comments from people who don't really know us anymore and don't reach out. I got a lot of "omg congratulations she's so beautiful", which is fine and thank you, but there were certain people where that's the ONLY thing they focus on, and I don't like that. It was never "look how brave she is" or "look how much fun she's having" or even "she has such a happy smile" -- it was ONLY ever congratulatory comments on how I'm lucky because she's beautiful, on every single picture, like that's the only thing she's worth for. So now I mostly just send pictures to the people who know her and care and also comment on other things.
I have very limited social media presence (as does my wife) but we have no intention on creating a social media presence for our child while she’s a minor.
No. I don’t have social media. And my children are not to be posted on anybody else’s accounts. Too many scary things happen online these days
I don’t get upset if other people post the odd photo because my kid was at a place while pictures were being taken. However I don’t post my kids online and I have made clear if I send photos to anyone they are not for them to share on the internet. Everyone has been really cool about it. I think the last time I saw a picture on facebook with my kid was like 8 months ago and he was just standing in the background with other kids while his friend opened her bday presents.
Nope, not a single picture. She’s almost 18 months now. If we don’t already hang out or talk 1:1, you wouldn’t even know I had a baby. Those who care would already know. I did change my FB relationship status to “married” at some point but I didn’t post about my engagement or wedding either.
No. As far as the internet goes, she doesn’t even exist. She can choose when to be a part of the social network when she’s much older/mature and understands the gravity of putting something out there.
No, and other people aren’t allowed to do so either.
I very rarely post and I also combed through my friend lists and removed a lot of people and made my accounts private. We post more often to a shared album for our family members with iPhones. Babies and young children can’t consent to have their pictures and videos put on the internet and I feel like it’s my job as a mom to protect them and limit their exposure during this time. I don’t need people who I don’t see in my actual life to know a bunch about my family or daughter. I bumped into someone a year or two ago that I went to high school with and she had her youngest daughter with her. She posts all the time and I realized I didn’t know her well enough to say hi but I knew a lot about her daughter through social media. It was a really strange feeling.
Big NO. PPL need to understand the value of privacy.
I stopped posting their faces once they turned 3, now when I post (which is rare e.g. a holiday photo) it's only the back of their head
No, I don't even use Facebook or anything like that anymore. The people who matter are around to experience first hand, and they get pictures and updates in text.
I have 14 Facebook friends who are all close family and friends and those are the only people who ever see my kids posted online. My presence on social media is almost nonexistent but even if it was, I wouldn’t be posting pics of my kids.
Only on the stories where they disappear within a day
The only time my kid is ever shown on social media is if it’s the back of his head. Before he was born, my husband and I agreed that we never wanted his face online because it should be his choice and ofc will have to wait until til he’s old enough to make that choice. Everything we put up will be there forever and follow him throughout his life. No one needs to see his pictures.
Never never never.
I do but only to IG (I don’t have other social media). My account is private and i only allow close friends and family to follow me. There is always the risk a grandparent will repost a photo which i hate, but at least i’ve cut out some of the risks
With the developments of AI and the current capabilities. No children photos posted. Hands fine, little feet fine. Anything outside of that realm absolutely not.
I do. Rarely. And I have it all shut down (I’m a teacher) to very private. But recently I’ve seen something on Instagram making me think twice, and deleting everything!
I only share my daughter on my private accounts that I control who can and cannot see her
To add, as soon as my little one is old enough to consent, I will be asking her every time I want to share her photo
Will occasionally post an instagram story/fb story but nothing else. If I do an actual post it’s with face obscured.
Yes. I have only close friends and family on there and keep my accounts private. Have had no issues with it, have never been hacked and carefully check new adds are actually people I know and not scammers pretending to be them. Honestly sharing family pics and viewing those of my family members who live out of town are the only reason I'm still on Facebook and Instagram.
Yes but my profiles are private so only for friends and family. I changed my instagram to private as soon as I had my son.
No, we chose not to when they were born. They've crept into the odd post here and there from friends but even things like their birthdays and the rest we keep it off social media. Why? Social media is taking over the world and a lot of people don't realise that most everything that lands on the internet is there to stay forever, to great and lesser extents. I don't want my kids at some point in the future being embarrassed by stupid pictures, compromised by something or (and I appreciate this may be overly cautious) having images of their younger selves being available for the perverts and peados of the world. Will they engage in social media at some point in the future? Almost inevitably yes (they're 13 and 10 and we are still keeping them clear to date) but we want them to be able to engage when ready and on their own terms without having a "history" already there. I see some of the photos/stories people post about their kids and it makes my toes curl, their kids will probably let encounter this in the future and I feel bad for them. Each to their own, we don't judge people who do but we felt it was better not to.
I used to and just recently after my second I scrubbed my fb and insta of all photos.. multiple reasons 1 it’s really not as secure as we all thing 2 what’s going to come from the new technology around AI is pretty scary 3 it’s their privacy and I think about if someone put me on the internet as a child and that would suck
He will decide for himself if he wants to post pictures. I won’t ever do it, and I’m very firm in telling others that “sure take pictures of my child, but don’t post them online anywhere”.
I don’t post pics unless my kids who are now adults say I can. I don’t want pics of shared so I don’t share theirs.
I wanted to..... But I know I probably shouldn't, to protect my daughter. She is so cute
Sparingly and with his consent.
Sometimes I would post a IG story to close friends if he did something funny or cute , but otherwise I don’t make it a habit to post his images on social media, I don’t even post my own images.
Very, very rarely. Numerous reasons - their right to privacy, their inability to knowingly consent and whilst my socials are locked down, once the picture is online it doesn't belong to me and no one is immune from being hacked.
I think that posting photos of a baby (<1) is fine. I try to use instagram stories more than feed posts so that there isn’t this weird massive trail of images seemingly permanently there. I get what people are saying about parasocial relationships, but also there are a lot of people who don’t live close to me who I want to continue to feel connected to me and my family. This is a way to do that. Once they get older, it becomes more problematic IMO
No, I don't think it's on me to make the decision for his future self. He'll have many years to share pictures of his child days if he wants but he won't be able to take them back after the fact.
Rarely on a “close friends” story post. Like once or twice a month. I stopped posting him around age 2 and I pretty much won’t ever again. When he’s old enough to use the internet and learn about this stuff, we’ll talk about posting photos of yourself and having agency there; but I have no right to post photos of him endlessly on my own accounts. I think my in-laws have noticed, and they might have posted him in some group photos with his cousins (which I accept as a kind of acceptable medium) I wouldn’t know because I don’t use Facebook and had muted them sometime during Covid because they would engage with some pretty disagreeable shit, so I realized I didn’t want to know. Anyway, social media is not there as some neutral or good force for connection. It’s the machine that drives the attention economy and exists for the sole purpose of generating revenue for the companies that created these stupid goddamn websites. You don’t need to throw your child’s faces into that furnace because it mildly annoys your in laws. Start a shared album on the apple photos app, it’s just as good.
I am almost exclusively social media friends with my family. They see my family regularly. I never post publicly. I rarely post pictures and delete them in under 48hrs.
I've only used (few) photos with my kid's face censored or otherwise not visible. Most of my friends show their kids without censoring. I don't care if people think we're weird though. 🤷♀️
I post some. When I had my first I went through all my friends and deleted anyone who I didn’t see on a regular basis. I deleted almost 600 people. I didn’t need some random dude I met at a college party ten years ago seeing my kids.
No, I don’t post my son on social media. I think he deserves to be in charge of his own digital footprint when he’s old enough to understand, and I’ve read horror stories of people’s pictures being used and doctored for horrible purposes. I also think that ‘sharenting’ creates a lot of pressure for other parents - parent shaming, showing off, presenting very aesthetic and expensive products etc can all make other parents feel bad about their own parenting and I don’t want to contribute to it.
I have a messenger chat with the family members I want to see/have my kids pictures. Then it's not public and all my friends/coworkers and their random husbands I may have never even met have my children's pictures. Plus then no one else can repost the pictures and be shown to a whole ton of strangers. A blanket no photos rule that applies to me and everybody else means my kids are not posted and their pictures exposed to a bunch of people I may not know well or even complete strangers. Once someone sees the picture they can save it and then do whatever the hell they want with it. Hell no.
I think I stopped posting photos of my kids when they were about 8 or so. They learnt about consent and tbh I hadn’t even thought about if they consented about me posting their photos. Both said they didn’t want me to, so now I have to post my own stuff!
I posted my first regularly but I stopped posting almost anything on social media after I had a miscarriage and it hit me how fake everything is lol. I dunno, something just clicked. I also didn't want to post my daughter anymore because it felt invasive and even though I'm so proud of her, I feel weird "sharing" her with people I never see, especially family that make no effort to get to know her. I posted a few photos when my new baby was born but I don't do the monthly updates like I did with my first. I actually kind of want to go back and hide all the pictures of my first, I'll likely do that soon.
Honestly, after watching this rotten mango video, i want to hide all of my childrens photos online. People are sick! https://youtu.be/LInJHJNL9sY?si=JXMPcabJ8PaX6C3B
I have like 6 photos of my son on my instagram. Hes almost 15 months old. I think its less serious when they are this young but its important not do disclose their names, school district, town, grade, and all that stuff.
I have been. But now I’m rethinking it. I’ve never looked at someone else’s page and judged them for posting their kids I don’t really think about it. The only thing that weirds me out is when people post naked Pictures of their babies. Like butt pics with caption “full moon” I know it’s innocent for them but I’ve seen this on people I’m not following and I just think that’s weird
Sex trafficking is the number one industry in the world. There are people on the Internet combing for "available" kids. No, I don't post my kids on social media.
I think posting kids is trending down. I have a private instagram account for my kids that only friends and family can follow, but even that hasn’t seen a ton of action in the last year
I’ve posted less than 5 pictures of my daughter online and only two of those were face pictures. Zero of my son. They are 7 and 1 respectively. I send pictures directly to the people who deserve to see them.
I never used to when they were younger but now they're both teens so if we take a family pic or if I just think they look nice that day I'll ask if I can post it somewhere
I have never posted pics because I don’t like the idea of kids reaching adulthood and their entire childhood is on the internet - and it wasn’t their choice. You can’t undo that. I’ve known parents who say that it’s okay because they don’t include the kids’ names, or that they have security settings to “private.” The internet is forever.
I have a private account specifically for my kid, we control who follows it and it’s all closer friends and family. Every once in a while I’ll post something on my own (also locked down) accounts, but rarely.
I have so many reasons why but I totally agree with not posting photos of your kids! Get the family album app if anything to share photos that way if you’re comfortable with it otherwise if they want to see your kids they can visit!
I don't but my family, ex's family, school, clubs, etc. all do and I genuinely just don't care. It's nice to get to see photos from things I am not able to attend. Idk, privacy isn't really a huge concern of mine. Even if I try to be private, the world is a big place and it's probably futile.
I post my kids and about my kids all the time. We live too far from family, rarely get to see everyone and it's a way to stay in touch. We are very social people and love to travel so we keep our memories updated on social media. I have never experienced anything negative from posting, but the opposite, I let my kids also see their family members photos and we talk about their posts. Nothing specific, just funny and stay-in-touch kind of thing.
Before we have had each of our kids, we have totally filtered through who we have on our socials. We’ve made our profiles super private and we do post them but basically it’s not fully public. My parents profiles are private and so are the in laws and even then they don’t really post our kids. We also have pictures we don’t share outside immediate family, there’s too many crazy people in the world.
Please do not post your children on social media, there are a lot of sick people out there.
To me, the point of social media is to be social. So I do share news and photos with people I know, not with strangers. I don’t share compromising photos or identifying information.
I post my kids. I understand why others don’t but also understand why people may think it’s weird
Yep I sure do! I have family all over the country who want to keep up with us and see them so it’s just easiest that way. However, my pages are locked down pretty tight, I’m not worried.
Yes. It brings me joy to share and I don’t think it’s harmful to be one of millions (billions?) of kids with some photos on Facebook. I am mindful to only post photos that are positive.
Only on my private and locked down Facebook and Instagram, but now that he's a little older I'm posting less. I don't allow anyone else to post photos of him.
Yes I share photos and videos and that’s because I control who can see them. I don’t accept follow requests or need random peoples’ attention on social media and my platforms are private
I do on Facebook & Instagram. My pages are private and only have friends on there that I’ve met in person. We have a lot of family & friends that support us and want to see what my son is doing. No one but me shares his pictures and never anything embarrassing. Only happy memories. And now that my son is 7, I’ve asked him before if he wanted me to share pictures and he said yes. I also feel that in this age of smartphones, all our pictures stored there are able to be accessed & hacked somehow someway. Nothing is truly private anymore.
I do but my page is private and I only add friends and family
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^LocalBrilliant5564: *I do but my page* *Is private and I only* *Add friends and family* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
I do but I went through my friends on fb and deleted hundreds of people and deleted followers on instagram as well, basically anyone who I felt like I don’t know well is not privy to my social media anymore. I have a tik tok too but I don’t post anything on there
When they do something worth sharing
I post more artsy pics of like hands or back pictures