Why are some parents choosing not to share photos of their children on social media?

[RedRobyn2021]

Someone I know has just made a status announcing they've had their baby but won't be sharing pictures at least not until they are older

And come to think of it, I know a few people who have not even shared their child's name

I don't even have many Facebook friends but after I had my baby I did a sweep of my Facebook and removed a bunch of people so now I have maybe 200 people on there that I know.

I don't post loads of pictures of my daughter but I post maybe every couple of months a photo or a story

Is that ok? Should I not be doing this?

Feel a bit upset like maybe I'm a bad mum and should have considered more carefully

Should I take them down?

I have one friend who posts pictures of their girl in the bath and in a nappy at a few years old. I have another friend who has posted one photo in the same time with the child's face actually covered up by an emoji so you can't see any features. Both seem to me to be extremes!

When my DC were small I only shared photos of parts of them (feet or hands) or the back of their heads and never used their name. I didn't want to be creating a social media presence for them without their consent.

Now they are older I'll share some photos (maybe one or two a year) and only with their permission. I still use an alias for them.

I do this because it's not up to me to expose them and their identity to the net. It should be their choice. Not mine.

Paedophiles?
Found out we were mutual friends with one.
I’ve removed all content.

Do what you are comfortable with. We have never put DC on fb- I’m concerned around privacy issues and I also don’t feel the need to boast about my children. We’ve had huge fall outs with schools who struggle to see why we don’t want our DC on their social media. I didn’t announce it, but I have asked people to take pictures down.

I don't mind school doing pictures doing normal things, when I was younger I was in the paper along with loads of school children which I think is a similar thing. But I don't post on FB personal pics, birthdays etc. They can do that when they're ready.

They're not sharing pictures of their children because they're very sensible and responsible parents who are doing exactly the right thing by their child.

I ask permission from my teen dcs. They usually say no. I did post the odd few pics when they were little.

I stopped recently as I felt others especially family were expecting it. And I stopped and thought why? What am I doing? If they want to see dc. Come and see them /meet me some where / invite us round or whatever
some members were sharing the photos or saving them to do the 'oh so proud of how my dn is growing up and dping xyz' but I don't know who's on their fb!

I have 230 friends on my fb.. 198 of them are family. The other 32 are friends I see often. I don't have people from school unless I still have a friendship. Same for ex colleagues etc

I stopped back last summer and never looked back

A friend of mine today added 65 photos of her ds playing playdoh and having his lunch. I find that bizzare.
And that's daily!

This probably isn't much of a problem now as I think social media companies have taken steps (and people are much more savvy about not letting their camera share location info) but see "I Know Where Your Cat Lives" for examples of potential problems with looser privacy settings.

A bit more dramatic, and also a lot less likely for people's home snaps shared only with friends and family, is 'OSINT' (Open Source Intelligence, it's not inherently sinister though!) where identifying information can be gleaned directly or indirectly from a photo to give someone clues about likely location craighays.com/how-an-investigator-can-find-your-location-from-one-photograph/

Also, what else is in the photo you're sharing ;) Some amusing pics of people trying to take photographs of mirrors they're selling haha.

Jo

We don't because social media is for, and used by, idiots

I post the odd one, as in there are probably less than 5 of my 18yo on my sm. I don’t put anything personal or embarrassing, just stuff like a family group shot on a day out. I don’t worry about paedophiles but I am quite private and don’t want my picture online so I extend that to other people. I wouldn’t put a pic of friends at an event on either. I have 2 people on my fb who put hideous amounts of content of their teen and pre teen kids which I find cringey af and it’s not even me in the pics. Stuff like a 14yo boy in his parents bed reading a story to his little sister. Cute but not something he’d necessarily show his friends, or a video of an excited 12 yo getting a birthday gift. People should be allowed to display emotions in their own home on their birthday without their mum videoing it and showing the world. It must be exhausting thinking about how you would look on insta every minute when you are just playing with your siblings or having a hot chocolate in the house.

When you post a photo online, you lose control of it.
No matter how tightly controlled you think your audience is, you have no idea where it could end up.
www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/08/14/mood-swing-meme-how-a-mum-s-photo-of-her-grumpy-toddler-went-viral_n_7327068.html

We never have, either. Up to you.

[quote Voice0fReason]When you post a photo online, you lose control of it.
No matter how tightly controlled you think your audience is, you have no idea where it could end up.
www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/08/14/mood-swing-meme-how-a-mum-s-photo-of-her-grumpy-toddler-went-viral_n_7327068.html[/quote]
You have convinced me.

I compromise and only post photos of DS in an album that only family and my two best mum friends can see.

The way I see it is would show pics of him if I saw them in person anyway and we are scattered all over the country so this is the easiest way.

@AntiHop

I do put photos of my dcs on Facebook. I never put anything that they might be embarrassed by in the future. I like looking my previous photos when the memories come up, and I like looking at the photos that other people share.

The thing is, you can’t know what will embarrass them in the future.

I remember being in the office with a colleague on her birthday. Her dad had put together lots of recent family photos in a “happy birthday” post and she was horrified that her entire friends list would see it. She was mid-20s and they were all objectively nice photos. But she hated her hair in one, the angle of her face in another, etc etc. As we all do with certain photos. We all present ourselves in specific ways, and over sharing our kids’ photos takes that away from them.

@wherethewildthingis I'm not the poster you quoted and I can't verify whether the specific incident they shared is true, but I can 100% say that Photoshopping images is a thing. I used to work in a job that had close links with the courts and sat through many trials. There was a man who had taken photos off the social media channels of a family he knew...just innocent photos of the kids playing in the garden etc. He had then photoshopped the faces of the kids and his own face onto images of child abuse, so it looked like he was abusing the kids of the family he knew. The police found hundreds of images like that. He wasn't the only person who did that kind of thing either. This happened in my city, in the UK.

I get the temptation to put photos of your family on Facebook. Despite knowing what I know, I also did this, because I was so excited to have a baby and wanted to share that excitement with people. I convinced myself it would be Ok because my Facebook is private.
But recently those court cases came back into my head, plus as time goes on and my DD grows, it's hit home that by the time she's grown up there will be probably hundreds of photos of her on social media. Would she be happy about that? I don't know. So I've decided to take down her photos and not share anymore, only via PM and What's App to close family and friends.

It's up to parents to decide what to do for the best but they need to be informed about what can happen to the photos they share and decide for themselves if it's worth the risk. And it isn't just risk from perverts either. There was this, from a few years ago:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-49425794

Woman's pregnancy and baby photos stolen from Instagram for an adoption scam.

Sharing some pics with genuine family and friends is one thing but....

I've seen some very uncomfortable constant using of children as accessories, not only that but rlth4lllxhiiden

I've always put the odd pic of my kids on Facebook and never really thought anything of it, but now my eldest is on TikTok and I'm struggling to get them to show any semblance of common sense. They're from a generation that has never known life before social media really and I get the feeling they think I shouldn't be telling them what to do on TikTok when I didn't ask them before I put their photo on Facebook. I think in retrospect I wish I'd kept them off social media completely.

@Unavailableusername I know I have seen similar cases, but a photoshopped image of my child's face on the body of another naked child isn't actually my naked child, if someone wanted they could take pictures of him in the park, on the beach etc and with the proliferation of constantly in hand mobiles I probably wouldn't even know. My child will appear on CCTV every day pretty much in an urban area, I worked with an offender who was a security guard and would masturbate over images and videos from the CCTV he monitored, should I keep my child at home or make him wear a Balaklava? I get I'm not as freaked out by this stuff because I am exposed to it daily, I'm very aware that there are sexual offenders pretty much everywhere, most of you probably live very close to our address related to I've, whether they are concocted it not. Yes it wouldn't be nice to find out my child's images had been photoshopped, however if that were to be the case he hasn't actually come to any physical harm. It's also not especially common, why would you photo shop the face of one 3 year old onto the body of another?
It's each person's preference what to share and as I said I'm not a prolific social media user, but I do post a few pictures a year. I wouldn't post anything even in swimwear let alone nude and I wouldn't post anything personal or embarrassing about him that he might find uncomfortable in later life but a sunny smile with his grandma shouldn't be anything he's ever ashamed of.

I don't get the consent thing?surely as a parent you will do things that your child won't/doesn't consent to but you go ahead and do them any way🤷🏻‍♀️
@Pebble55 I can confirm I am not an idiot and use social media🤦🏻‍♀️

@Mrsmch123

I don't get the consent thing?surely as a parent you will do things that your child won't/doesn't consent to but you go ahead and do them any way🤷🏻‍♀️ *@Pebble55* I can confirm I am not an idiot and use social media🤦🏻‍♀️

The issue is most of those things are for the child's benefit.

Posting on SM does not benefit the child in any significant way and also there would be no harm/disadvantage of those photos didn't exist.

That's the difference.

No mention or pics of DC on social media for us. Privacy, consent, future issues etc.

I am not even on FB. It's not important
.I can't see why I would "share" photos in public either
If I want someone to see a photo of my.child..I'll.send it to them directly