To hope that all parents who put photos of their children on FB/Insta/Twitter end up getting sued . . .

[Harumphy]

. . . by their grown-up children for breach of privacy.

Children have absolutely no say or control over what is shared by their parents, or with whom it is shared.

My family member has posted, on her public Instagram feed, her son's full name, date of birth, and every waking moment. Now that information will be out there for anyone to consume. At best, this could erode the boy's sense of self-esteem, security, and privacy. At worst, the data can be used to commit identity fraud or give a stranger the information they need to socially engineer access to him.

And I don't care if you say that you get consent before you post anything, because children don't have full knowledge of the context of their decision. They are not cognisant of the whole range of risks.

I also don't care if you say your FB/Insta/Twitter is private. Social networking sites are porous. Facebook in particular is never private, and the data you share will never be expunged.

I think it's not your place, and it's not your right.

Agree with you 100 pc OP. Amazed that this has become so normalised and accepted tbh. We seem to go to great lengths to protect children in this country and yet where FB is concerned parents post all kinds of pics of them. Who knows who might be looking at them.

You seem a bit paranoid OP.

Well, the kids could try suing, if they fancy paying for a lot of lawyers' expensive summer holidays. Because that is all they would achieve.

I don't think I'm paranoid. I work in tech and I suppose I'm coming at it with a different perspective.

I've got a picture of my Son painting the fence in the nud on my instagram. You can see his sweet little 3 yr old bum.

Please remove this. Seriously.

How is posting the odd cute picture of your child in their new outfit/playing on their new swing any less acceptable than a random seeing them in the park/walking through town? Full frontal nudity I’ll grant is totally not acceptable but I don’t feel I deserve to be sued by my daughter for sharing a photo of her in her new outfit🤷🏻‍♀️

Who knows might be looking at them in real life though? Most people who will do your kids harm are known to them personally. It wasn't fucking photos that my pervert relative abused.

I agree to a large extent too and don't put my childs pictures on SM. She wouldn't like it and that's a good enough reason.

I can't get worked up about it. I use fb to share photos with friends and wider family. It's called taking calculated risks.

Does anyone think Facebook will die off sometime soon? Serious question.

Or will it just expand until we all have to broadcast all our lives on a live feed together with what's going on in our heads?

After all, what's the fuss? If you've got nothing to hide why not just get it all out there...

Only paranoid people don't want to share everything they do

All iPhone users have iCloud. That could be hacked at any given moment and all photos taken on your phone could be stolen.

Think it's time to give up your phone too OP

And technology businesses rely on people being lackadaisical with and happy to share their data.

I think people aren't beinb careful (or paranoid) enough.

If my children grow up wanting to sue me because I posted photos of them on the internet then I would wonder where I went so wrong.

Three of mine are teenagers and I do ask before I post any photos of them. Simply because they seem to have lost the art of posting photos that are natural, not filtered and posed in a certain way. I ask now and usually it is a no because it isn't 'FB worthy'.

How is posting the odd cute picture of your child in their new outfit/playing on their new swing any less acceptable than a random seeing them in the park/walking through town?

You really can't work this out?

OP what hideously awful thing do you think is going to happen to me, my DS, his friends, most of my family and millions of other people as we are all on the internet.

To me what seems crazy is how little people think it matters. Far fetched but if you are showing the world pictures of your child, what your child likes doing, what their favourite things are, showing them photos in their school uniform with logo displayed and sharing posts moaning about the school run and how busy it is and how you are always late then you've just told people: What your child looks like, what school they go to and what time they finish school. The parent might not be able to get to the school on time. Someone else could ready with all of that particular child's favourite things. shrug Maybe it's just me. Maybe it's watching too much Black Mirror.

The Cambridge Analytical scandal did one surprise me one jot. But what is sad is that people are willingly building up an online internet profile for people that can't consent.

I work in data protection, and I still post photos of my children on my private facebook account. Yes, nothing is ever truly private but if they become famous they will have far worse photos of them published without their consent and photographers camped outside their doors for recent scandalous photos. A photo (if found) of them at Christmas 2008 with a new box of lego will not be of much interest. There are extremes, as with everything. My son is nearing 11 and I rarely post any of him anymore and he sees what I do post. Children, as you rightly point out, do not have the ability to consent under the age of gillick competency so the parent can do for them (photos in school newsletters etc) so until that age, the parent can make the choice. What you advocate would be no more photos at all until they reach this age in any school newsletter or paper etc. Most senior schools (11+) will now ask for parental and student consent for photo use. At junior school and on a parent's social media as long as the photos are not inappropriate, I fail to see what the problem is. From 12/13 they will be making (in the main) far more embarrassing mistakes in this digital age than their mother having posted a photo of them with an Easter egg each when they were 6 and 9. You are also forgetting that they are growing up in the digital age and all this is 'normal' for them. There will not be 'embarrassing' haircut photos in an old album to look through anymore, but their parents may well be able to trawl back on their facebook timeline to show a new boy or girlfriend. I fail to see much difference.

We are all aware that pedophile routinely steal pics of children online and manufacture sick photos.

We cannot live in a state of constant paranoia when photos of children will be taken even without our knowledge let alone our consent: at school, in parties, in swimming pools, on the beach, in parks, in the street even.

Unless you don't allow your child to leave the school in uniform, their clothes make them so easy to identify and locate.

Photos accessible to the public have been there for so many years.

I agree, in fact my almost 10 year old made it quite clear from age around 8 when he became aware of FB that I'm not to post any photos of him. He doesn't particularly like having his photo taken and he doesn't want them posted online so I respect that. I have family members and friends who publish every minutae detail of their kids lives, photos of them naked, photos of them ill, nothing is off limits apparently. I wonder if those who think you're being silly OP actually ask their kids if they're ok with it once they reach an age where they understand the internet of course which is fairly young these days.

Mia1415 why do you think there will be absolutely no consequences to publicly documenting children's lives and personal information?

If you’re posting embarrassing photos of your children that could potentially come back to haunt them in the future then fair enough, you may have a point. However most parents post the occasional sweet (usually posed, let’s face it..) pic of their kids out for the day or whatever. Nothing that will leave them red faced in years to come.

I agree with you up to a point, OP, but I'm not on facebook or any other social media. I don't get the obsession with the whole thing at all. Whether parents could be sued is a different matter, I suppose there could be a case in extreme circumstances. This reminds me of those nude photos of Brooke Shields as a child that were displayed in an art gallery a few years ago, against her wishes. (that is an extreme case though, I'm not comparing the vast majority of family photos on facebook to that).

Also worth noting they will most likely be on social media themselves in a few years as well...

Mission you haven't listed anything there that someone couldn't figure out watching the school gates I live near a primary school and can.tell you a lot more than that about a number of families I see every day from my living room window.

None of us KNOW what the future repercussions may be on many levels. That's the point. It seems to me wiser to err on the side of caution. Anything else is a gamble.