Children on social media

[ChildcarePanic]

I used to post photos of my son on social media, until I went to some training on children and autonomy/the Internet etc. It opened my eyes to the fact that I had created a digital footprint of my son without his consent, and posted 'cute' photos of him that he may find embarrassing as he gets older. I removed all photographs and won't post any more unless he wants me to when he's older. The training really struck a chord.

I've come across people either friends or 'influencer', that post all sorts, photos of kids in the bath with goggles on, photos of their kids in drama performances, photos of their kids upset or stressed for whatever reason, videos pranking their kids etc.

Does anyone else wonder what the effect of putting photos of our children's daily lives on the Internet might be?

I don't post any photos of my children on social
Media for this reason, I'm 10 years time I'm sure my grown don't want photos of everything thing they did out there. Kids can't consent to having their photos out there. I feel a lot of 'influencers' who put their kids lives up there are exploiting their children. Some of the kids have been in social media since the minute they were born and it's scary. People know their children's names, birthdays, interests it's very strange and scary. Have you looked some
Mums who run these accounts they will happy let you buy stuff for their child. Some of them have daughters and you can buy them swim wear and see photos of them in it as a 'thank you'. So gross. You can also have personalised video messages, FaceTimes. It seems everything has a cost. It doesn't matter how the child feels about it.
you also don't know who is seeing your photos, if someone can see your photo they can get your photo

I do have pictures of my kids online but tgey are on private accounts where the photos arent public anx only friends/family on my friends list.

i do wonder how the kids feel with all these “mummy bloggers “. Im talking about those who have photographed and videoed them in every situation from birth and how the conversation goes when they hit teen years/high school. I cant get a photo these days with my teen and i cant imagine how unhappy he would be if i had a blog like that.

I guess it's not so much the danger aspect as the privacy and consent. It's people that they do know that will be able to see these pictures. Nothing is truly private on Facebook.

Who benefits when you put pictures online of children too young to consent? Is there another way to achieve that benefit?

I cannot fathom why any parent with an ounce of emotional intelligence would not consider how posting pictures without their children's 'consent' may affect their child in a negative way. Should be a law against it.

I don't think there's any justification for sharing them on public accounts, not unless they are old enough to consent properly. I would love to hear how people who do so manage to justify it. You can't claim it's for family/friends etc as you can use WhatsApp or a private online album for that - which I do think is OK as it's the same as sharing printed photos with people "in the olden days".

Well if they don't like their facial expressions or clothing they are wearing in photos do you go as far as to remove family photos from around your home? Ask relatives too?

Where does it end?

I’m not on social media anymore but I’ve never done this. I do really judge parents that overshare about their kids online tbh.

I've often felt it's up to DC how they present themselves. It's marketing to me. Many different ways of doing it. Would hate someone to turn them down for a job because we looked too rich, poor, uneducated, unsporty or whatever. People judge. The less they have to go on, the better.

Is a private online album substantially different to a completely private Instagram account, where the only people who can see any pictures are people who have requested to follow and have been accepted?

That's a genuine question, as I don't know.

On the training I was on they said any platform or group that had more than 2 or 3 people in it shouldn't be used to share photographs, so if shared by a parent in a group with just maternal grandparents in it is fine, any platform that had more could potentially be damaging to the child. She said 'imagine you were out with your 12 year old and you bumped into a close friend, and you then proceeded to show them a picture from 10 years ago of you sat in your high chair with spaghetti on the wall. Your child probably wouldn't mind. Now imagine you did the same thing but showed a group of 20 people, passing your phone from person to person. Do you think that might make your child feel uncomfortable'. I mean, she was very much of the mindset that you should never, ever put even one photo of your child online before the age that they're allowed to have their own social media profile (usually 13) and not without their consent, but the content made sense.

*a photo of the child sat in their high chair. Brain isn't working today!

I know people who post every single day pictures of their kids and have done since their scans, kids are now 6+ and below. No thought or care what so ever about their consent or consideration for their future despite me telling them in the past.

Social Media companies own your photos, you give up the right when you post them on their platform. It's a hackers and scammers dream, potentially setting your kids up in the future for fraud identified theft and worse

I tested this once going back on their profiles, date of birth easy their photos are plastered all over social media when they were born including every birthday. Security questions , first school, first pet , where were they born, parents names, best friend, favourite so and so all plastered every where without their consent all information ripe to be sought out farmed and used in the future. 🙄

I would say it is, because social media is relatively easy to hack by pretending to be someone else. Also I don't know much about Instagram but certainly on Facebook if someone likes something or tags you in it then that's potentially a way for it to be seen outside of your group, because each person you are "friends" with has their own network. Whereas an album or WhatsApp group doesn't have any way to be accessed by those outside it. Social media can't be completely private

Yes there's quite a lot of research out there re identity theft and joy easy it's going to be to steal the identities of our children when they're adults (or even now!).

I don't do it. For many reasons.

What other people do is up to them though. Everyone has different views.

Well that's the point really. You could decide to remove those photos hanging on the wall at home if you wanted to. And not that many people would have seen them and probably no one would have a copy. Whereas something online is there forever and you can't control who sees it.

If the photo is at Grandma's and the child never goes there (or their friends don't at least) it's less of an issue.

Presumably if you care about the child you wouldn't force them to have pictures of themselves they hated anyway

Children can’t consent to being used this way. Getting the little dopamine hit of social media likes should be less important than your child’s consent.

I don't post any photos of my children that I wouldn't happily share in real life..

My two love looking at my Facebook memories and their baby pictures!

Often how they'll say "are you going to take a photo of me for Facebook?"

I don't have loads of Facebook friends and my Facebook is locked right down so no issue in my opinion.

I'm somewhat similar to you OP in that I did it when they were very young but would never do it now. I'm not a prolific SM user but when they were tiny I of course thought they were the most adorable things in the world and posted occasionally. I would say I put up approx 20 photos over their babyhood/toddler years. Never embarrassing/inappropriate.

What changed for me was finding out a friends husband (now ex) was using photos of her (adult) friends as wanking fodder. Just normal every day photos on FB and Instagram, nothing revealing or provocative, but he had another phone and was compulsively searching through the photos, saving them and getting off to them every day 🤢 that was it for me. I took all photos of my children and me down. You never ever know who on your friend list has nefarious proclivities...

See I find that kindof, odd, that putting photos of our kids on social media has been so normalised that they're asking whether you're going to take a photo of them for Facebook.

I agree, I don't think people should flood social media with pictures of kids, but worse in my opinion is when people post about their children's illnesses or accidents "back at the hospital with this one [insert pic]" or just a photo of a sad looking sick child huddled under a blanket on the sofa etc. Why? Just for a few sad face emojis or "You ok hun?" messages?
You are using your child as digital currency and future employers will be able to Google your child and estimate how many sick days they are going to cost the company!

I don't know one person who doesn't put pics on insta or fb of them and their kids. Just saying.

Zero pictures of my children on social media and I don't have social media. If they wish to have their image online they can decide for themselves when they're older.

I have a really small circle of friends on my private Facebook- literally about 20- and I share the occasional photo of Ds on there. I have no issue with him being put online on his schools website or something like that. I think we’ve all become so ridiculously worried about everything now it’s almost sad when you can’t see photos of people enjoying themselves when you look online at stuff. There are so, so many pictures of kids / people online in general I really don’t think it’s worth getting upset about it all. As an adult I couldn’t give a flying monkeys whether there are / were photos of me out there as a kid doing mundane normal kid stuff.