People posting pics of their children in hospital online

[Rolson77]

Why is this a thing? A friend (old school friend, we dont really speak other than in passing) of mine just 3 weeks ago had a normal amount of followers/friends online. Now her daughter is in hospital with a serious illness and she's opened up her social media, now has over 30k followers, because of the pics she's posting of her daughter online. One of them is her daughter crying with a dr/nurse putting a needle in her back. Another of her hand with a bloody cannula in it describing how she keeps pulling it out. Etc. Her daughter is 7 and cannot give informed consent for this. I don't know why it's pissed me off so much. Is this normal? Using your kids' illness to get likes and followers?

YANBU- I hate this.

It's really weird and if my child was in hospital it is the last thing I would be thinking of doing.

This is what happens when people become so addicted to the dopamine hit of “likes” that posting deeply questionable shit like this online becomes a spinal reflex rather than a conscious thought. Awful.

There is a family in our town who do this sort of thing. They even had a photo of a relative in the back of an ambulance. How desperate do you have to be for 'likes' to sink so low?

It's literally the last thing that would cross my mind to do if my child was in hospital. Then again I don't do social media anyway and never post pictures of anyone online. She's exploiting her child for followers imo.

I find it sickening to be honest.

One of my children was in NICU. The staff had to remind me to take photos, or I wouldn’t have had any of his first few weeks of life. I was so frightened and focused on him that I just didn’t think of it.

I couldn’t imagine Then uploading those photos to the internet.

Yes it's sickening.
One mum I've seen posting a selfie of herself with her son clearly visible on a nebuliser.
Utterly ridiculous, total lack of brain cells.

@HappierTimesAhead exactly. This is how I feel.

I absolutely hate it. I don’t use SM anymore, but I also used to hate it when people would check into hospital to get the ‘you ok hun?’ comments too. It’s worse when they do it with their kids though. I instantly thought the person doesn’t give a damn about their child when Ive seen it, because when it’s plastered over social media it’s just for attention for the parent. The only exception I would make for this is when they are fundraising for their child, which to me is completely different.

It’s very easy to be very judgemental about this isn’t it?
I’ll admit to having posted photos of my 6 year old online when she got a cancer diagnosis (just eating breakfast rather than mid procedure!). I desperately needed support from my friends and couldn’t face telling everyone individually- it was just too painful. I’d never have thought I’d do it till I was in that situation either - until you’re in the middle of it I really don’t think you can predict how you’ll react.

A bit dangerous if you ask me:

https://www.kaspersky.com/resource-center/threats/children-photos-and-online-safety

I took a couple photos of my youngest in NICU, just because you do take photos of your new baby, but I only sent them to a couple of relatives to "introduce" him to family, and he was asleep rather than distressed or having needles put in him.

I have a couple of FB friends who post things like photos of them and their kids in A&E "at A&E with Lulu, sooo worried" so that the comments all fill up with "omg hun" and "poor Lulu, what's wrong?" It's such horrible attention-seeking.

An old school friend has lost her daughter and grandchildren over this.

Her granddaughter (4/5) fell and had a very deep cut to her knee. Her mother photographed the wound and filmed the child screaming and uploaded it to Facebook with some merry caption of 'on our way to get stitches'.

The morons came out of the woodwork with 'Poor Bubba' posts and heart emojis etc.

Then the whole hospital wait and treatment and stitches was photographed and filmed and uploaded in real time.

The girl was very distressed and when the husband arrived he took a photo of his crying daughter and in the background was the mother, eyes down and gripping her phone and not comforting the child.

My friend saw all these posts and photographs and was very upset. She made the mistake of posting underneath a photo of the crying girl song the lines of it not being very nice for Imogen and that was it.

The daughter blew up, blocked her and they had a massive row by phone and she's never seen her daughter or grandchildren since.

Photos of a new born in an incubator are entirely different are worthy of empathy and a show of support.

Little Brian with his leg hanging off after falling off his trampoline, are not.

Its so easy to say "I wouldn't even dream if taking photos of my child in hospital" isn't it.

Until you have a kid who spent their whole life in hospital and that's all you actually have of them.

I have posted photos of my beautiful daughter in hospital, I've posted them on MN actually, so you can be disgusted by that all you damned well like, they are all I have and I'll share them to the world, because she never got to make the impact on the world that she should have.

My little girl is in and out of hospital, I take photos but never of her in pain and I try not to show wires/cannula etc. She's just very sweet and it helps to keep family updated. I wouldn't post to social media as I couldn't be bothered explaining to 20 separate people what's going on.

Are you Billie's mother?

If so the photos of your lovely daughter are not in the same category of people who have taken their child to A&E and are photographed having treatment or in distress.

There is a big difference.

God I hate this. It's one of the reasons I'm not on Facebook anymore.

But in the past I I have seen pictures of:

• a child throwing up in the toilet
• a child's bare back showing chickenpox, the buttocks were visible.
• close up shot of a very unwell child asleep
• a child being given oxygen by ambulance staff

It's disgraceful that these parents are posting pictures of their children at their most vulnerable, without consent, when they should be getting off their stupid fucking phone and comforting the poor child. I judge these people harshly and wouldn't be friends with anyone who does it.

To add to my reply, the worst part for me is the fact the parents are never comforting their child or holding their hand when they are distressed or going through procedures, they are taking photos instead like some nasty paparazzi photographer taking photos of a crash. The children will grow up with evidence that their parents cared more about ‘likes’ than they did them. It’s really sad.

My little girl is called Emma.

Op didn't categorise anything, just lumped us parents who take photos and post online 'for likes and followers' together really.

I don't have SM anymore but for the longest time I did because I was desperate to find other families in the same boat, I was desperate to find an answer (long backstory about her short life and her death).

Now I post every so often just because I want people to see her, use her name, and read a little about her so she isn't just real to me.

As I say, all I have is hospital photos.

Maybe if op didn't mean people like me, she should have used her words more carefully.

This sums it up perfectly. It’s disgusting and voyeuristic.

I used to work in theatres and we regularly had to ask parents not to make videos or take photos of their children and the staff in the anaesthetic room. I know many nurses in the recovery area and the HCAs in reception that have been verbally abused for also reminding parents the same. Honestly we don’t say it to be mean it’s a matter of safety, privacy and respect.

Ditto @Ivalueloyaltyaboveallelse

Why parents want to film anaesthetic induction instead of comforting their distressed anxious child who's about to have surgery completely baffles me.

you missed the point of this post