To find it annoying when parents choose to put their children on social media but cover their faces?

[yellowpinkbluegreenlilac]

I don’t mean parents who for whatever reason decide they don’t want their children’s images on social media: that’s a totally valid choice.

But why share photos of your child and then stick a smiley face or similar over their image? Quite a few pages I follow on instagram do this, mostly those with a small business. They’ve evidently decided to share images of their family life but are so secretive about their child.

I find it irrationally annoys me, as if their child is so special in some way. I just can’t understand why, you know, you just wouldn’t share images of the child at all, or ones of the child looking out at a view so only back of head or similar. Or am I being petty and disagreeable?

Exactly how I feel. It's very attention seeking. You either share a photo or you don't 🤷‍♂️

It kind of irrationally annoys me. I cms dela with the back of the head pictures but the emojis are annoying. I understand if it is agroup picture and you don't have one child's permission. Obviously, I just scroll past and move on with my life.

*Also, to add, there will be other people who take photos of your kids and upload them to social media. It's far easier to ask them to obscure your kids faces than it is to tell them not to post anything from that day/event etc

Maybe they shouldn't be uploading pics from events which include other people's kids.

I have a friend who does this. Her children were adopted from a very difficult early life and she doesn’t want their birth family to be able to find them. She is very proud of the life they have built and they have started to be able to do things as a family (one child in particular has high special needs resulting from early abuse so this was hard early on). So she wants to take photos of all of them all together, but obscures the children’s faces

I figure I don’t know people’s back stories

All the people worried about AI bots and paedophiles - you could, you know, just not post a picture? I know. Radical concept, isn't it.

Or post a picture of the birthday cake rather than everyone round the table. Or a Christmas tree, view from the window, whatever.

It's all a bit "have your cake and eat it too" - you are NOT ALLOWED to see my child's face because he's SO important, but I'm not prepared to make any compromises around what I post and why, or change my style of posting, or restrict my audience.

I don't disagree with you. I don't think any kids should ever be posted on social media.

My point is that obscuring a kids face is by far the easiest option if you care about their privacy. And with AI bots, CSA images that can be made now etc - you should definitely care about not posting their image on social media.

Excluding your kids from every family/event photo is a lot of effort, as is making sure no family holiday photos involve your kids. If you really care about it you can go to efforts to exclude them from photos, but imo obscuring their face is way easier

Why does she need to post them on SM? She's done an amazing job, created a family for vulnerable children, why not just take pictures and keep them private?

I think this is what I’m not getting, and despite people’s protestations it is attention seeking to stick a massive smiley face or heart over your child’s face. It also actually draws attention to them rather than distracts it.

I don’t understand it either. If you don’t want photos of your children’s faces online then don’t post them.
I have very few photos of mine, mostly just when they’re photographed at big family occasions. My main concern is their right to privacy. Although I don’t have anyone on there I don’t know IRL and I make use of all the settings, I still don’t think that everyone needs to know every time one of them eats an ice cream.

If I want to share holiday photos with family then I put in the family chat.

but I'm not prepared to make any compromises around what I post and why, or change my style of posting, or restrict my audience.

Almost like it's a free country, isn't it!

Tbh I judge far more the parents who post their kids faces on social media, despite knowing all the risks

So why post at all?

She can still have photos of her children, and be proud of the lovely family she has created without Facebook.

Of course it’s a free country - no one is suggesting that a law is in place banning it!

But there is a dichotomy between the two stances of

social media is very dangerous! My child must not be on there because of paedophiles and besides, he cannot consent to his photo being shared and I know! The way around this issue is to … share his photo with a massive emoji over his face!

The obvious thing is not to share the photo. The emoji makes it look attention seeking and more than a little precious and demanding.

We need to go back to how it was years ago. The only people who saw photos of your children were family and very close friends when you shared the family album. People really need to think about their children's digital footprints.

IMO pictures of children should not be on the intenet unless officially licensed through agenices etc for modelling. It should be up to the child when they become an adult whether they want to upload images or not, yet many grow up and discover the whole world has access to years of their history. Some parents will even share things like bath photos. Absolutely mental...

For the same reasons birth parents like to show pics of their kids! They're sharing the experiences, not their kid's looks.

My little one is adopted and I love to share our life with family and friends. We initially did no shots of head or back of head - we legally weren't allowed to share more. Once the adoption was legalised we could do what we liked, but we continued to cover their face. Eventually we began to share images. Depsite my SM being locked down, I've since got rid of it because I feel that's the safest thing for us.

Children who are adopted may face devastating repurcussions if they are identified. Covering faces means their parents can alter the way they share things to make it safe. Obviously safest is no photos at all, but when a child is adopted parent's still often want to share life. So next best option is backs of heads or covered faces.

Someone up thread mentioned that other parents shouldn't share images of other children (e.g. at a choir performance) but trying to stop that is nigh on impossible. It's terrifying, but I hope that not being able to tag me on SM provides another bit of safety for my family. Shame so many are so judgemental about these things.

I know why you shouldn't share pictures of kids! I've fostered myself.
My point is that SM isn't compulsory.
Just don't put them on there.

Yes, exactly. Social media isn’t compulsory.

It is nice to share photos but that ‘nice’ feeling goes when there’s a headless toddler on one of the pictures.

It's wanky nonsense for sure

I think people don't understand your point, really. The privacy aspect just keeps getting repeated

For you. But there are plenty of people for whom the connection is still there.

I still don't really understand why this winds you and the posters agreeing with you up so much when it doesn't affect you. What is it demanding of you exactly?

I can tell you why people do that -people at my DP work place thought our DD had died at birth or something else horrific because there wasn't a photo of her or part of her on his social media.

I find it a bit annoying, like a lot of fairly minor but still irritating stuff. Generally speaking, I’d say I do find things needlessly being shrouded in mystery annoying and it tends to be people who enjoy a bit of drama and performance who do this.

In particular, it annoys me when people wanting me to engage with their business do it because of the sort of ‘well I’m not letting you see MY CHILD but of course you can spend £££ at my cafe or online shop.’

Oh, come on. No they did not.

I don't really agree on the mystery and drama parts, but fair enough if you've had different experiences.

As for businesses, that's surely a whole other area of discussion? When people commodity their personal lives to sell a service or product I think there are very different considerations around privacy and use of their children's images but I don't think that's what most of us are talking about here.