AIBU to dislike parents using children in social media content?

[Hakunatomato]

Frances Haugen and Stuart Armfield. They are all over social media. I try blocking their pages, but they pop up everywhere. It is nothing to do with them being two gay dads. It’s just the nauseating constant attention seeking, and using the children in content to make money. There was another content creator a bug life or something, where the kid was quite cute, but is it wrong to put your kids all over the internet when they have no say in it, just to make a fast buck? By the time they decide they don’t want their younger years documented and shown all over the world it will be too late. A clip came up this morning and one of the two dads was posing in his underpants, quite provocatively, for attention, and the next scene showed the kids. Yeuch….. What do you think?

Louise thompson and Ryan libbey are relentless with posting their 4 year old son. They post him asleep , unwell, in his pants etc etc. Yesterday they even posted him trying on his school uniform - outing where he will be 5 days a week.

But he’s a cute kid and they get lots of brand deals/ads. Money talks.

If the Bug’s Life mentioned in the OP is the account I’m thinking of, the actual content seemed pretty benign, but I did always think it was odd that the parents never appeared on camera, just the toddler. So they were protecting their own privacy but not hers.

I agree but unfortunately it will always happen. I was browsing through Netflix yesterday trying to pick something to watch and one of the top series was a father-daughter thing.

I have no idea how because they both seemed wildly annoying but it’s obvious it’s popular and there will always be parents trying to get a paycheck through their children.

Hard agree, it is the modern day version of the pushy stage Mom and stage Dad. Children should not the allowed in content.

Very good point, and also it could easily make children targets for playground bullying.

It should be illegal. Children can not consent and a lot of the parents are making a lot of £££ exploiting their children. Child performers are protected in terms of hours they can work and what happens to the money they earn - but children featured on social media do not have that protection.

I suspect we are going to see a lot of legal cases coming up in years to come from the children who were exploited - it is already happening in the US.

I agree and think we need laws.

I have seen stuff about how many times videos of children on line are saved and shared - vvvv creepy but that is why the parents keep doing it as videos with children have 'high engagement' which equals more cash.

Completely agree with you. See also reality TV! Absolutely disgusting trying to monetize off children

Totally agree op. See also the Cole’s on instagram. Totally exploiting their children. Despite me saying I am not interested in them and not following them they still pop up on my feed.

I think you'd see a problem if someone plastered photos and videos of you all over the internet without your permission.

It's no different for the children.

It absolutely is our business when children are having their most vulnerable moments exposed on the internet for the world to see.

People do report extreme religious cults, by the way, and dance moms get one equal amounts of criticism.

Many of these families have been reported to social services, btw.

There’s a few “influencers” and I that word loosely because they’re only TikTok famous who roll their children out for views and engagement. One in particular springs to mind from Aberdeen who insists on posting her child in his most vulnerable moments to her 700,000 followers. The amount of saves on her content with her child in it is horrific.

You're making my point for me: when there are genuine underlying issues, we already have mechanisms in place for social services to get involved. Bog-standard social media content that people on here get so worked up about doesn't qualify; simply disapproving of someone's parenting decisions doesn't give us the right to decide that it shouldn't be allowed.

I agree it should be illegal.

The law protects children from their parents in many ways, this should be another way that it does. It is very easy to exploit children, and this is one way that creates a public record that can never be truly deleted. People should be lobbying the government.

But I suppose it will take 18 years since it started being popular for the kids to grow up and start telling their stories of how it has affected them.

I think the odd shot of your child as part of a family group in a holiday snap or a "back to school" shot once in a while is harmless enough tbh. I think sometimes people take the paranoia about children on social media to absurd extremes.

I think people who plaster their children all over their Insta or Facebook feed are just daft. Very obviously the children don't have consent and very obviously it's opening them up to many risks.

Thinking about the Beckhams?

It may not qualify now but that's only because our laws haven't caught up with technology and life.

Children cannot consent to having their lives broadcast on the internet. We're not just talking the odd family photo or cute baby video of them trying a lemon - we're talking children who have their medical issues blasted online, their potty training - even videos of them in the bath or naked at the beach.

This isn't a case of disagreeing with someone's parenting. It's a case of knowing these children cannot consent to what's happening to them. Hopefully if enough people complain, the laws will change and these parents will no longer be able to make money off their kids in this way.

I’m kind of somewhere between the two stances on this. Agree that things like potty training, tantrums, even photos that are slightly private or personal (like children asleep or similar) need to be kept off large public followings. Photos of children just … you know, there, I have no issue with at all. I do think it all gets a bit silly. My DC goes to an art class and someone took a photo of her own daughter painting last week and the reaction was ridiculous, tbh.

My issue is very much with the monetising of children on social media. I also think times have changed, years ago many of my 'friends' on Facebook would put photos of their children on there but now no one does as we have all got a lot more informed about the dangers of doing so and respectful of our children's right to privacy.

I don't attend exercise classes for example where they will post photos on line as I don't want to be seen hot and sweaty on instagram to promote a gym's business and so feel very strongly that we shouldn't do similar to children.

Perhaps the next generation of kids will feel the need to legislate having been deeply traumatised by their parents sharing content about them, but honestly, I doubt it. The only way I could see this happening is by some huge media campaign whipped up by a well-publicised tragedy that is laid at the door of evil social media parents, which is hardly an edifying prospect and not a way to make good laws imo.

There was a good advert by I think the Irish government high lighting how much information people were putting online about their children.

Here it is

Well, I hope the laws do change.

There are more and more stories coming out about families whose kids have been blasted all over social media, after all.

Do you think it’s ok for an employer to make employment decisions based on seeing an 18 year olds toddler tantrum posted by their mum? Wouldn’t you think it was the employer who was weird as hell for caring about that?!

yes talking about periods and medical issues (which is extreme) is highly embarrassing but I would hope other adults would be mature enough not to punish the child for their parents actions.

I completely agree - monetising children on social media is disgusting.

There was an influencer recently who did a post about their teenage child’s suicide attempt. Even wrote an article about it on their Substack (or similar) which people had to pay for to read!! I had followed them up until that point but so fundamentally disagreed with that, that I had to unfollow. Not that they will give a shit