Sharing children on socials

[Orangepen13]

What’s your stance?
I didn’t want anything and relented slightly for some family and said they could do very occasional insta stories with her face, but these are becoming a little too frequent (IMO they shouldn’t be posting more than me!)

am I too strict?

I post my son

I do not put face shots of my ds on Facebook, nobody else is allowed to either. I'm very firm on this rule and anyone found posting his pics would never again get a picture of him.

I have a photo box ( box with photos in it )
I take photos for me to look at not for the world to look at.

I post the occasional picture of my DD on my Facebook account which is set so that only friends can see it and I only have friends on there that I actually know in real life.

Totally happy with that decision and can’t see how she will ever see the odd photo of her smiling in a park at 3 years old or whatever as a breach of privacy but if it turns out she does I guess I’ll have to cross that bridge when I come to it.

I have a locked profound share my children with only family and very close friends. No-one may put any pictures of my children online in any capacity. They gey to determine their digital footprint, not random others.

I have photos of when he was a newborn and then when he got more features and stopped looking like a wrinked grape, I stopped post as much, I dont think I have a single photo of DS after about 5.

My facebook is locked down and I get people's whole thing about the child's privacy but for me, its going to be teaching him internet safety and shit you shouldnt put online because you never know who is watching.

I can't do that while, taking photos of my dinner every day

I share pics occasionally via family Whatsapp groups, or occasionally do an invite thing to a Google album.

No pics on anything else (I'm not on Facebook and don't follow anyone I know on Twitter or Instagram)

Privacy is valuable

Hilarious posts!!!

I've posted pictures of my dc on FB over the years. Not very often, but quite a few altogether, I suppose. They are now 15 and 18 and not remotely bothered by this. In fact when a picture of them occasionally pops up on my FB memories, they like looking at it and often ask me to share it with them.

I don’t post pictures of my kids on sm. There is one picture on my sil's fb that she posted that I was am pissed about, but according to DH it’s no big deal so it’s remained.

To my mind, I’ve got thousands of pictures that they can post of them throughout their life once they’re old enough to make an informed choice on the matter, but until then I’m not going to post any pictures!

To each their own, I’m not judging other people’s decisions, but this feels right for mine.

I've never posted photos of my children online and wouldn't post photos of anyone else's either. Our family and friends are the same so no issues.

My kids are teens now and very glad we made that choice.

I post a lot of pictures of my daughter. I have my profile set to private and I see it as a way of sharing her life with relatives, such as her grandma, who don't see her very often. I use it as an online photo album and like getting memory notifications of the photos in subsequent years. I like seeing photos of relatives' children too as some of them I only see in person once a year or so.

Relatives we see more often I checked before I shared photos of them the first time and generally they've all been happy for me to share photos.

There is only one relative who said no photos of her children could be shared and initially I didn't put any of them on. Then a friend of hers put some photos of the relatives kids on and she 'loved' them all and even shared them so I now do put the odd photo on if I've seen the children and taken a photo as I know other relatives who don't get to see them much would also appreciate seeing them. The relative has never asked me not to and she does now put the odd photo of them on now too.

This is all exclusive to Facebook. I started using that in 2007 and can't be bothered with trying to use Instagram or anything else. I just stick to Facebook. I also don't ever put anything on of my child (or other children) crying, having a tantrum, doing anything gross etc. I would only ever put 'nice' photos of her on. I remember once seeing a FB friend's photo of her daughter having a screaming fit aged about 4 with the caption 'this is a very naughty little girl!' And I thought it was quite off of the mum to put that on.

I agree. Once it's online it's out there forever, no matter how good your security settings are.

I must be weird because I have no problem with the kinds of photos I post being ‘out there forever’. A cute kid with an ice cream, posing all wrapped up in her winter wooly hat next to a snowman she built, pointing at some penguins at the zoo - if that’s ‘out there forever’ then so are literally millions of similar photos - on private profiles like mine, on open profiles, posted by ‘influencers’, in magazines, advertising etc etc

I must be weird because I have no problem with the kinds of photos I post being ‘out there forever’

You might not have a problem with it, but what if your children do?

I mean it’s conceivable she might I guess, but I really can’t see it. There’s nothing personal or embarrassing about the photos and they are being shared with a few friends/ family members in the same way as if I’d shared them via WhatsApp or similar (which seems to be more acceptable according to this thread).

And despite how these threads tend to go, the vast vast majority of people I know do share pictures of their kids - to a greater or lesser extent (and I’m on the lesser end!). I don’t actually know anyone with the blanket ban that so many people seem to have on here, so if she’s fuming I guess she won’t be on her own at least?

I totally understand why other people might make different decisions, I’m just quite comfortable with mine at least for now. I’ll definitely review and adjust as necessary as she gets older.

We don’t post any pictures of our DC on SM or give our permission for anyone else. Until they’re old enough to give their consent I don’t think it’s right. But saying that all of our close family DB, DM, PIL and SIL aren’t on SM anyway so it’s not a big deal to them or us. I only have FB for my business no other SM.

I do find the responses to this thread quite surprising tbh.

As I said I post my DD to a private Insta but with a heart over her face, so there's nothing identifiable of her online. I'm the only person I know with kids who does this - everyone else posts lots of pictures of their children, yet this thread is dominated by people saying they don't. I do think people who don't are probably in the minority.

I feel conflicted about this, I gave private social media accounts and post from time to time of things we do, maybe milestones like a birthday or starting school (with school name blurred out) but not many face on pics they're usually from the side or back. They are never embarrassing pics and I don't share videos. However friends and family may take group pics and share them and at school the kids have their pics taken for things like school news letter and we have taken pics and videos of events which clearly have other kids in them. The school always say don't share on socials and we don't but who's to say others parents don't actually respect this. I guess what I'm saying is that the cat is out the bag on this one a bit, technology is very much in our lives and you can try and control it but only going to a certain extent.

*have private social media accounts

Also in real life most people I know post pics of their kids of their private social media accounts and quite a few post a lot! I know very few people who don't post at all.

To be honest in 2023 I'm surprised so many people still post so liberally despite knowing how dangerous and how horrible social media can be.

I suspect many children will indeed be unimpressed when they get older and realise these pictures are online.

No one else should be posting photos of your babies face on SM at all! They’ll have people on their friends list that you do not know and that’s completely mad that you’d allow strangers to see your baby! We’ve posted one post of the back of our babys head and a couple of stories with her face covered by an emoji and a couple of friends have posted on stories but I made sure her face was covered first. It’s your baby, your rules and family shouldn’t be trying to get you to bend your rules about their safety! The difference between you posting and other people posting is that you know who is on your friends list and you don’t know who’s on theirs

Op, it sounds like you need to say something and ask them not to post pics of her face. People have different attitudes to this photos on social thing and unless you say something they'll carry on thinking it's fine.

@AliasGrape ·

I must be weird because I have no problem with the kinds of photos I post being ‘out there forever’

Do you know that there are people who harvest photographs of children and use them in child sexual abuse videos? How would you feel if your child's photograph was used like this? More importantly how would your child feel?