To post, or not to post?

Why My Husband & I Don’t Share Photos Of Our Child Online

And why I think you should reconsider how you share yours

I’m not telling you what to do. You should know that before you go any further. And I’m not one of those people who thinks that every stranger is a “Stranger Danger” or a pervert, but as someone who prayed and prayed for years on the chance to be a mom, I want to explain why I’m just as shocked as the next person to not see images of my miracle baby on my feed. Trust me, he is just as gorgeous as you think he is.

I’ve daydreamed for years on what my post would look like once I had kids of my own.

Isn’t that so stupid to say?

But I know that I’m not the only one who operates this way now. When we anticipate our future, our images have shifted from experience and three-dimensional daydreams of real life— “What will this be like and feel like” to “What will this look like on my feed?”

And maybe even assume what the foot traffic will be like on your platforms. The likes, the shares, and comments.

Gross, gross, gross. But that is just how it is.

And let me go ahead and interrupt myself to say that our kids do not think that way. Children, as they should, absolutely look forward to their futures based on experience, not how they will look in a tiny square.

You can bet that I’ve wasted minutes (hours) of days that I won’t get back on preplanning what our announcement photos would look like, holiday hashtags, vacation stories, and now “photo dumps”. All including the beautiful images of my baby boy’s face—or so I thought.

And as I began to think about this article, I realized my opinions began to slightly change before our son even came home.

Do you remember that election in 2016?

Of course you do.

Whew, what a time that was. Families were separated by candidate and party, spouses put several different political signs in the yard to make sure neighbors knew they were a house divided, and even me and my own mother had a few heated discussions on who should win the White House. Everyone, even your grandmother, had severely polarizing opinions online. And that is when the shift began.

I would peruse a nasty comment section where complete strangers would dog each other based on belief, education, socio-economic status, and voting history—and I began to notice a trend.

Grandmothers, soccer dads, mid-western housewives, and even your local tattoo aficionados who would engage in vitriolic Facebook debates, all had beautiful innocent children as their profile images. Yikes.

I’m sure that none of them assumed when they uploaded images of their children or grandchildren, that the image would be the only identifier a stranger had of them in a brutal comment war, but that was just the tip of the iceberg.

Since becoming a mom and dipping my toe in the very, very shallow end of the “influencer” pool, I’ve noticed an alarming trend where children are the content. Sure, there are Stanley cups being tagged, Amazon links being tapped, and Target is the backdrop, but the children are the main event. Everything from first steps to temper tantrums, to even alarmingly over exposed and embarrassing bathroom mishaps.

I pause to consider what the social and mental effects of our postings today will do to our children tomorrow. According to a 2010 study performed by AVG security corporation, 92% of US children have a digital footprint by the time they are 2 years old. That seems wild to know that the average American 9-year-old has at least 1,300 images of them that can be found online, from birth to current date.

We have no generation before us to comment on what the effects of an over exposed and posted adolescence does to a human, and I can’t imagine most of us being okay with our children being the experiment, all for the sake of internet clout. My husband who has worked in finance for the last decade also wants me to shatter the sweetness of birth announcements.

“You’re giving the internet a playground for hackers and identity thieves. Full names, dates of births, and hospitals are tagged. All someone needs is your full name and birthdate to get away with a lot of online crimes.”

At this point I’m sure you’re thinking I’m overly paranoid, but it’s not just the information given to potential hackers, it’s not just the screenshots of a sweet bath time image that can end up in the creepiest corners of the internet, and it’s not even about the women who’ve made sharing their lives online a career path.

It’s them, our kids. We forget that we are raising adults. And we have forgotten how delicate a childhood can be, and some of us expose our children at the most fragile of milestones. Is it because we don’t know any better? Is it because it’s all we’ve grown accustomed to?

Children will be adults longer than they will be children and the internet isn’t going anywhere.

We post as if our children will never find out that we documented their potty-training, falls, school day flubs, weird rashes on their backside, psychological developments and so so much more.  

As always, the United States doesn’t have much legislation in place to say when enough is enough by means of exploiting a child. However, in France there is a one-year prison sentence or a $4,500 fine for posting a photo without one’s consent. Meaning if your child grows up and discovers you posted an image of them that they don’t like and didn’t approve of, they can sue you. Une victoire pour la France!

I can’t imagine being able to go back into the digital archives of my youth. MySpace came out when I was a freshman in high school, and I didn’t log on to the platform until a few months before I graduated. Which means now at 33 years old, I’ve lived more of my life with the pressure to post, than not. That thought seems overwhelming and frankly, just downright sad.

And I’ve been in control of 90% of what has been posted of me on the internet, but I’m afraid we will be the last generation who can say that.

Allow me to paint a picture before we move on…

You’ve seen this video, or at least a dozen like it. There is a child or two, fighting or crying, having a tantrum, or just living in the middle of a very normal, but very big emotional moment. Then a parent (WHO HAS OBVIOUSLY BEEN RECORDING THE WHOLE TIME) begins to speak and ask gentle questions.

“Are you better?”

“Did you share?”

“Can you hug it out with, sissy?”

“Can you point to your emotion color on the feelings chart?”

The internet goes wild for videos like this.

The parents are praised as calm experts who are breaking generational curses of poor and angry parenting, but all while the child is having a true learning moment, a phone has been stuck in their face to document the learning curve—and the only people who are praised for it, are the parents.

On TikTok, there is a content creator called @mom.uncharted. The creator is a woman named Sarah and she has built quite the following (over 200,000 followers) educating parents on the long-term damages that over-posting and sharing can do to our children. And more disturbingly, she has spear-headed an entire movement about how innocent bath time, pool time, and dance leotard images end up the seediest corners of the world wide web. Sarah’s account has even exposed the worst of the Mommy Bloggers. There are actual parents who sell bikini pictures of their daughters, age 4-13, to strangers online.

Yes. You read that correctly.

 Mother’s will create downloadable PDF albums to sell online.

What will this do in 10 years? Will our children not know how to self-regulate without someone recording it? Will they have trust issues with adults because they may never know if they are being live streamed? How much of their memories of sweet instagramable moments will have been organic or staged?

This topic could land in seven different places. Privacy, online predators using children’s images for unspeakable crimes, protecting their innocence, understanding when to share and when to not—but all I can consider each time I’m tempted to share more about my child, is what will this look like for him as he applies to college? Or his first job? Or will teenagers stalk potential crushes back into their toddler years through their parent’s page and mock them based on something that was posted? Are we opening the door for a type of bullying we won’t know how to handle?

I’m convinced online privacy will be future currency for our kids.

Less is so much more for them in this scenario.

Last spring, I became obsessed with a podcast called, Under The Influence, a brain child of author Jo Piazza. And in the single season broadcast she unpacks the world of Mommy Influencers, and she interviews several experts on this—Including a child who was raised by one of the very first Mommy Influencers back in the early 2000’s.  The now 26 year-old woman grieves the childhood she lost to subscribers, and a mother who was obsessed with internet fame. The emotional and mental game of roulette we play with our children’s futures online is no game with any sort of reward that I can see.

There is no such thing as a perfect parent. But I would hope my failures wouldn’t be the sum total of what I posted online, what an easy way to avoid excess hurt to our kids.

Please don’t misunderstand my stance as judgement for those who parent or post differently. I have a strong feeling a lot of us are torn in our choices, but after so many of us fought our way to parenthood we almost see posting them online as a mandatory ownership.

Are we needing to post images of our kids because we need someone to see that we are good?

Please look at us. We showed up, dressed cute, I love my kids, I’m happy, I’m a better mother than my mother was to me, please see me and tell me that I’m doing a good job. Please recognize me here. I made it to motherhood; now tell me you see me. Notice my efforts.

 I resonate a lot with those thoughts but hear me when I say that you are seen.

You are doing a good job.

We can all reconsider our motives for everything, I call that emotional inventory.

We are all influencers in some way, we all have a responsibility to protect our kids, and each parent is certainly the gatekeeper to their children’s emotions and futures—if you love to share, keep doing it!—who am I to stop you or change your mind. But I would hope as the internet gets bigger, along with our children we can pause before we post, and maybe even leave the phones in the car while we enjoy our little ones.

The internet can wait.