[name_m]Hi[/name_m] Berries! 3 days past my due date here and my husband and I were just discussing how we will announce the birth on Facebook (I am on it, he is not). He said that he would prefer that I and our families/friends refrain from posting pics of our baby until he is old enough to decide for himself whether he wants his photos online. I am OK with his decision, but how do we handle the inevitable barrage of questions/comments from people waiting to ‘meet’ our baby? Should we be preemptive and post our wishes, or just wait and answer each request individually?
Has anyone else decided to keep their kids off of social media? [name_m]How[/name_m] did your friends/family react? Did you send pics privately to those who asked or set up a private photo sharing website?
[name_f]My[/name_f] friends posted one picture and then set up a private photo album on another website and said that if people wanted to see more pics they could message them for the password.
I’m one of those who is completely wary about posting photographs anywhere. [name_f]My[/name_f] instagram is private and I only allow family/friends to follow me, and I don’t really post many pictures to my son on facebook. He is 8 now, so if I do ever post a photograph of him then I always ask him first and he’s mostly ok with it but I still make sure my privacy settings only allow my friends to see it. The idea of having a private album with a password is a good idea!
I know a few people who do not post any photos of their kids online. That is definitely a personal choice, but from my point of view it is a bit drastic. It seems unlikely that the photos will haunt the child when he or she is older. Maybe I am missing their reasoning. The baby photos of my daughter disappeared along with my MySpace account several years ago (and pretty much everyone else’s MySpace). You can set your social media to private, but your baby’s photos are likely to look like the millions of other baby photos online. I’m not sure what the average stranger would do with them…
We’ve had people on these forums take pictures of other people’s children from places on the internet, give them new names, and pretend as if they were their children. That’s something that’s surprisingly not uncommon on baby names forums.
Is that something that is going to really affect their quality of life or come back to haunt them? No, probably not, but it could be a bit unsettling/creepy.
I don’t have children yet, but I try be careful/paranoid about how much of myself I put out there online. [name_f]My[/name_f] name is uncommon and easy to Google, so maybe that’s part of it. When I do have children, my intention is to not post pictures of them online. I want them to have control of their “online footprint” when they’re older and can decide for themselves what they do and don’t want to put out there.
I don’t expect there would be any awful consequences from sharing online. That’s just sort of what my comfort zone is.
This is something I was discussing with another mummy-to-be a few weeks back: I think that I would be fine with posting a few photos/videos on my Facebook as it is totally private and only my friends and family are on it, however the social media websites where you don’t have as much power as to who can see your photos would be a huge no no (the likes of Twitter or Instangram and stuff like that, not that I have either, I only have Facebook).
That’s just me personally, my sister is fine with having photos everywhere and has them on all of her social media stuff.
That would be unsettling. I have had my photos stolen by a person making a fake profile in the past, but it is even weirder to pretend someone else’s baby is yours. I do know that Instagram has a pretty solid privacy option. I can’t even see the friends of people I’m following without their permission. Facebook’s privacy settings have always been sketchy.
I would really prefer if there were no photos of our son online. But my husband does Facebook and Instagram with his family, and he posts lots of photos of our boy. He has privacy settings, but I am pretty sure these are meaningless. And all of his family is the same way, so I know that if we go and see them, they will post photos. If my husband and I agreed about this, we could be the overprotective paranoid parents and tell the family not to do this together, but since we don’t, arguing about it seems pointless.
The reason I would prefer no photos online is just b.c he can’t understand or tell us that he doesn’t want that right now. I doubt it will be harmful to him, since all of his peers will also have extensively documented childhoods online as well.
I have learned to just not allow people to take photos that I would not want online. So if someone starts taking cell phone photos while the cousins are in the bathtub, I just say No. Bathtub photos of cousins are adorable and completely innocent, the problem is that the photo-takers have no discretion about posting these for the world to see.
A few months ago, I discovered that some of the teenagers who volunteer in the church nursery had posted photos of our son as a baby on their Facebook accounts. They were cute photos and there was nothing wrong with them, but it is a really bad idea for nursery volunteers to do this. There are kids in our church in foster care or involved in custody disputes that this could be very unsafe for. So I did speak to the people in charge of the children’s ministry about this. They already have a policy against taking and posting photos of other people’s kids, but have had recurring problems with teenage volunteers disregarding this.
Whatever you decide about posting your own kids on social media, PLEASE do not post photos of other people’s kids without the express permission of the parents/guardians. You just can’t know everyone’s situation, and it might be actually unsafe to do this in some cases.
[name_f]My[/name_f] husband and I don’t use any sort of social media, and we just asked-politely!-that no one posts pictures of our kids online. We just don’t want any pictures of them out there that we don’t know about. I’ve had a difficult time with my dad and our “policy”, because he thinks its no big deal since my sister allows it and posts pictures of her kids on facebook, but we remind him everytime he snaps a picture. [name_f]My[/name_f] oldest one even tells him he’ll only smile for a pic if its not for facebook!
I totally understand where you’re coming from. I will probably post some photos, but I have friends/family who post EXCESSIVE photos of their children and I just do not want to reach that level, know what I mean? [name_f]My[/name_f] facebook is locked down about as much as humanly possible, whether that’s meaningless or not I doubt we’ll ever know.
I get so angry when people post photos of their children suffering, like, here’s a picture of poor [name_m]Jimmy[/name_m] looking miserable with a fever. Here is a picture of my son crying in the hospital because he broke his arm. Seriously, WHO does that? Also, I have seen some of my acquaintances who are nannies post photos of the children they nanny. I don’t know if they had permission or not. I would definitely NOT allow that.
We post photos of our children onto social media. It doesn’t really concern me that much. I don’t really worry about it. The preschool my son is attending next year maintains a blog with pictures of the children on it. [name_f]My[/name_f] personal opinion is that a picture of my child online isn’t that different from somebody seeing my child out in public. I don’t post pictures of my children naked because I do think that is violating their privacy but pictures. I would imagine it would be very difficult to prevent people from posting pictures of your children. [name_f]My[/name_f] [name_f]MIL[/name_f] is constantly putting up pictures of my kids or sharing pictures that I put up with her friends.
I’m going to do my best to keep on top of privacy settings, maybe make a closed group on FB that only members can see pics on, but I’m definitely posting pics of my kid. I have family all over the country and friends all over the world who will want to see him, and I really don’t see too much harm in posting appropriate pictures (no naked bathtime pics, lol)
[name_f]My[/name_f] entire family and most of my really good friends are thousands of miles away, and while I suppose I could send emails or open a private album on photobucket or the like, I’ll most likely be facebooking pictures of any future kiddos. I don’t friend people I don’t know, but even so I take full advantage of the FB groups, and share only certain things with my entire FB friend’s list. I’ll be doing the same with kid pictures and make a private closed group of our most intimate loved ones. As for trying to control the pictures other people upload of my kids, I’ll judge that once it happens. If it bothered me, I’d just ask them to remove the photo. I personally love all the photos my loved ones share of their growing kids. Some of them I only get to see once a year, so it’s nice to see them grow. I know some people feel like that’s spamming, but I’d rather see that type of update than another political share that’s not even remotely accurate, just shared round and round the hamster wheel. Or the cryptic updates that are just fishing for attention. [name_f]My[/name_f] god those drive me nuts.
For people nervous about picture thieves, you can watermark your photos. There’s places online that do it for free, but it’s really easy to do it yourself with photoshop or whatever you use. I’ve had my pictures stolen twice (both times in my younger years and from myspace), so it’s a valid concern. I haven’t gone so far as to start watermarking my photos, but I’d consider it with children’s photos. I don’t use any other social networking sites, so I don’t really have an opinion on them. Also, it’s a good idea to image search your photos from time to time, for anyone that worries about picture thieves.