By Matthew W. Maxey | Published Jul 14, 2015
How to raise a baby in the digital era is a topic that, until recently, had never really crossed my mind. I was the guy that when I saw pictures of a friend’s children on social media would keep scrolling as quickly as I did past the latest Farmville request. It’s not that I dislike kids or anything like that, I just wasn’t in that stage of life yet and found other things more interesting than the bathroom habits of a three-year-old. That was until my wife and I learned that we were expecting a daughter.
After getting the news I was becoming a father, like most every first time parent does, I began reading up on everything I could find about babies. During all that reading I was struck by a post over at Knoxville Mom’s Blog about Protecting Your Kids from the Overshare Culture. A paragraph from the story that really caught my attention is the one below from one of the moms.
We were in the restroom at a local store when a lady, whom I know solely based off of social media, called my daughter by her first name and asked about the animals on our farm. My seven year old politely answered the question then posed one of her own: “How did you know my name?” “Oh! From Facebook, sweetie! I just love your pictures on there!” She dried her hands with a stiff paper towel and promptly left the restroom, leaving my seven year old daughter in utter confusion and a slight sense of worry: “How do strangers know who I am? What in the world is a Facebook?”
While my interest in the bathroom habits of my friend’s children remains very low, my awareness of their kids on social media is now as high as ever. I began taking notice of all the kids of friends and family as the popped up in my timeline and realized I actually knew far more than I previously realized about them – all because of Facebook and other social media sites.
That made me wonder two things. Could I unknowingly play the role of the well-intentioned lady from the excerpt above? More so though, how could I prevent my own daughter from experiencing a similar situation that could make her feel uncomfortable or frightened?
As someone who makes a living working with social media, and is active on several social platforms personally (I even started a Facebook page for our dog Maggie), I understand the desire to share the things you are passionate about. Now that our daughter is here, there is nothing on this earth that I’m more passionate about than her and my wife Ashley. Before I didn’t truly “get it” but now I fully understand why so many parents share the fun, exciting and especially the funny moments of their children online. They want to share the moments that mean so much to them with all their family and friends.
However, after reading many more articles on the subject and having multiple conversations with Ashley, I was reminded of something I have repeatedly told clients.
“You are your own brand and it is up to you to define what that brand looks like.”
With that in mind, my wife and I made the decision that we would make a conscious effort to keep pictures and excessive updates about our daughter off social media.
We were not overt about our decision, did not tout it as the only line of thinking, and by no means think anything less of our friends and family who do choose to post pictures of their kids on social media. In fact some of our favorite blogs are about the personal adventures of our friends and their kids. Like people make the choice between lacing up a pair of Nike or Adidas shoes, or playing a Titleist or Callaway golf ball, people can make the choice of what, and what not, to share about their children online and should be able to do so without judgement.
Our decision has been met with understanding from most and wonderment from others. Our families know about our wishes and are great about respecting those.
The reason we keep our daughter’s pictures off Facebook and other social sites.
- We don’t want to be “those parents.” On my Facebook page, I have close friends and family of course, but I also have a number of work colleagues, clients, acquaintances and those friends from high school and college you keep up with on Facebook even though you’ve not actually spoken in person for years. For a large majority of the audience viewing my Facebook profile, the simple fact is, my daughter is not very interesting to them. They don’t know her and they’re not hanging on a thread to know everything about her.
- These days you can find countless stories of kids’ photos being stolen from social media feeds and then being used in fundraising scams along with other far more unsavory ways. A very easy way to prevent that from happening to our daughter, is to not make those photos available to be stolen.
- The most important factor to us in making this decision though, was allowing our daughter to develop her own digital footprint when she is older – not inheriting one we created for her. When I was growing up, if someone saw an embarrassing photo of me it was usually because mom had cracked open the baby book again. My embarrassment was limited to a few people looking at an actual photo album, not an entire online audience of people who may or may not know me. Since Facebook didn’t arrive until I was in college, if you find something about me on social media it is because I put it there or was old enough to consent to it going online. I would like for my daughter to have the same clean slate as a starting point.
- Additionally, kids these days are growing up with their entire lives documented online from birth and will enter middle school with 10-plus years of material for bullies only a short Google search away. We all remember middle school and how little inspiration it takes for a bully to lash out. When most of us were growing up, that inspiration came from what we wore to school, the terrible haircut we thought was awesome at the time, or the fact we admitted liking the music of a boy band. It is a new world now with regular bullies and now cyber-bullies with their inflated keyboard courage. Our daughter will face enough challenges simply by being a pre-teen and going through the awkward stages we all did growing up. I’m certainly not going to make it easier for any of the bullies out there by putting 10 years worth of material on a silver platter only a Google search away.
How we still share our daughter’s fun moments with family and friends.
- Facebook and other social media sites are popular because they make it so easy to share information with a wide audience. However, you can also share privately to only approved recipients via the lesser used closed and secret groups that Facebook offers. My family has a “secret group” we utilize, meaning it can only be viewed by the invited members. This is where we do the planning for holidays, share family moments and occasionally talk a little trash about the annual Independence Day bocce ball tournament. Within this group, we do share occasional photos because they are not searchable by people we do not know and go only to those we wish to have them.
- We also have a Shutterfly Share Site for our daughter. Long-time Shutterfly users already, this was a no-brainer for us. Just because we don’t post them on social media, doesn’t mean we don’t still take a ridiculous amount of pictures of our little girl. Having a place we can store the pictures was nice, but the added feature of the share sites we love most is that you can share access to it with anyone you wish. All you need is their email. It also comes with a very easy to use mobile app, that allows you to sort the photos however you wish (we do ours by month) and gives you a photo album in your pockets at all time. This is a VERY popular feature with us and the very proud grandparents. If you want to have a hard copy of the pictures, you can also order prints directly from the app and of course from the Shutterfly website too.
“Where are the pictures of that cute little girl on Facebook?”
This is a question we got often right after our daughter was born, and still occasionally do, especially as many of our friends are still meeting our daughter for the first time. Occasionally friends will tag pictures of our daughter on Facebook thinking they are doing us a favor. We sincerely appreciate that they want to share those moments with us and make sure we don’t miss an instance of our daughter doing something cute. We know it comes from a good place in their heart with nothing but good intentions, and for that reason, when this happens we don’t make a big production out of it. We simply untag the pictures and politely or jokingly mention that she is not yet ready to make her world wide web debut. Our friends have been great about respecting those wishes and understand our decision.
What are your thoughts on posting pictures of your kids online? Is it something you pondered before your child was born and made a conscious decision about one way or another?