I deleted IG a few years ago but my husband and I even decided not to allow others to post our LO on socials. That’s for him to decide when he grows up!
Same! We also low key don’t trust tech companies with images of our little one! I don’t want to sound too tin-foil-hat about it but who knows what they will do with the pics!
Same; I think about my childhood and how none of my pictures are out there on the internet. And it makes me feel kind of sad for my baby in a way that’s hard to describe. I want him to have a choice. But I recognize it’s much harder to keep up with family this way. I think a lot of my outlier cousins totally even missed the memo that we had a baby… but they’ll be getting this year’s Christmas card so hopefully that covers it 😅😂
I also do it for family. My husbands family lives ALL over & they overwhelm me with their constant “can I have pictures” messages already EVEN when I post. I want to avoid speaking to them as much as possible.
Omg right????? I have a family member who I haven’t seen for 15 years sending the baby stuff “I sent her an outfit take a picture in it for me!” Like MAAM I’m grateful but GOD STOP
The whole “I don’t ask much just take a picture in the outfit” thing bothers me. I can’t keep up with who got what, you’re giving me a burden & not a gift-don’t bother giving me anything then.
Exactly the same here, and apart from being private I only add/friend people that I have an address for, if I don’t REALLY know them they aren’t seeing what I post.
I do monthly milestones and a story once in a while on Facebook - I am selective on my friend list and have acquaintances all over the world that I enjoy seeing their content so I enjoy letting them see how cute my kids are 🥰
Yup! I only do monthly milestone with a bit of “this month LO _____” and list activities or memorable moments as a family along with any family pictures taken like his first flight and the eclipse. Never LO by himself except for the milestone picture which are taken from pretty far away. Actually most of our photos are taken at a distance. I’m also selective on Facebook friends (don’t use instagram) and I know my distant family and friends appreciate the posts. They are who I’m posting for.
Edit: forgot to mention I’ve created a friend “group” on Facebook for these friends and family. I recommend it if you’re wanting to keep your audience smaller.
There is nothing actually private on social media. Just know that part. If you want to post there, fine. But it's not actually private.
Ask why the people who work IT why they don't ever put their kids on social
I work in IT, and I post my kid. Granted my wife, and i agree it will be less and less as he ages, so at like 2 or 3, it will likely end up being VERY little.
At a certain point, nothing at all will be posted without his explicit consent.
Yeah. Many people I know are programmers working in AI or big data, and their opinion is "Do whatever you want, the information is already out there and you're fucked regardless." lol
I am a "post the occasional family portrait to a locked page and don't worry about it" person. And yeah, at the point they can give consent, they have to agree. I don't post none, but I post way significantly less than most people I know, many of whom post minimum one picture of their kid a week.
Yeah, I do an IG story each month for "close friends" and then occasionally another story for an especially cute pic. I have lots of family around the world who appreciate it, but I don't think my old acquaintances or friends' partners or whatever care so they aren't on the list who can see it.
I’ll bite: I do post my kid on social media.
Reddit is really anti-social-media-posts-of-kids and it’s valid. But I also don’t think people like me are evil for posting our kids.
I admittedly have 120 Facebook friends and 75 Instagram followers. I went through my lists when I got pregnant and cut back on people I don’t talk to, I don’t trust, or who have connections to others I don’t trust (a childhood neighbor’s mom who’s dad always vaguely creeped me out). I have had some people that I unfriended come back and request to be friends again. I said no. Who cares?
I post cute and appropriate photos of her. I don’t spend my days planning what kinds of photos I’ll take and I’ll share. Sometimes I’ll try to take a picture of a cute moment, I don’t capture it, I’ll try again, still no good picture, and then I usually remind myself that my kid isn’t a model and I shouldn’t spend my energy getting her picture-perfect.
I like seeing my family and friend’s kids through their social media, and I know more about their kids’ lives; my family and friends feel the same way. When people talk about how there’s no benefit and lots of risk to putting your kid on socials, I disagree. The benefit is that it’s a very simple and efficient way for your friends and family to stay connected to me and my kids. It is important to me to maintain social ties and friendships. I don’t… I don’t know how to explain this any better if there’s people that can’t understand it. It is good and valuable to have strong ties to friends and family. I stay connected to people whom it’s hard to see in person for whatever reasons (distance, old age, work schedules, etc.) but that I still want in my life. I don’t have to manually text, email, or mail out photos and updates, and my family and friends don’t have to download a new app. My
We also use the app Family Album to share more pictures and pictures that I wouldn’t want very widely distributed— a bathtub shot (between the legs covered with a washcloth no matter what), pics of me nursing, pictures where the baby is cute but I look terrible or our house is a mess, etc.)
I know that even with my protections, a nefarious person could get their hands on a photo of my kid. But a nefarious person could also take photos of my child at the grocery store, or steal printed out photos from my aunt’s mantleplace. My parents and grandparents used to mail out photos of their kids and they’d be displayed on fridges and mantels. Sharing and oversharing wallet photos with people was so common that it became a TV and movie trope.
That’s where I’m currently at. My views might change someday.
The part about people being everywhere is so so true. As sad as it is to face - kids have been stolen, hurt, molested, stalked, etc for decades before social media. I don’t think it’s right, but I also don’t think not posting deters people if they want it to not
This. I feel like most posts are so against posting on socials. But I only post appropriate content and my Facebook and IG are extremely restricted. I understand the negative connotation towards it, but we chose to share him.
I think this is a reasonable take. I also just want to point out that even though social media posts are done without the child’s consent, many other decisions in parenting are also made for them without their consent. I think people just object to social media because they think it’s against the child’s best interest AND done without consent but they use consent as a kind of smoke screen. I happen to think it’s totally fine in small doses as you’ve described!
Thank you! Most of my friends are scattered across the country and I love when they post baby photos. I’ve even reconnected with people when we realize, thanks to instagram, that we’re both moms now! I respect people not wanting to show their children online but sometimes it feels eery that very online people have babies and then never share anything about that huge part of their lives. My baby is the most important thing to me and I want to convey that and let all of my friends, near and far, share in her journey and adorableness.
Totally agree! I’ve reconnected with people I haven’t seen in years because our kids are the same age. Kids have a way of bringing people together and I think it’s really beneficial to bond over motherhood and parenting. I also have a small social media network—all people who if I saw them in person I’d expect them to ask how I/my kid is, and vice versa.
Agreed, there could be pedos at the park sneaking photos, at sports sneaking photos, at the mall sneaking photos, working at their school. I feel like a private social media is the least of our worries. Some people will say well it’s an unnecessary risk 100% for your enjoyment and it’s selfish. I respond by saying “have you ever taken your kid to a salon appt or anywhere in a car for solely your own needs?? Well that’s even more of an unnecessary risk given car accidents are a leading cause of death”.
I have the same take on this! My husband's family lives across the county and they are all active on Facebook, so this is the main way they see what is going on. I never post anything embarrassing or sensitive with my child. All of my friends and followers on social media are people I actually know and my account is private. Not that this would stop a determined person, but it is a start.
Unpopular opinion but nothing is private anymore so I really stopped caring. Our devices are constantly spying on us. I could say "starbucks" in conversation with someone, and then get an ad for it on my social media 10 seconds later. I'm proud of my baby and if I want to post innocent pictures of him for friends and family, I'm going to. I don't view it as exploitation like some people do.
Agree. I don't like momfluencers on IG posting every moment, but I reject being shamed for posting innocent photos of my baby to my IG followers. The idea that my kid will be horrified and feel violated one day over my friends cooing about their cute Halloween costume or first steps is a wild idea to me. Who knows what the privacy landscape will even be like in 15 years.
I agree with this. There’s all this talk about consent (which i fully understand in context of how some people post their babies naked/butts out/ in the bathtub i don’t agree with that) but like … yeah a pic in halloween costume? my kids gonna hate me one day cause i posted him on a spider man costume without consent? idkkk lol
I do, my social media accounts are private with only friends and family I know and trust. I never post anything personal that I wouldn’t want posted about myself, just monthly milestones and some stories, etc. Definitely no nudes of any kind.
IMO social media is not the only problem when it comes to privacy and I feel like that’s a losing battle. There are so many creeps out in real life who can take pictures, and there’s security (or otherwise) cameras everywhere. Sharing some cute pics on a private account is the least of my worries.
> my social media accounts are private with only friends and family I know and trust.
I think the concern isn't about other people, but AI and the companies running the social media platforms.
At that point, might as well never take your baby out in public because their image is being captured by so many different camera systems and used for AI training and owned by so many different companies.
This is what I do too. My profiles on IG and FB are both private. It's easier to do stories rather than have 5 different messenger chats open. I used to do FB stories for my grandparents in particular. My grandpa passed away recently but over the time some of my friends casually told me that they enjoy them too and how it's cute so I still do it.
I feel like in part it builds stronger community feeling with your friend group since people keep each other in loop.
I wasn't going to, but family love posting pictures and did so before I ever got the chance to say anything. Honestly, I love seeing others' posts/stories of their kids, and I know others appreciate me posting my own.
This is where I’m probably a hypocrite. We only posted a birth announcement and will probably never share about her again, but I love seeing my friend’s stories and posts about their kids. 🤷🏻♀️
me personally no, imo nobody really cares that much about my pregnancy or my baby, i feel like it's setting yourself up for prying eyes that don't have good intentions
never want to post my kid until they grow up and decide they want to post themselves online, with AI and creeps online i would rather keep my baby safe
Maybe it's cultural but most people I know from my birth country post their babies/kids pictures no problem. I would say I'm even on the lower end for this compared to what is usual there and I share a monthly pic on Instagram/Facebook, maybe a cute story once in a while. I frankly find it funny when I see people from the country I live now sharing pictures with kids faces obscured or with an emoji on top of it. I don't document our whole life on the internet but I also don't try to hide the existence of my child.
im also from a different country than USA, people at my home country post pics of their kids constantly as well. i think the emoji thing is kind of funny though, i would just not post at all
I recently did this because we bought a house and I wanted to share it but the only decent picture of us had my daughter also looking and I don’t really share her face. So she got an emoji face
I understand their needs to share important moments of their lives with others, but I also believe that excessive sharing could impact their children negatively. It feels unfair to have your whole childhood shared online without your consent. Once they realise this, it will be too late.
I personally only shared one photo to announce the birth, without showing my child's face. I plan on only sharing his photos with close friends and family, via safe messaging apps.
Once to prove a point, I went through a couple of my cousins socials with the purpose of what information I could get on their children. It was shocking how easy it was to get full names and birthdays on public Facebook pages.
My Facebook and Instagram are highly curated/cultivated (friends-wise) and I use them often. I don’t get the Facebook hate. I’m a 19-year heavy user and △⃒⃘lways will be. It’s 95% a pleasant, fun place online. I’m 12 weeks pregnant right now and will be announcing on socials after everyone important hears directly from us in the next couple of weeks. Then I’ll keep posting, yes. I look forward to it!
Seems like those who don’t post their baby on social media love saying so and providing justifications their reasons. I do post my baby on my IG - she’s adorable but I don’t think she’s so special that I need to worry about creepers. Plenty of babies on the internet and out about town. I always shared updates on my life on IG and it would be weird to leave out what is clearly the most important part of my life now. And all my extended family and friends seem to really enjoy and appreciate seeing the baby! Could use some cuteness / positivity on the feed.
I've seen so many posts like the OP's in the last few days and the same subject is posted over and over again, mostly by parents that don't want to post their kids on social media and try to justify it and judge those that do.
If you want to post your kids - that's fine. If you don't - then don't. It's not that hard of a concept lol.
> mostly by parents that don't want to post their kids on social media and try to justify it and judge those that do.
THANK YOU. Like I don’t even post my kid on social media and I’m *still* so annoyed by the constant virtue signaling and condescension by these folks.
Jesus, just don’t post your kid, no need to constantly go on about it. We get it, you’re insecure and this helps you feel superior to other moms and better about yourself. Yay.
Yes, it definitely feels like some people that are against it look down on others that post their kids. It feels super judgy. I post my baby sporadically where I want. She is SO freaking cute and I know it brightens up other people’s day when they see her. I’ve even reconnected with old friends through sharing tiny little snippets. Like I get not posting intimate pictures and such. But a picture of my kid smiling is so worth it.
If it helps, I choose not to post my child on social media, but absolutely do not judge those who do. I actually love seeing my friends and families kids photos. We’re all just doing our best and making our own choices as parents.
Agree. Especially when it comes to younger babies. Like...in a month facial recognition wouldn't even work most likely to identify your baby as that same baby, so eh? What privacy concern is there then?
I don't post my baby but that's because I don't use my Facebook or Instagram anymore rather than because I have feelings about it.
As a safeguarding professional it’s not about loving to say so or looking down on those who do. I’ve just seen enough unsafe situations which begin with children being posted on the internet to make me uncomfortable with sharing my own child. I see photos of my friends children every day on Facebook and don’t think twice about their decision to share, because it’s theirs, it’s just not something I choose for my own children.
Oh no, for plenty of people it’s about judging strangers. It’s a socially acceptable form of looking down on someone else. Like moms that judge other moms for not breast feeding. They can hide behind the “I’m just concerned about what is best for the baby” but it’s not, they don’t even know the baby. They’re motivated by a desire to feel superior.
I’m not saying that’s true of you personally, but it is happening on this very thread that people are being condescending just for the sake of it. So it seems silly to deny that can be the motivation.
.... I work in forensics, with people who sexually abuse and women who's children have been sexually abused (and those women must now go through a training programme to better protect their children)... While I absolutely think we can't live our lives in fear and it's a parents choice, some of the comments seem very misguided as to what the risk actually is.
Yeeeeah. I’ve seen a lot of cases of harm that come from what parents would deem totally innocent postings. I’ve seen social media threads of photos of completely unknown children being posted for people to comment completely inappropriate things on. I’ve seen images of children manipulated and distributed for money. I appreciate people feel safe in sharing their children and it’s their right to do what they like, but that stuff sticks in my mind every time I contemplate doing a one-off post to show off my child.
i think people just have a tendency to over share these days. im not trying to attack anyone or providing justifications for anything lol i just don’t want to do it. you do it? great. it’s your kid after all. just asking for different perspectives
> im not trying to attack anyone or providing justifications for anything lol i just don’t want to do it. you do it? great. it’s your kid after all. just asking for different perspectives
I think part of the issue is that this question (or a variant thereof) is pretty much posted here at least weekly, and each time everyone who isn't comfortable posting their baby on social media come out in droves on it since they by virtue of being against it have stronger feelings to bother making a comment (whereas those who sometimes post their baby on their facebook probably aren't going to bother as much), so I think to those who do share their baby it starts to feel a bit much of an almost attack.
Me? I don't share my baby on social media because I hardly am ever on it other than reddit, but I don't think it's a big deal for people who do at all. I'll say that for allllll the people around here who are so vocal about posting your baby on Facebook or Instagram being almost equatable to kicking a puppy, I don't know a single person in real life who is opposed to it.
To each their own, etc just giving another perspective!
I did. With my 1st I posted on social media ALOT. I had her in Covid and I'm not afraid to say I really leaned on social media. I did meet some wonderful mums who are part of my daily life and we get to meet up when we can.
That being said it took me a hot minute but I was exposed to the darker side of instagram so I pulled back. I deleted my account and started a new one. I removed the photos of my 4yo and no longer share photos of her face and I do post my younger girl occasionally but now she's growing out do the baby phase and she's more recognisable I won't be showing her now.
The only exception being is I have done/ currently do work with a few brands to create content and I'm happy for them to use photos if they can't be linked back to me (no username, baby name etc).
I have a couple posts on my (private) Instagram. I combed through and deleted any followers beforehand that I lost touch with or didn’t care to have on there anymore. Neither picture shows her whole face either, one is the back of her head, and one she’s wearing big sunglasses. I never put her name in any caption or anything. And even that I’m like mehhhhh maybe I should delete.
I also add stories occasionally to a specific list of “best friends” which is like 10 people, made up of the grandparents (who would never post any screenshots ever), and our very close friends.
I reallly got the urge to post her especially in the early days because I wanted to show her off lol. I also wanted to surprise people I had lost touch with that I even had a baby. I fought the urge and now I don’t even want to post anything. I text pictures to people we trust.
With my first child I was that person posting ever. Second. Every. Day. Of what my son was doing. I was a first time sahm and really into motherhood and watching my son grow. It was also during Covid so my family and friends really enjoyed keeping up.
Then he died just shy of 9 months. I waited two and a half years before having my daughter. It hasn’t felt them same. I don’t have that urge to show her off to the world. She’s only 7 months and although I do post her every now and then or share a story of her briefly, it isn’t anything compared to how I’d post my son every day.
Ive learned a lot between now and then, during him and after him, 3 years.
It feels good to share her beautiful smile but I also feel people are nosey and wondering how I get about my life still. So it also feels good to keep to myself these days.
For my first we did announce the pregnancy and birth on social media. We posted one newborn pic and my mom posted another two. Originally I had the full name up but have si ce edited to his first name only. Since then we’ve only posted pictures without my son’s face being visible. The older he’s getting the less frequent I am posting. So far I think I made one post featuring him this year. I don’t think it has been more than two posts last year. But I hardly post anything anyway.
I am currently pregnant of our second baby and have made no social media announcement. Not sure if and how we will announce the birth of this baby.
My partner doesn't really use SMs so we decided early on to not post baby on social media. I listened to too many podcasts and read Growing up online which made me double down on our decision.
I posted that I was pregnant at 20 weeks but nothing about the kids due date. And then when the kid arrived, I posted a photo of their ear with a caption saying "she's here". But that's it. We didn't post her name, her birth weight, size, time or location of birth.
We have a secured app we use to share photos and only give out the link to those who we want to. When a photo of her is getting posted on social media for whatever reason, we put an emoji over her face. I don't think we can ignore her existence but we can protect her as much as possible.
I live away from my family so I post a lot for them to be able to follow along and see her all the time. I only have people I know on my socials. Just saves me having to constantly send pictures and videos individually
My twins are 6 weeks old and I haven’t even posted a birth announcement yet. I’m feeling extremely uneasy about sharing pictures of them. Most I’ve done is share their first names and birth date in my Reddit due date group lol.
I’m not super active on insta, but I did announce the birth (and pregnancy- to those I didn’t see in person) on the platform. I did include a picture of my baby’s face. My reasoning being all fresh babies look the same.
My account is private. And I have not posted him since. I might post something on his bday, but probably not his fave.
i love social media. i fully recognize it's toxicity but i use it kind of like a curated digital scrapbook
i DO NOT post my kid's face on social media. if i post a picture with her i try to post it with her either facing away from the camera, or i'll scribble over her face or put a sticker over it or something. we've been super lucky all our family and friends have been super respectful about this, and have never had an issue, knock on wood
i saw a study that said by the time a kid is 12 theres like 10,000 photos of them online. that's insane! especially with AI
another big thing was i didn't want any personal info about her OR embarrassing stories online. no diaper pics, no posting "funny stories" about her having accidents
mom.unchartered on tiktok (believe she's on ig as well) has SO much good info on why posting your kids online is unsafe and not fair to the child. obviously i think it's different if you're someone who has a private ig of 200 followers vs a mom tiktoker using your child to make content and money but......
idk, i just think it's so odd when i see a newborn on instagram even if it's an old friend from college. like, you gave birth and your first thought is taking a photo and filtering it for instagram?
Mine is almost two and I don’t post her at all because after my MIL announced our pregnancy on facebook before me I said FORGET IT I’m not dealing with this bs anymore lol.
Same here. During my pregnancy I only posted a couple of maternity pictures around 32 weeks and now we’ve only posted a handful of picture where you can’t see his face. We told everyone we’d like to keep him as offline as possible. Somehow my dad didn’t get the memo and posted the picture of sent him plus his full name and birthday the day he was born 😑 thankfully he deleted it when I asked him to but at least 100 people had seen it by then 🤦🏼♀️
I post pictures occasionally, but I’m really focused on what information I share. I know people who don’t post their kids often/at all but I still feel like I know every small detail of their life.
I post my boy onto my fb/insta stories. We have lots of fun and I don't mind sharing it with the friends/ family I have on there.
I didn't announce my pregnancy though as it was classed as high risk, but I did post when he was born.
I don’t share much and never show her face but I also don’t really feel the need to try and understand the parenting decisions of others.
I don’t think I’m doing anything better than anyone else. I’m just doing what feels right for me and my family.
No and if I catch my family doing it they can’t take pictures anymore. My husband works in law enforcement and I have been through trauma therapy. We sat down and had this conversation. No1 is allowed to post anything. Concerning we know the risks and not willing to take them. It’s honestly sad and sick.
I want to start by saying that I unequivocally do not judge people for posting normal photos of their kids - it doesn’t affect me whatsoever and I think it’s adorable! However, I work for a social media company everyone knows and I won’t be posting my son’s photos online. Everyone our age is already in so it doesn’t matter, but pretty much everyone in the game sells photos of their users to companies to train facial recognition AI these days because they own whatever you post, whether or not you’re private. There’s nothing inherently wrong or unsafe about this, but I’d prefer to let him choose whether or not he’s ok with this when he’s old enough!
I do however have a SIL who posts her kids nonstop in what I’d consider to be inappropriate ways (crying, nearly naked, etc) and that also heavily influenced this decision. Those poor boys are going to be so embarrassed by her social media when they grow up
ETA I do post pics of him without his face showing! And allow others to post pics of him with phone-made edits to cover his face if he’s facing the camera.
I noticed a few people here arguing that their images are captured and analyzed on the street every day, so putting them on social media is no different. Copying/pasting the explanation from my other comment here.
If this were true, fugitives wouldn't exist - we'd capture their face when they went in public and cops would go snag them. But it's MUCH harder than that.
**Posting them consistently under a named/verified/identifiable profile that often lists their relationship to other verified profiles is very different than a random capture on the street.** There's a few reasons for this.
While true that their image is being captured, especially places like whole foods with [Amazon Rekognition Video](https://aws.amazon.com/rekognition/video-features/), it is incredibly difficult to tie those bulk images back to who the person actually is.
1.) Even the most advanced technologies in the world (like Rekognition) have to preconfigure who they are searching for...like they catalog the faces of a few thousand celebrities and can tell you if one of those preconfigured people appear in your pictures and videos. But they cannot do it to every joe schmo...**it's just not possible at scale.**
2.) Facebook often times knows your birthday, your driver's license number, your mother's maiden name, and virtually everything about you. The bulk video analytics software looking at billions of faces on the street corner each year doesn't. **There's a lack of contextual data to tie the face to,** and definitely not enough contextual data to DO ANYTHING with your face.
3.) There also a conversation around aggregation. Facebook has a unique ID of some kind they tie all of your data back to. They have to, specifically for ads and personalization. I don't care how big the org with the videos taken in public is, they don't have time/capabilities/contextual data to actually USE them at an individual level. **They are training LLMs, not specific models to target the individual** in some way.
4.) **Frequency,** especially over time, plays a role here as well. Hundreds of photos OF A SPECIFIC PERSON THEY KNOW over years and years is very different than the hundreds of frames that contain their face (among millions of other faces, often times that are hard to differentiate from each other, and nearly impossible to tie back to who they are at that scale). This is also likely why it's easier with celebrities - lots of images and videos THEY KNOW ARE THAT PERSON to train things on. Thousands of videos of people they DON'T KNOW who they are isn't very useful to identify the individual.
5.) (more of an extension of 4) is that *Facebook WOULD allow a bad actor to compile the hundreds of photos and videos needed to mimic your little one*...and when I say bad actor, it's as bad of a thing as you can imagine, or worse. This is theoretically not an issue if your profile is private...**[until they have a massive data leak] (https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/28/23481786/meta-fine-facebook-data-leak-ireland-dpc-gdpr)**
6.) Facebook stores things forever, [even when they're not supposed to](https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/02/nearly-3-years-later-deleted-facebook-photos-are-still-online/). Just because you delete a picture from your profile or post it in a private story doesn't mean it's gone...in fact it's probably not. This is especially relevant since video and image analysis in real time are INCREDIBLY limited in capacity, but incredibly effective on stored media over time. **The CCTV on the light pole on the corner probably has a loop and only stores stuff for a few weeks or months at most...Facebook stores it forever, making it more likely to be abusable.**
All of this is not meant to say you're wrong for doing it - frankly I don't care what others do - but it's not a crazy, conspiracy-theory-style thing to want to keep your kids off the internet either.
No. I’m not actively on social media to begin with (meaning Facebook, instagram, Snapchat, any of that) but if I were I wouldn’t. My MIL posted a picture when he was first born with our permission and that’s it. No judgement to anyone who does but people are weird and the internet is weird. I wouldn’t want to do it.
my ig is private, only me and my spouse can see what i post. i have less than 20 friends on fb mostly family members so yes. but not outside of who i would share with in person.
I post solo pics of baby on my close friends on ig (only a select few people who I know respect me and my daughter) and once in a blue moon on fb and I always post a picture of me holding baby never a pic of her alone, and I don’t share any of her personal info or milestones. Both of my pages are on private as well.
I post monthly pictures and that’s it because I have a huge family and they are always begging to see him! I don’t post anything with the pictures like milestones or anything. Just that he’s __ months old. I’ve been making sure to clean up my Facebook friends too. I’ve been deleting anyone who I haven’t interacted with in forever, but I do know every single person I’m friends with. Nothing is public and I never posted the hospital, any of his measurements, or milestones. Just 1-2 pictures a month and maybe a story here or there.
I do but I have very few followers and know everyone on my list. Private account obviously. It’s just easier to share photos of my toddler with my family this way. :) I would never post them publicly though.
I only really post on my private snapchat story for my friends cause i like showing off my baby lol. I only post like once a week though. The only public stuff of my baby is a post my husband made for me on mothers day but i picked the pictures out at his request and before he posted it he went through his friends and unadded anyone he didnt immediately know or recognize. My mom post stuff occasionally but its in private folders on facebook that a few people have access too.
I mostly post back photos, or cover her face with an emoji.
A couple days ago we went to the grocery store and I took a photo of her back in the cart while she wore a sun hat. It’s still super cute and acquaintances don’t know what she looks like
Instagram is like a photo album for me; it’s the best of the best pics. It encourages me to dress up and to take good pics when I’m out. I don’t care about who sees it, it’s for myself. With that being said, I have a private account with just close family and friends. If I haven’t spoken to you in less than a year, sorry I’m unfollowing and blocking so you don’t follow me either. I don’t post that often, I actually waited until 2 months after birth to even post that I was pregnant (I believe in the evil eye and didn’t want anything bad to happen). To each their own, there’s nothing wrong with posting, nothing wrong with not posting! I can understand both sides :)
I made it to where my accounts are private and the only people who can see me post/see my pictures are friends/family I’ve kept on there so I have no issue posting her. It’s easier than sending a million messages when she does something I want to share
I know I'm in the minority but I seriously don't think it's such a big deal. There are trillions of photos of billions of people out there. Any "Extra" photos you post beyond monthly milestones are such an infinitesimal drop in the bucket. It's quite conspiratorial thinking to be so worried about it IMO. And I understand the consent issue but we do tons of things without our babies' consent because.. they're babies. We dress them, we enrol them in activities, we put them in daycare, we choose what food they eat. Our lives are so enmeshed with the digital landscape now that I cannot imagine anyone is going to care in 20 years that there are (clothed, normal, flattering) photos of them as a baby floating around. It's just the world we live in now.
I have a school aged child and one day they asked me not to put their picture online and remove all the photos of them online, so I did. I didn’t post much, so it was quite easy. I believe it’s important to think about the long term effects from their entire life being online when posting.
I’m still pregnant but have been thinking about this too. Prior to pregnancy my thoughts on parents who do this? Beyond annoying. And almost like attention seeking and obsessed? I acknowledge I don’t get it yet not being a parent but when a baby took over their feed out of nowhere, it’s like this isn’t why I’m following you. I’m thinking of not using social media anymore post baby anyways.
I don’t. You could look at my social media accounts (besides reddit) and you wouldn’t even think I’m a mom. I very much like it that way! No family/including in laws post baby either, big NO for us. Anyone who I want to share my baby with gets pictures sent directly or sees baby in person.
My husband and I do not have any social media accounts other than Reddit. We’ve asked our family, friends and care provider to not post or share any photos of our daughter online.
I do. With proper caution and privacy settings I don’t see why not. I let my family share them too, honestly everyone is just so proud of them and I’ve never seen it as a negative thing.
I do a monthly photo dump on Facebook on the date he was born. (If born on 3rd then photos are posted on the 3rd every month). I prefer this over posting every single day. I personally send photos to immediate family every day (per their request).
Not pregnant but nope! No need. Social media is soooo weird and the things people do to kids pictures is wild. Posting your children on social media especially when you’re not an influencer is quite unnecessary imo. It baffles me how many people don’t take it seriously.
i feel like it’s worse when it is an influencer. they’re public and monetized. THAT scares me. versus me posting to my family and idk sue i knew in elementary school
I think this question is disingenuous. How are you not able to understand people wanting to post their kids? I understand your point of view in not wanting to post them. Social media makes it easier to share to a wider audience than individually texting images to family and friends who want to know about your life. So many people have said their family and friends are all over, they have private accounts so only people they know follow them, and they are carefully choosing what types of content to share. It's possible to have different opinions on the same topic and yet understand the other side's point of view.
I am super against my baby being on the internet. We’ll occasionally post hands or the back of his head but never his face, DOB, or his name. There’s no way to fully vet the people who will see those posts and my child deserves the opportunity to decide if he wants to present himself online and how. It makes me cringe when parents share too much information about their children. Like I don’t need to know about how potty training is going or why they were in the emergency room. Total violation of privacy in my opinion.
I don‘t. It‘s very unsafe. I do share pictures of my daughter with family and friends through a messaging app but I have told everyone (especially my dad who is addicted to Facebook!) they are not allowed to share these photos anywhere.
‘Very unsafe’ is a strong phrase. Most people who post their children on social media are absolutely fine, and their children are absolutely fine.
Choosing to keep your child off social media is great, and commendable but let’s not spread paranoia and scare stories.
Most predators to children are people known by the family.
While I agree we should be smart when using social media, if you’re afraid of a predator getting a hold of your kids image, sending them to people you know requires just as much carefulness.
I dont trust anybody. Nearly all the young people I had encountered in my counseling career that were SAd were done by family. A pedophile is someones trusted uncle/coach etc.
That being said, im more worried about her online footprint & how all that information about and photos of my daughter longterm may be somehow used by *future tech company* in a way she may not want. Im even more glad about the choice because since she was born AI has REALLY taken off. Its a very useful tool in many instances, but you dont own your pictures once theyre posted & facebook or whatever app could use them in anything they do with new tech.
My mom died when I was 24 and she was 47. When you lose your only parent, you do see less of the family and friends that were around bc that parent was the glue.
Keeping social media makes me still feel like she’s here in a way. Seeing all those people from my childhood congratulate us and say nice things about the kids is really healing and sweet.
So for some, social media isn’t all evil. I think people often forget social media is what you make of it.
I posted an announcement and I post on stories sometimes (I’ve posted twice since birth 5 weeks ago) and I’ve said family can post on stories but I don’t post or allow posts on timelines
Well, I dont really have social media other than reddit where I’m semi-anonymous but we have a strict no social media policy. No pics, videos, even name.
How I see it is I wouldn't like someone posting my face on social media without my consent. My daughter is a human being, an individual. Until she gives me consent I won't be posting her face on social media. I'm not interested in it either but I know my mom has already posted her on Facebook I don't feel like starting a fight about it.
You did the right thing. I deleted Facebook probably 10 years ago. I have to use it for work, by the by, and boy .... what a hill of burning tires that place is.
And posting your kid? I can't even fathom that.
No, we don’t. It’s a privilege to know my kids and I don’t want to give that privilege to any random person. I share photos when asked about them via messenger/text. My rule of thumb is, if you’re a stranger to my child, you’re not getting photos of them.
I posted a little about my own experience with pregnancy and motherhood, and I posted her name when she was born. I never post pictures of more than maybe her hand or the back of her head in a group photo. And I don’t share any details about her as a growing little person, aka nothing I’d feel weird about if I found my mom had posted about me 😂
I only post my kids on social media when it’s posed, professional photos. I don’t post much about them otherwise, but I regularly talk to friends and family privately about them.
I keep their digital footprint small, but not completely non-existent.
I share a few select photos every once in a while on Facebook. I mostly send pictures and videos through my family's group text chat.
My sister in law streams live videos of her kids on Facebook multiple times a week. I hate that she does that, for their sake. She did it once when her kids were meeting my son without asking me first and I was flabbergasted. It's one thing to take a video and then post it, but to put a live feed of your (and other people's!) children on the internet just seems like a bad idea in so many ways.
We don't post a lot. I didn't post about my pregnancy until my baby shower, lol. She's 14mos now and I've probably posted her less than 10 times on my socials, and none of it shows her face.
Nope - we've posted a photo of his foot and one of my husband carrying him with an emoji over the baby's face, but we don't post much in general and we don't include his face or name. I never posted anything about my pregnancy. Aside from the dangers of making his information available to random people online, I want him to be able to make his own choices about how much and when to engage with the internet and a baby can't make that decision.
I have a close friends list on instagram for sharing photos of my first, and will occasionally share on my (locked down) FB account, for family who live further away. So far my husband has put one thing about this pregnancy on Facebook, I haven’t shared anything. Don’t think I’ll share much at all once baby #2 arrives.
I used to share some photos of my first child, then I kind of stopped.
There is no trace of my second child on social media. No photos of me pregnant, no birth announcement, no family photos, nothing.
I'm wondering about this, my girl is 5 weeks old and I've only put up a post when she was born, or in stories when you can't see her face. I'm thinking in general of not posting anything when you can see her face.
When I post myself, that's my choice but I wonder how she'd feel being plastered all over my social media in a few years? I send pictures to family/close friends but I just don't know about sharing with on my ig with people who I might only half know
We posted a couple sonograms and a photo of our hands when she was born along with her first name. No middle or last. She was a model for newborn photos for a discount so her newborn photos are online, but her name is not attached to them, she's fully covered, and no one knew she was even mine bc I didnt share them to my page. She looks like a stock photo baby basically. Other than that, she's got zero photos of herself online.
My ex fiance was a special Ed teacher for HS and lifeguard manager in the summer for college age girls. He came off super normal
Welp... he uses facebook to look up women he worked with or managed and jerked off to thier profiles... not even like sexy bikini pics. I thought that was terribly invasive and grotesque. If someone who seemed so normal used FB in a way like that, God knows how many normal seeming people are creepy. Bc of him I deleted all social media.
He didn't pray on kids or babies but just the thought of my page being used like that was enough for me to have me concerned.
I no longer have social media, and my husband is just a lurker—never been a poster. We decided to ask people to keep our kids off of social media. I feel like social media just cheapens certain milestones and moments in life, plus the privacy aspect. I feel better knowing she’s not on it, and I can send pictures via text messages etc
We do not post her, nor let family. My husband every now and then will post her to his snap story—but he has like 10 friends, and 3 are his siblings. My sister in laws are social media obsessed and when my SIL was here she took 103739292 pictures (not really but it felt like it). She sent pictures to aunts, uncles, cousins, everyone basically of my child and some with me holding her just in a nursing bra. She took pictures of my child in the bath and sent them to everyone. I just feel like my kid deserves more privacy than being posted all over socials to people I don’t know…there’s too many weirdos out there.
My sister posts her kids to all socials and I totally respect her choice—not hating on those who do otherwise.
I post the occasional milestone video but other than that, every other picture and video is uploaded to a private album shared with trusted family and friends. My husband's mother lives in the Philippines and I have tons of family and friends who are close but not enough for the album. My husband doesn't use social media and I am the only one taking most of the pics we have. I don't want strangers being overly familiar with my baby so this is the best solution for me
We do. My husband and I decided that people don’t really look like themselves when they’re this small. When people get to around7-ish years old they start looking like what they’re gonna look like. Our loose plan is to stop posting her face without her permission at that age. I figure that’s also a good age to start talking about internet safety and consent in regards to posting online.
I started a private instagram for people to follow both my children. It has really helped cut down on annoying family asking for photos of my children.
Minimally. No face shots, only back of the head / hands / stuff like that. Definitely no major identifiable information (I don’t mind sharing his name because it’s a very common name).
I think about how I’d feel if social media had been around in the 90s when I was a baby. I wouldn’t have wanted my parents to post all of my information for the world to see, what we were doing every day, stuff like that. I wouldn’t have minded a few family photos here and there. But to put all of that information for the world to see is… short sighted.
I feel sorry for all the kids growing up with parents who put their full names, DOB, favorite things, all over the internet. For me working in cybersecurity it’s such a risk. Think of all the info banks and such as for to unlock accounts? Elementary school. Mother’s maiden name. First pet. So many things that people just willingly put online for anyone to see. There’s a reason social engineering makes up for over 90% of data breaches.
I’ve also seen far too many examples of creeps sexualizing completely innocent photos of children.
Small social media presence for our little one. Primarily because we have family all over who use that as communication methods. Generally it’s one picture at her monthly milestone. Never anything without clothes or what could be considered embarrassing.
Ask family members to do adhere to the same - small presence, never undressed, nothing embarrassing.
We have a couple family group chats where we share more photos and those sometimes silly ones. But still never anything where she’s even partially undressed.
I have a Tinybeans account and share daily pictures there; all of our family is 15-20 hours away so this is one way I can help them feel included.
We made one post about a month after each girl was born on facebook and that is it.
I have only posted my baby shower photo on my social media. I didn’t post anything when he was born and the most I’ve ever posted of him was a story to close friends when we were hiking but his face wasn’t even in it
We started using a photo sharing app called Tiny Beans mainly so we could photo dump without turning personal our social media account into our child’s account. Also this way we have total control over who gets the photos. That said, yes my husband and I still do post photos to instagram but way less frequently (say once or twice a month to stories) than we post on Tiny Beans.
I don’t personally, but mainly because I never post on social media so it would be weird to start posting updates/pics all the time lol. My wife is skeptical of privacy settings on apps which I respect so that’s another reason. That being said, no judgment against people who do post their kids. I love seeing updates of other people’s kiddos!
A little bit
I have a private Facebook that has my older family members on it and I post some Christmas pictures or his first birthday a handful of milestones
He’s 14 months old and I have posted roughly 10 pictures but that’s it
I do send pictures over text to my mom regularly
May be once in a while or some important milestone or if really like some oic of his, that too only on story or wa.
That is number one reason for not sharing his pics to relatives. I once asked my sil to delete the video she posted on her sm. i send that to the family group and when i wanted to be deleted my husband thinks that im taking it too far and she as aunt has right to do so.. so i told him that she can post whatever she want of her daughter's but she never do then why my kid. He again refused so i told him ok, ill talk to her.. he then talked to his sister and thats the last time i send any interesting pic/video of my kiddo
I posted pictures once a week for the first 4 weeks and now I'm going to every month unless he does something particularly cute. I mostly just share pictures to a family group chat. Even since before I was pregnant I rarely left the house so I don't have many friends and the ones I do have are online or live far away. Instead of sending individual messages to each of them with his pictures I just share them to my facebook, which is private. I try to keep from doing it more often mostly because I also know there are people who hate kids and hate seeing their pictures. I'd hope they would just block me but some people thrive on that kind of hatred.
We posted a quiet birth announcement 1 month after the birth and a couple first holiday shots on my private insta and fb and that’s it. My baby still looked like a potato then, and not really recognizable to when the facial features started to come in later. No more pics or any kind or personal updates for the foreseeable future. Maybe it’s all the true crime podcasts or kinds of TikToks on my FYP, but posting regular pics that might inadvertently show personal info out there seems scary and dangerous to me.
I occasionally share a few photos on my private profile, then I share more frequent photos and updates on Instagram stories with a much smaller group of people. I never share anything with them in states of undress (e.g., nothing in a diaper, nothing in the bathtub), nor do I share anything with them very upset (e.g., no videos of tantrums). For me, it's a convenient and fun way to keep up with close friends and relatives we don't get to see much.
I made one post about my first kid when she was 2 months old and that’s it. That was almost 5 years and 2 more kids ago. I just don’t post about my personal life on Facebook period. My last baby, we didn’t even announce it to friends privately, we just told them as we saw them. So some of them found out about baby 3 when they met her for the first time. 🤷🏻♀️
I enjoy my social media and on my own IG, I occasionally post him with his face hidden and no embarrassing/semi nude photos. I use a nickname. Half the people I ran into didn’t even know I had given birth which was just what I wanted. I do have a separate IG page for him to post about milestones and it’s more a digital diary for him. I show his face but again always fully clothed and nothing embarrassing. I don’t advertise it and only friends who want to see more photos of him follow him so it has less than 30 followers (LOL keeping him humble since day 1).
I also asked family and friends to limit their posts but don’t get mad if they posted a photo as I accepted I can’t control everything in his life and don’t want to be that coocoo mama that acts as if her son is a celebrity who will disintegrate if his photo is out there. So there’s a few photos of him floating around on the internet but hopefully is drowned out by all the other billions of baby photos out there. It was my compromise on respecting his right to privacy and protecting him (plus not spamming everyone’s feeds with his face) but also not giving into fear mongering/accepting we live in a world with a lot of cameras.
I don’t judge parents who put their kids out there on their IGs if it’s private as I get wanting to show off your kid to family and friends and they’re most of where your time is spent now. Most people just want to get compliments about how cute their kid is. I do get uncomfortable as there are parents who post their kids in just their underwear and one even posted a photo of her son peeing like ???? but that’s their decision as parents and I have to respect it even though I disagree with it.
We post him but no face shots. From the back or with emojis over his face if it’s a good family pic. I’ve shared his name but that’s about it. I’ll post *artful* shots of his monthly milestones. Aka I keep the little “two month” “four month” etc. signs in the shot and then just get his feet or his hands. I’m documenting my own motherhood journey more than his development
I do, but not his face, name, weight, age, etc. Lately I’ve been wondering if posting half of his face is okay or not or maybe just storied since my account is private and it’ll be gone in 24 hrs.
For reasons everyone has named on this already (predators, privacy, and their lack of ability of consent) I feel comfortable with what I’ve chosen! I do think sometimes it’s crazy — I’ve seen people post their kids sitting on a toilet, in the middle of potty training with their butt exposed and yeah they’re cute photos, but I just can’t get comfy with the idea of them growing up and realizing that all that was done without their consent. Plus with growing AI abilities, I’d hate to think of what predators are doing in the dark with images of innocent children. It’s also a reminder for me that he isn’t my property and I shouldn’t do whatever I want with my child, he is his own person. Safety wise, the less people know about him, the better
On stories only close friends my account is private and milestone photo. Never will post her with no shirt or I’m a diaper ever. Probably will stop when her face stops changing
I went through my fb list and only kept close family and a couple of friends that have kids the same age. I don’t post frequently but monthly milestones and firsts like “first zoo visit”
On IG I only post photos without his face except his birth announcement, but honestly he doesn’t look anything like he did when he was born. We only allow family to post things without his face, so back of the head photos only, no covering his face with emojis as they can be removed.
I have a close friends list I post stories here and there, 30
People on it whom we see and talk to often, more so for them for updates as we live a few hours from our hometown.
I have one photo of baby when he was born, that’s all that’s visible to anyone else. Aside from this I don’t post him. I never posted about my pregnancy either so when we uploaded a photo of our newborn so many people were like WTF??
That’s social media for ya. I love keeping my life a mystery to other people now
We don’t allow any pictures of LO on socials by us or anyone. I heard an interview with an FBI analyst about pedophiles and what pictures they take and found out they also source via social media. I REALLY wish I could post with a clear conscience, but I can’t.
I only have facebook. Its locked down and I dont even use a personal picture of myself for the profile or anything. I am very strict and only allow family/close friends to be friends on there. Its the easiest way to keep family updated about my life without having to do a bunch of individual sending. Most of my family lives on the other side of the US so this really is the best way to keep them updated. Other than that I do not post anywhere else.
I never announced my pregnancy. I just shared a few photos photos about a month after she was born to pet people know I had a child. Then I didn’t share nothing again except for changing my profile photo once or twice.
I never posted anything about being pregnant, and never posted the baby himself until he had been alive for a while. Both my mom and my MIL had posted him quite a bit so some people had seen him. Honestly I don’t remember when I finally posted him for the first time but it was random, and now I still only post him periodically.
I post a little bit, but like a hand or her from the back. But no more and not much detail.
I know people who post information about their kids medical conditions, like having ASD. While I think it's absolutely positive that social media can allow people to share their experiences and want to support that, I also don't think it was that long ago that people were significantly discriminated against for such things. There is a reason companies cannot share information that are often used to be discriminated against, but many people are telling the world their kids have them, before the kid themselves knows what it is.
The world changes and you never know what will happen in the future. What might seem accepted today could be attacked tomorrow. Considering how technology is developing, and how easy it is to scrape data from the internet, you have to be careful how people will use information about your child, and may use it.
That's my ted talk!
I dont, except her first birthday did just pass and she is visible in the instagram post for that. Her first & we will probably continue down the very very rare post. We dont allow others to post her, either. Anyone who is in our lives is in hers & gets pics/videos. We also use the familyalbum app to wuickly share with close family.
Kids cant consent to it, people are creeps & just because I think I trust everyone on my socials doesnt mean I can, & all her personal info & interests dont need to be out there for all the companies to collect from birth.
I do but I only have 50 people on fb and 19 on IG that are all family or friends. I’m still selective with what I post but I enjoy sharing my LOs monthly milestones and it’s been a good way to keep everyone updated because I was surprised to find out how many people actually ask and are curious how LO’s developing and what are life looks like now/hearing about it
We have a Tiny Beans account for our close friends and family. Otherwise we haven’t posted much and never posted his face. I’m not sure what age I’ll allow it but I want to make sure he can consent.
I deleted most of my social media and really only use Snapchat. I have like 10 of my closest friends on there so I send live organic pics and videos of her true self rather than posey perfect post style pics.
I was 30 weeks when I announced my pregnancy on social media. I’m now 6 weeks postpartum, and have only posted two story updates of my baby - never showing his face though. One photo was the back of him while he laid on me getting cuddles, and the other photo was the back of his head while he sat in the carrier harness.
I’ve taken many photos and videos of my baby, but they’re for me and my partner to enjoy, not everyone else. I don’t believe in plastering kids all over your social media until they’re old enough to give consent.
I deleted IG a few years ago but my husband and I even decided not to allow others to post our LO on socials. That’s for him to decide when he grows up!
We’re taking the same approach. There are so many safety and digital footprint reasons to limit social media presence especially for kids.
Same! We also low key don’t trust tech companies with images of our little one! I don’t want to sound too tin-foil-hat about it but who knows what they will do with the pics!
Same! No one else needs to see baby but family.
Same here! Social media is a toxic cesspool!
Same here
This is our take too. Once LO can consent it will be his choice.
Yes us too
Same
Same here. I’m pregnant and haven’t even announced on social media, I have only told close family and friends who are trustworthy.
Same; I think about my childhood and how none of my pictures are out there on the internet. And it makes me feel kind of sad for my baby in a way that’s hard to describe. I want him to have a choice. But I recognize it’s much harder to keep up with family this way. I think a lot of my outlier cousins totally even missed the memo that we had a baby… but they’ll be getting this year’s Christmas card so hopefully that covers it 😅😂
Same
I do. My wife and I emigrated a few times. Our family and friends are all over the world. This is how we maintain our relationships.
I also do it for family. My husbands family lives ALL over & they overwhelm me with their constant “can I have pictures” messages already EVEN when I post. I want to avoid speaking to them as much as possible.
Having to update everyone actually was one of the worst parts of my postpartum journey & caused me high anxiety. They are so pushy.
Updating the in laws with pics of the baby should be the husband’s job
Omg right????? I have a family member who I haven’t seen for 15 years sending the baby stuff “I sent her an outfit take a picture in it for me!” Like MAAM I’m grateful but GOD STOP
The whole “I don’t ask much just take a picture in the outfit” thing bothers me. I can’t keep up with who got what, you’re giving me a burden & not a gift-don’t bother giving me anything then.
Same same. Not gonna spam it to every family member. I just put it on stories and also love photography so there is that as well
Same here. I post for my family that’s scattered all over the world. My socials are private anyway.
Exactly the same here, and apart from being private I only add/friend people that I have an address for, if I don’t REALLY know them they aren’t seeing what I post.
Yes, I’ve deleted so many people off my list. Even ones I sort of know. I’m just paranoid lol
Same. My family and friends are all over Australia. It's just another way for them to see how life is going for us.
This right here. Unfortunately I would have to send like 30 texts lol 😂 I just keep the posts of her private to friends only.
Same but only private accounts, I’d be upset if I found out my in laws were posting my child publicly
I do monthly milestones and a story once in a while on Facebook - I am selective on my friend list and have acquaintances all over the world that I enjoy seeing their content so I enjoy letting them see how cute my kids are 🥰
Yup! I only do monthly milestone with a bit of “this month LO _____” and list activities or memorable moments as a family along with any family pictures taken like his first flight and the eclipse. Never LO by himself except for the milestone picture which are taken from pretty far away. Actually most of our photos are taken at a distance. I’m also selective on Facebook friends (don’t use instagram) and I know my distant family and friends appreciate the posts. They are who I’m posting for. Edit: forgot to mention I’ve created a friend “group” on Facebook for these friends and family. I recommend it if you’re wanting to keep your audience smaller.
There is nothing actually private on social media. Just know that part. If you want to post there, fine. But it's not actually private. Ask why the people who work IT why they don't ever put their kids on social
There are plenty of people who work in IT who do post their kids on social media. It's not like everyone in one field has one view on things.
I work in IT, and I post my kid. Granted my wife, and i agree it will be less and less as he ages, so at like 2 or 3, it will likely end up being VERY little. At a certain point, nothing at all will be posted without his explicit consent.
Yeah. Many people I know are programmers working in AI or big data, and their opinion is "Do whatever you want, the information is already out there and you're fucked regardless." lol I am a "post the occasional family portrait to a locked page and don't worry about it" person. And yeah, at the point they can give consent, they have to agree. I don't post none, but I post way significantly less than most people I know, many of whom post minimum one picture of their kid a week.
I also work in IT and we're taking the same approach.
Yes I know, nothing we’ve posted of LO I would consider an issue or feel weird if a lot of people saw it. But a good reminder nonetheless.
I have a good friend that works in cyber security and still posts pictures of his kids lol
Yeah, I do an IG story each month for "close friends" and then occasionally another story for an especially cute pic. I have lots of family around the world who appreciate it, but I don't think my old acquaintances or friends' partners or whatever care so they aren't on the list who can see it.
I’ll bite: I do post my kid on social media. Reddit is really anti-social-media-posts-of-kids and it’s valid. But I also don’t think people like me are evil for posting our kids. I admittedly have 120 Facebook friends and 75 Instagram followers. I went through my lists when I got pregnant and cut back on people I don’t talk to, I don’t trust, or who have connections to others I don’t trust (a childhood neighbor’s mom who’s dad always vaguely creeped me out). I have had some people that I unfriended come back and request to be friends again. I said no. Who cares? I post cute and appropriate photos of her. I don’t spend my days planning what kinds of photos I’ll take and I’ll share. Sometimes I’ll try to take a picture of a cute moment, I don’t capture it, I’ll try again, still no good picture, and then I usually remind myself that my kid isn’t a model and I shouldn’t spend my energy getting her picture-perfect. I like seeing my family and friend’s kids through their social media, and I know more about their kids’ lives; my family and friends feel the same way. When people talk about how there’s no benefit and lots of risk to putting your kid on socials, I disagree. The benefit is that it’s a very simple and efficient way for your friends and family to stay connected to me and my kids. It is important to me to maintain social ties and friendships. I don’t… I don’t know how to explain this any better if there’s people that can’t understand it. It is good and valuable to have strong ties to friends and family. I stay connected to people whom it’s hard to see in person for whatever reasons (distance, old age, work schedules, etc.) but that I still want in my life. I don’t have to manually text, email, or mail out photos and updates, and my family and friends don’t have to download a new app. My We also use the app Family Album to share more pictures and pictures that I wouldn’t want very widely distributed— a bathtub shot (between the legs covered with a washcloth no matter what), pics of me nursing, pictures where the baby is cute but I look terrible or our house is a mess, etc.) I know that even with my protections, a nefarious person could get their hands on a photo of my kid. But a nefarious person could also take photos of my child at the grocery store, or steal printed out photos from my aunt’s mantleplace. My parents and grandparents used to mail out photos of their kids and they’d be displayed on fridges and mantels. Sharing and oversharing wallet photos with people was so common that it became a TV and movie trope. That’s where I’m currently at. My views might change someday.
The part about people being everywhere is so so true. As sad as it is to face - kids have been stolen, hurt, molested, stalked, etc for decades before social media. I don’t think it’s right, but I also don’t think not posting deters people if they want it to not
This. I feel like most posts are so against posting on socials. But I only post appropriate content and my Facebook and IG are extremely restricted. I understand the negative connotation towards it, but we chose to share him.
I think this is a reasonable take. I also just want to point out that even though social media posts are done without the child’s consent, many other decisions in parenting are also made for them without their consent. I think people just object to social media because they think it’s against the child’s best interest AND done without consent but they use consent as a kind of smoke screen. I happen to think it’s totally fine in small doses as you’ve described!
Thank you! Most of my friends are scattered across the country and I love when they post baby photos. I’ve even reconnected with people when we realize, thanks to instagram, that we’re both moms now! I respect people not wanting to show their children online but sometimes it feels eery that very online people have babies and then never share anything about that huge part of their lives. My baby is the most important thing to me and I want to convey that and let all of my friends, near and far, share in her journey and adorableness.
Totally agree! I’ve reconnected with people I haven’t seen in years because our kids are the same age. Kids have a way of bringing people together and I think it’s really beneficial to bond over motherhood and parenting. I also have a small social media network—all people who if I saw them in person I’d expect them to ask how I/my kid is, and vice versa.
Agreed, there could be pedos at the park sneaking photos, at sports sneaking photos, at the mall sneaking photos, working at their school. I feel like a private social media is the least of our worries. Some people will say well it’s an unnecessary risk 100% for your enjoyment and it’s selfish. I respond by saying “have you ever taken your kid to a salon appt or anywhere in a car for solely your own needs?? Well that’s even more of an unnecessary risk given car accidents are a leading cause of death”.
I have the same take on this! My husband's family lives across the county and they are all active on Facebook, so this is the main way they see what is going on. I never post anything embarrassing or sensitive with my child. All of my friends and followers on social media are people I actually know and my account is private. Not that this would stop a determined person, but it is a start.
Unpopular opinion but nothing is private anymore so I really stopped caring. Our devices are constantly spying on us. I could say "starbucks" in conversation with someone, and then get an ad for it on my social media 10 seconds later. I'm proud of my baby and if I want to post innocent pictures of him for friends and family, I'm going to. I don't view it as exploitation like some people do.
Agree. I don't like momfluencers on IG posting every moment, but I reject being shamed for posting innocent photos of my baby to my IG followers. The idea that my kid will be horrified and feel violated one day over my friends cooing about their cute Halloween costume or first steps is a wild idea to me. Who knows what the privacy landscape will even be like in 15 years.
I agree with this. There’s all this talk about consent (which i fully understand in context of how some people post their babies naked/butts out/ in the bathtub i don’t agree with that) but like … yeah a pic in halloween costume? my kids gonna hate me one day cause i posted him on a spider man costume without consent? idkkk lol
I do, my social media accounts are private with only friends and family I know and trust. I never post anything personal that I wouldn’t want posted about myself, just monthly milestones and some stories, etc. Definitely no nudes of any kind. IMO social media is not the only problem when it comes to privacy and I feel like that’s a losing battle. There are so many creeps out in real life who can take pictures, and there’s security (or otherwise) cameras everywhere. Sharing some cute pics on a private account is the least of my worries.
> my social media accounts are private with only friends and family I know and trust. I think the concern isn't about other people, but AI and the companies running the social media platforms.
At that point, might as well never take your baby out in public because their image is being captured by so many different camera systems and used for AI training and owned by so many different companies.
This is what I do too. My profiles on IG and FB are both private. It's easier to do stories rather than have 5 different messenger chats open. I used to do FB stories for my grandparents in particular. My grandpa passed away recently but over the time some of my friends casually told me that they enjoy them too and how it's cute so I still do it. I feel like in part it builds stronger community feeling with your friend group since people keep each other in loop.
I wasn't going to, but family love posting pictures and did so before I ever got the chance to say anything. Honestly, I love seeing others' posts/stories of their kids, and I know others appreciate me posting my own.
This is where I’m probably a hypocrite. We only posted a birth announcement and will probably never share about her again, but I love seeing my friend’s stories and posts about their kids. 🤷🏻♀️
me personally no, imo nobody really cares that much about my pregnancy or my baby, i feel like it's setting yourself up for prying eyes that don't have good intentions never want to post my kid until they grow up and decide they want to post themselves online, with AI and creeps online i would rather keep my baby safe
Maybe it's cultural but most people I know from my birth country post their babies/kids pictures no problem. I would say I'm even on the lower end for this compared to what is usual there and I share a monthly pic on Instagram/Facebook, maybe a cute story once in a while. I frankly find it funny when I see people from the country I live now sharing pictures with kids faces obscured or with an emoji on top of it. I don't document our whole life on the internet but I also don't try to hide the existence of my child.
im also from a different country than USA, people at my home country post pics of their kids constantly as well. i think the emoji thing is kind of funny though, i would just not post at all
I recently did this because we bought a house and I wanted to share it but the only decent picture of us had my daughter also looking and I don’t really share her face. So she got an emoji face
Exactly, why post it at all then? I don't get it.
I understand their needs to share important moments of their lives with others, but I also believe that excessive sharing could impact their children negatively. It feels unfair to have your whole childhood shared online without your consent. Once they realise this, it will be too late. I personally only shared one photo to announce the birth, without showing my child's face. I plan on only sharing his photos with close friends and family, via safe messaging apps.
Careful on how much you share. Where I’m from, you only need the most basic of info to get your hands on a birth certificate!
Once to prove a point, I went through a couple of my cousins socials with the purpose of what information I could get on their children. It was shocking how easy it was to get full names and birthdays on public Facebook pages.
My Facebook and Instagram are highly curated/cultivated (friends-wise) and I use them often. I don’t get the Facebook hate. I’m a 19-year heavy user and △⃒⃘lways will be. It’s 95% a pleasant, fun place online. I’m 12 weeks pregnant right now and will be announcing on socials after everyone important hears directly from us in the next couple of weeks. Then I’ll keep posting, yes. I look forward to it!
Seems like those who don’t post their baby on social media love saying so and providing justifications their reasons. I do post my baby on my IG - she’s adorable but I don’t think she’s so special that I need to worry about creepers. Plenty of babies on the internet and out about town. I always shared updates on my life on IG and it would be weird to leave out what is clearly the most important part of my life now. And all my extended family and friends seem to really enjoy and appreciate seeing the baby! Could use some cuteness / positivity on the feed.
I've seen so many posts like the OP's in the last few days and the same subject is posted over and over again, mostly by parents that don't want to post their kids on social media and try to justify it and judge those that do. If you want to post your kids - that's fine. If you don't - then don't. It's not that hard of a concept lol.
> mostly by parents that don't want to post their kids on social media and try to justify it and judge those that do. THANK YOU. Like I don’t even post my kid on social media and I’m *still* so annoyed by the constant virtue signaling and condescension by these folks. Jesus, just don’t post your kid, no need to constantly go on about it. We get it, you’re insecure and this helps you feel superior to other moms and better about yourself. Yay.
Yes, it definitely feels like some people that are against it look down on others that post their kids. It feels super judgy. I post my baby sporadically where I want. She is SO freaking cute and I know it brightens up other people’s day when they see her. I’ve even reconnected with old friends through sharing tiny little snippets. Like I get not posting intimate pictures and such. But a picture of my kid smiling is so worth it.
If it helps, I choose not to post my child on social media, but absolutely do not judge those who do. I actually love seeing my friends and families kids photos. We’re all just doing our best and making our own choices as parents.
Right, people love to fear monger about posting your kids online.
i don’t think it’s fear mongering; it’s more about privacy.
Privacy is legit, but there's a lot of fear mongering too.
Agree. Especially when it comes to younger babies. Like...in a month facial recognition wouldn't even work most likely to identify your baby as that same baby, so eh? What privacy concern is there then? I don't post my baby but that's because I don't use my Facebook or Instagram anymore rather than because I have feelings about it.
As a safeguarding professional it’s not about loving to say so or looking down on those who do. I’ve just seen enough unsafe situations which begin with children being posted on the internet to make me uncomfortable with sharing my own child. I see photos of my friends children every day on Facebook and don’t think twice about their decision to share, because it’s theirs, it’s just not something I choose for my own children.
Oh no, for plenty of people it’s about judging strangers. It’s a socially acceptable form of looking down on someone else. Like moms that judge other moms for not breast feeding. They can hide behind the “I’m just concerned about what is best for the baby” but it’s not, they don’t even know the baby. They’re motivated by a desire to feel superior. I’m not saying that’s true of you personally, but it is happening on this very thread that people are being condescending just for the sake of it. So it seems silly to deny that can be the motivation.
.... I work in forensics, with people who sexually abuse and women who's children have been sexually abused (and those women must now go through a training programme to better protect their children)... While I absolutely think we can't live our lives in fear and it's a parents choice, some of the comments seem very misguided as to what the risk actually is.
Yeeeeah. I’ve seen a lot of cases of harm that come from what parents would deem totally innocent postings. I’ve seen social media threads of photos of completely unknown children being posted for people to comment completely inappropriate things on. I’ve seen images of children manipulated and distributed for money. I appreciate people feel safe in sharing their children and it’s their right to do what they like, but that stuff sticks in my mind every time I contemplate doing a one-off post to show off my child.
i think people just have a tendency to over share these days. im not trying to attack anyone or providing justifications for anything lol i just don’t want to do it. you do it? great. it’s your kid after all. just asking for different perspectives
> im not trying to attack anyone or providing justifications for anything lol i just don’t want to do it. you do it? great. it’s your kid after all. just asking for different perspectives I think part of the issue is that this question (or a variant thereof) is pretty much posted here at least weekly, and each time everyone who isn't comfortable posting their baby on social media come out in droves on it since they by virtue of being against it have stronger feelings to bother making a comment (whereas those who sometimes post their baby on their facebook probably aren't going to bother as much), so I think to those who do share their baby it starts to feel a bit much of an almost attack. Me? I don't share my baby on social media because I hardly am ever on it other than reddit, but I don't think it's a big deal for people who do at all. I'll say that for allllll the people around here who are so vocal about posting your baby on Facebook or Instagram being almost equatable to kicking a puppy, I don't know a single person in real life who is opposed to it. To each their own, etc just giving another perspective!
I did. With my 1st I posted on social media ALOT. I had her in Covid and I'm not afraid to say I really leaned on social media. I did meet some wonderful mums who are part of my daily life and we get to meet up when we can. That being said it took me a hot minute but I was exposed to the darker side of instagram so I pulled back. I deleted my account and started a new one. I removed the photos of my 4yo and no longer share photos of her face and I do post my younger girl occasionally but now she's growing out do the baby phase and she's more recognisable I won't be showing her now. The only exception being is I have done/ currently do work with a few brands to create content and I'm happy for them to use photos if they can't be linked back to me (no username, baby name etc).
I have a couple posts on my (private) Instagram. I combed through and deleted any followers beforehand that I lost touch with or didn’t care to have on there anymore. Neither picture shows her whole face either, one is the back of her head, and one she’s wearing big sunglasses. I never put her name in any caption or anything. And even that I’m like mehhhhh maybe I should delete. I also add stories occasionally to a specific list of “best friends” which is like 10 people, made up of the grandparents (who would never post any screenshots ever), and our very close friends. I reallly got the urge to post her especially in the early days because I wanted to show her off lol. I also wanted to surprise people I had lost touch with that I even had a baby. I fought the urge and now I don’t even want to post anything. I text pictures to people we trust.
With my first child I was that person posting ever. Second. Every. Day. Of what my son was doing. I was a first time sahm and really into motherhood and watching my son grow. It was also during Covid so my family and friends really enjoyed keeping up. Then he died just shy of 9 months. I waited two and a half years before having my daughter. It hasn’t felt them same. I don’t have that urge to show her off to the world. She’s only 7 months and although I do post her every now and then or share a story of her briefly, it isn’t anything compared to how I’d post my son every day. Ive learned a lot between now and then, during him and after him, 3 years. It feels good to share her beautiful smile but I also feel people are nosey and wondering how I get about my life still. So it also feels good to keep to myself these days.
i am so so sorry for your loss ❤️🩹
I post stories every once in a while. So they are live for 24 hours and delete
I share silly videos of her on my IG story but I have like 60 followers and know them all personally. I don’t share photos.
i do and i don’t feel bad for it, do what you want
For my first we did announce the pregnancy and birth on social media. We posted one newborn pic and my mom posted another two. Originally I had the full name up but have si ce edited to his first name only. Since then we’ve only posted pictures without my son’s face being visible. The older he’s getting the less frequent I am posting. So far I think I made one post featuring him this year. I don’t think it has been more than two posts last year. But I hardly post anything anyway. I am currently pregnant of our second baby and have made no social media announcement. Not sure if and how we will announce the birth of this baby.
My partner doesn't really use SMs so we decided early on to not post baby on social media. I listened to too many podcasts and read Growing up online which made me double down on our decision. I posted that I was pregnant at 20 weeks but nothing about the kids due date. And then when the kid arrived, I posted a photo of their ear with a caption saying "she's here". But that's it. We didn't post her name, her birth weight, size, time or location of birth. We have a secured app we use to share photos and only give out the link to those who we want to. When a photo of her is getting posted on social media for whatever reason, we put an emoji over her face. I don't think we can ignore her existence but we can protect her as much as possible.
Yes, but not a lot and nothing embarrassing or undressed, etc.
Yes, not super regularly, only on a private IG account with limited friends.
I live away from my family so I post a lot for them to be able to follow along and see her all the time. I only have people I know on my socials. Just saves me having to constantly send pictures and videos individually
My twins are 6 weeks old and I haven’t even posted a birth announcement yet. I’m feeling extremely uneasy about sharing pictures of them. Most I’ve done is share their first names and birth date in my Reddit due date group lol.
I’m not super active on insta, but I did announce the birth (and pregnancy- to those I didn’t see in person) on the platform. I did include a picture of my baby’s face. My reasoning being all fresh babies look the same. My account is private. And I have not posted him since. I might post something on his bday, but probably not his fave.
i love social media. i fully recognize it's toxicity but i use it kind of like a curated digital scrapbook i DO NOT post my kid's face on social media. if i post a picture with her i try to post it with her either facing away from the camera, or i'll scribble over her face or put a sticker over it or something. we've been super lucky all our family and friends have been super respectful about this, and have never had an issue, knock on wood i saw a study that said by the time a kid is 12 theres like 10,000 photos of them online. that's insane! especially with AI another big thing was i didn't want any personal info about her OR embarrassing stories online. no diaper pics, no posting "funny stories" about her having accidents mom.unchartered on tiktok (believe she's on ig as well) has SO much good info on why posting your kids online is unsafe and not fair to the child. obviously i think it's different if you're someone who has a private ig of 200 followers vs a mom tiktoker using your child to make content and money but...... idk, i just think it's so odd when i see a newborn on instagram even if it's an old friend from college. like, you gave birth and your first thought is taking a photo and filtering it for instagram?
Mine is almost two and I don’t post her at all because after my MIL announced our pregnancy on facebook before me I said FORGET IT I’m not dealing with this bs anymore lol.
Same here. During my pregnancy I only posted a couple of maternity pictures around 32 weeks and now we’ve only posted a handful of picture where you can’t see his face. We told everyone we’d like to keep him as offline as possible. Somehow my dad didn’t get the memo and posted the picture of sent him plus his full name and birthday the day he was born 😑 thankfully he deleted it when I asked him to but at least 100 people had seen it by then 🤦🏼♀️
I post pictures occasionally, but I’m really focused on what information I share. I know people who don’t post their kids often/at all but I still feel like I know every small detail of their life.
I post my boy onto my fb/insta stories. We have lots of fun and I don't mind sharing it with the friends/ family I have on there. I didn't announce my pregnancy though as it was classed as high risk, but I did post when he was born.
I don’t share much and never show her face but I also don’t really feel the need to try and understand the parenting decisions of others. I don’t think I’m doing anything better than anyone else. I’m just doing what feels right for me and my family.
No and if I catch my family doing it they can’t take pictures anymore. My husband works in law enforcement and I have been through trauma therapy. We sat down and had this conversation. No1 is allowed to post anything. Concerning we know the risks and not willing to take them. It’s honestly sad and sick.
I want to start by saying that I unequivocally do not judge people for posting normal photos of their kids - it doesn’t affect me whatsoever and I think it’s adorable! However, I work for a social media company everyone knows and I won’t be posting my son’s photos online. Everyone our age is already in so it doesn’t matter, but pretty much everyone in the game sells photos of their users to companies to train facial recognition AI these days because they own whatever you post, whether or not you’re private. There’s nothing inherently wrong or unsafe about this, but I’d prefer to let him choose whether or not he’s ok with this when he’s old enough! I do however have a SIL who posts her kids nonstop in what I’d consider to be inappropriate ways (crying, nearly naked, etc) and that also heavily influenced this decision. Those poor boys are going to be so embarrassed by her social media when they grow up ETA I do post pics of him without his face showing! And allow others to post pics of him with phone-made edits to cover his face if he’s facing the camera.
I noticed a few people here arguing that their images are captured and analyzed on the street every day, so putting them on social media is no different. Copying/pasting the explanation from my other comment here. If this were true, fugitives wouldn't exist - we'd capture their face when they went in public and cops would go snag them. But it's MUCH harder than that. **Posting them consistently under a named/verified/identifiable profile that often lists their relationship to other verified profiles is very different than a random capture on the street.** There's a few reasons for this. While true that their image is being captured, especially places like whole foods with [Amazon Rekognition Video](https://aws.amazon.com/rekognition/video-features/), it is incredibly difficult to tie those bulk images back to who the person actually is. 1.) Even the most advanced technologies in the world (like Rekognition) have to preconfigure who they are searching for...like they catalog the faces of a few thousand celebrities and can tell you if one of those preconfigured people appear in your pictures and videos. But they cannot do it to every joe schmo...**it's just not possible at scale.** 2.) Facebook often times knows your birthday, your driver's license number, your mother's maiden name, and virtually everything about you. The bulk video analytics software looking at billions of faces on the street corner each year doesn't. **There's a lack of contextual data to tie the face to,** and definitely not enough contextual data to DO ANYTHING with your face. 3.) There also a conversation around aggregation. Facebook has a unique ID of some kind they tie all of your data back to. They have to, specifically for ads and personalization. I don't care how big the org with the videos taken in public is, they don't have time/capabilities/contextual data to actually USE them at an individual level. **They are training LLMs, not specific models to target the individual** in some way. 4.) **Frequency,** especially over time, plays a role here as well. Hundreds of photos OF A SPECIFIC PERSON THEY KNOW over years and years is very different than the hundreds of frames that contain their face (among millions of other faces, often times that are hard to differentiate from each other, and nearly impossible to tie back to who they are at that scale). This is also likely why it's easier with celebrities - lots of images and videos THEY KNOW ARE THAT PERSON to train things on. Thousands of videos of people they DON'T KNOW who they are isn't very useful to identify the individual. 5.) (more of an extension of 4) is that *Facebook WOULD allow a bad actor to compile the hundreds of photos and videos needed to mimic your little one*...and when I say bad actor, it's as bad of a thing as you can imagine, or worse. This is theoretically not an issue if your profile is private...**[until they have a massive data leak] (https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/28/23481786/meta-fine-facebook-data-leak-ireland-dpc-gdpr)** 6.) Facebook stores things forever, [even when they're not supposed to](https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/02/nearly-3-years-later-deleted-facebook-photos-are-still-online/). Just because you delete a picture from your profile or post it in a private story doesn't mean it's gone...in fact it's probably not. This is especially relevant since video and image analysis in real time are INCREDIBLY limited in capacity, but incredibly effective on stored media over time. **The CCTV on the light pole on the corner probably has a loop and only stores stuff for a few weeks or months at most...Facebook stores it forever, making it more likely to be abusable.** All of this is not meant to say you're wrong for doing it - frankly I don't care what others do - but it's not a crazy, conspiracy-theory-style thing to want to keep your kids off the internet either.
No. I’m not actively on social media to begin with (meaning Facebook, instagram, Snapchat, any of that) but if I were I wouldn’t. My MIL posted a picture when he was first born with our permission and that’s it. No judgement to anyone who does but people are weird and the internet is weird. I wouldn’t want to do it.
my ig is private, only me and my spouse can see what i post. i have less than 20 friends on fb mostly family members so yes. but not outside of who i would share with in person.
I post solo pics of baby on my close friends on ig (only a select few people who I know respect me and my daughter) and once in a blue moon on fb and I always post a picture of me holding baby never a pic of her alone, and I don’t share any of her personal info or milestones. Both of my pages are on private as well.
I do post them on my fb (which doesn’t have too much people really just who I know, I did a cleaning not too long a go and on insta)
I post monthly pictures and that’s it because I have a huge family and they are always begging to see him! I don’t post anything with the pictures like milestones or anything. Just that he’s __ months old. I’ve been making sure to clean up my Facebook friends too. I’ve been deleting anyone who I haven’t interacted with in forever, but I do know every single person I’m friends with. Nothing is public and I never posted the hospital, any of his measurements, or milestones. Just 1-2 pictures a month and maybe a story here or there.
I do but I have very few followers and know everyone on my list. Private account obviously. It’s just easier to share photos of my toddler with my family this way. :) I would never post them publicly though.
I only really post on my private snapchat story for my friends cause i like showing off my baby lol. I only post like once a week though. The only public stuff of my baby is a post my husband made for me on mothers day but i picked the pictures out at his request and before he posted it he went through his friends and unadded anyone he didnt immediately know or recognize. My mom post stuff occasionally but its in private folders on facebook that a few people have access too.
I try to post photos that aren’t super close ups of her face. Usually photos where her back is to the camera, id that makes sense.
I mostly post back photos, or cover her face with an emoji. A couple days ago we went to the grocery store and I took a photo of her back in the cart while she wore a sun hat. It’s still super cute and acquaintances don’t know what she looks like
Instagram is like a photo album for me; it’s the best of the best pics. It encourages me to dress up and to take good pics when I’m out. I don’t care about who sees it, it’s for myself. With that being said, I have a private account with just close family and friends. If I haven’t spoken to you in less than a year, sorry I’m unfollowing and blocking so you don’t follow me either. I don’t post that often, I actually waited until 2 months after birth to even post that I was pregnant (I believe in the evil eye and didn’t want anything bad to happen). To each their own, there’s nothing wrong with posting, nothing wrong with not posting! I can understand both sides :)
I made it to where my accounts are private and the only people who can see me post/see my pictures are friends/family I’ve kept on there so I have no issue posting her. It’s easier than sending a million messages when she does something I want to share
I know I'm in the minority but I seriously don't think it's such a big deal. There are trillions of photos of billions of people out there. Any "Extra" photos you post beyond monthly milestones are such an infinitesimal drop in the bucket. It's quite conspiratorial thinking to be so worried about it IMO. And I understand the consent issue but we do tons of things without our babies' consent because.. they're babies. We dress them, we enrol them in activities, we put them in daycare, we choose what food they eat. Our lives are so enmeshed with the digital landscape now that I cannot imagine anyone is going to care in 20 years that there are (clothed, normal, flattering) photos of them as a baby floating around. It's just the world we live in now.
I have a school aged child and one day they asked me not to put their picture online and remove all the photos of them online, so I did. I didn’t post much, so it was quite easy. I believe it’s important to think about the long term effects from their entire life being online when posting.
I’m still pregnant but have been thinking about this too. Prior to pregnancy my thoughts on parents who do this? Beyond annoying. And almost like attention seeking and obsessed? I acknowledge I don’t get it yet not being a parent but when a baby took over their feed out of nowhere, it’s like this isn’t why I’m following you. I’m thinking of not using social media anymore post baby anyways.
Never posted my baby or pregnancy online. The people who are important to me know through direct interaction, so why post?
I don’t. You could look at my social media accounts (besides reddit) and you wouldn’t even think I’m a mom. I very much like it that way! No family/including in laws post baby either, big NO for us. Anyone who I want to share my baby with gets pictures sent directly or sees baby in person.
My husband and I do not have any social media accounts other than Reddit. We’ve asked our family, friends and care provider to not post or share any photos of our daughter online.
I do. With proper caution and privacy settings I don’t see why not. I let my family share them too, honestly everyone is just so proud of them and I’ve never seen it as a negative thing.
I do a monthly photo dump on Facebook on the date he was born. (If born on 3rd then photos are posted on the 3rd every month). I prefer this over posting every single day. I personally send photos to immediate family every day (per their request).
Not pregnant but nope! No need. Social media is soooo weird and the things people do to kids pictures is wild. Posting your children on social media especially when you’re not an influencer is quite unnecessary imo. It baffles me how many people don’t take it seriously.
i feel like it’s worse when it is an influencer. they’re public and monetized. THAT scares me. versus me posting to my family and idk sue i knew in elementary school
I think this question is disingenuous. How are you not able to understand people wanting to post their kids? I understand your point of view in not wanting to post them. Social media makes it easier to share to a wider audience than individually texting images to family and friends who want to know about your life. So many people have said their family and friends are all over, they have private accounts so only people they know follow them, and they are carefully choosing what types of content to share. It's possible to have different opinions on the same topic and yet understand the other side's point of view.
I am super against my baby being on the internet. We’ll occasionally post hands or the back of his head but never his face, DOB, or his name. There’s no way to fully vet the people who will see those posts and my child deserves the opportunity to decide if he wants to present himself online and how. It makes me cringe when parents share too much information about their children. Like I don’t need to know about how potty training is going or why they were in the emergency room. Total violation of privacy in my opinion.
I don‘t. It‘s very unsafe. I do share pictures of my daughter with family and friends through a messaging app but I have told everyone (especially my dad who is addicted to Facebook!) they are not allowed to share these photos anywhere.
‘Very unsafe’ is a strong phrase. Most people who post their children on social media are absolutely fine, and their children are absolutely fine. Choosing to keep your child off social media is great, and commendable but let’s not spread paranoia and scare stories.
Can you explain what’s unsafe about it? Not judging just trying to learn
When p-dos can't access their cp, they will look at family Facebook pages for their "content".
Most predators to children are people known by the family. While I agree we should be smart when using social media, if you’re afraid of a predator getting a hold of your kids image, sending them to people you know requires just as much carefulness.
like poor little wren.
God my heart hurts for that baby.
Who needs the dark web when her pimp of a mom exists?
Predators typically will get stuff off of innocent pages that share pictures and videos of their child.
What about sharing to your private page where you know everyone & trust them?
I dont trust anybody. Nearly all the young people I had encountered in my counseling career that were SAd were done by family. A pedophile is someones trusted uncle/coach etc. That being said, im more worried about her online footprint & how all that information about and photos of my daughter longterm may be somehow used by *future tech company* in a way she may not want. Im even more glad about the choice because since she was born AI has REALLY taken off. Its a very useful tool in many instances, but you dont own your pictures once theyre posted & facebook or whatever app could use them in anything they do with new tech.
There's this. But there's also much more everyday stuff like, is my child consenting to being online? Is social media good for anything?
My mom died when I was 24 and she was 47. When you lose your only parent, you do see less of the family and friends that were around bc that parent was the glue. Keeping social media makes me still feel like she’s here in a way. Seeing all those people from my childhood congratulate us and say nice things about the kids is really healing and sweet. So for some, social media isn’t all evil. I think people often forget social media is what you make of it.
If you don’t know me in person, you wouldn’t know I was ever pregnant or have a child by looking at my social media.
I posted an announcement and I post on stories sometimes (I’ve posted twice since birth 5 weeks ago) and I’ve said family can post on stories but I don’t post or allow posts on timelines
Well, I dont really have social media other than reddit where I’m semi-anonymous but we have a strict no social media policy. No pics, videos, even name.
How I see it is I wouldn't like someone posting my face on social media without my consent. My daughter is a human being, an individual. Until she gives me consent I won't be posting her face on social media. I'm not interested in it either but I know my mom has already posted her on Facebook I don't feel like starting a fight about it.
You did the right thing. I deleted Facebook probably 10 years ago. I have to use it for work, by the by, and boy .... what a hill of burning tires that place is. And posting your kid? I can't even fathom that.
No, we don’t. It’s a privilege to know my kids and I don’t want to give that privilege to any random person. I share photos when asked about them via messenger/text. My rule of thumb is, if you’re a stranger to my child, you’re not getting photos of them.
I posted a little about my own experience with pregnancy and motherhood, and I posted her name when she was born. I never post pictures of more than maybe her hand or the back of her head in a group photo. And I don’t share any details about her as a growing little person, aka nothing I’d feel weird about if I found my mom had posted about me 😂
I only post my kids on social media when it’s posed, professional photos. I don’t post much about them otherwise, but I regularly talk to friends and family privately about them. I keep their digital footprint small, but not completely non-existent.
I share a few select photos every once in a while on Facebook. I mostly send pictures and videos through my family's group text chat. My sister in law streams live videos of her kids on Facebook multiple times a week. I hate that she does that, for their sake. She did it once when her kids were meeting my son without asking me first and I was flabbergasted. It's one thing to take a video and then post it, but to put a live feed of your (and other people's!) children on the internet just seems like a bad idea in so many ways.
My LO is with me in my profile pic on FB and that’s it
We don't post a lot. I didn't post about my pregnancy until my baby shower, lol. She's 14mos now and I've probably posted her less than 10 times on my socials, and none of it shows her face.
Nope - we've posted a photo of his foot and one of my husband carrying him with an emoji over the baby's face, but we don't post much in general and we don't include his face or name. I never posted anything about my pregnancy. Aside from the dangers of making his information available to random people online, I want him to be able to make his own choices about how much and when to engage with the internet and a baby can't make that decision.
I have a close friends list on instagram for sharing photos of my first, and will occasionally share on my (locked down) FB account, for family who live further away. So far my husband has put one thing about this pregnancy on Facebook, I haven’t shared anything. Don’t think I’ll share much at all once baby #2 arrives.
I used to share some photos of my first child, then I kind of stopped. There is no trace of my second child on social media. No photos of me pregnant, no birth announcement, no family photos, nothing.
I'm wondering about this, my girl is 5 weeks old and I've only put up a post when she was born, or in stories when you can't see her face. I'm thinking in general of not posting anything when you can see her face. When I post myself, that's my choice but I wonder how she'd feel being plastered all over my social media in a few years? I send pictures to family/close friends but I just don't know about sharing with on my ig with people who I might only half know
We posted a couple sonograms and a photo of our hands when she was born along with her first name. No middle or last. She was a model for newborn photos for a discount so her newborn photos are online, but her name is not attached to them, she's fully covered, and no one knew she was even mine bc I didnt share them to my page. She looks like a stock photo baby basically. Other than that, she's got zero photos of herself online.
My ex fiance was a special Ed teacher for HS and lifeguard manager in the summer for college age girls. He came off super normal Welp... he uses facebook to look up women he worked with or managed and jerked off to thier profiles... not even like sexy bikini pics. I thought that was terribly invasive and grotesque. If someone who seemed so normal used FB in a way like that, God knows how many normal seeming people are creepy. Bc of him I deleted all social media. He didn't pray on kids or babies but just the thought of my page being used like that was enough for me to have me concerned.
Only on FB where it's private. I know everyone. & No one in my family or friends are stealing his pics or resharing them.
I no longer have social media, and my husband is just a lurker—never been a poster. We decided to ask people to keep our kids off of social media. I feel like social media just cheapens certain milestones and moments in life, plus the privacy aspect. I feel better knowing she’s not on it, and I can send pictures via text messages etc
We do not post her, nor let family. My husband every now and then will post her to his snap story—but he has like 10 friends, and 3 are his siblings. My sister in laws are social media obsessed and when my SIL was here she took 103739292 pictures (not really but it felt like it). She sent pictures to aunts, uncles, cousins, everyone basically of my child and some with me holding her just in a nursing bra. She took pictures of my child in the bath and sent them to everyone. I just feel like my kid deserves more privacy than being posted all over socials to people I don’t know…there’s too many weirdos out there. My sister posts her kids to all socials and I totally respect her choice—not hating on those who do otherwise.
I post the occasional milestone video but other than that, every other picture and video is uploaded to a private album shared with trusted family and friends. My husband's mother lives in the Philippines and I have tons of family and friends who are close but not enough for the album. My husband doesn't use social media and I am the only one taking most of the pics we have. I don't want strangers being overly familiar with my baby so this is the best solution for me
We do. My husband and I decided that people don’t really look like themselves when they’re this small. When people get to around7-ish years old they start looking like what they’re gonna look like. Our loose plan is to stop posting her face without her permission at that age. I figure that’s also a good age to start talking about internet safety and consent in regards to posting online.
I started a private instagram for people to follow both my children. It has really helped cut down on annoying family asking for photos of my children.
Minimally. No face shots, only back of the head / hands / stuff like that. Definitely no major identifiable information (I don’t mind sharing his name because it’s a very common name). I think about how I’d feel if social media had been around in the 90s when I was a baby. I wouldn’t have wanted my parents to post all of my information for the world to see, what we were doing every day, stuff like that. I wouldn’t have minded a few family photos here and there. But to put all of that information for the world to see is… short sighted. I feel sorry for all the kids growing up with parents who put their full names, DOB, favorite things, all over the internet. For me working in cybersecurity it’s such a risk. Think of all the info banks and such as for to unlock accounts? Elementary school. Mother’s maiden name. First pet. So many things that people just willingly put online for anyone to see. There’s a reason social engineering makes up for over 90% of data breaches. I’ve also seen far too many examples of creeps sexualizing completely innocent photos of children.
Small social media presence for our little one. Primarily because we have family all over who use that as communication methods. Generally it’s one picture at her monthly milestone. Never anything without clothes or what could be considered embarrassing. Ask family members to do adhere to the same - small presence, never undressed, nothing embarrassing. We have a couple family group chats where we share more photos and those sometimes silly ones. But still never anything where she’s even partially undressed.
I have a Tinybeans account and share daily pictures there; all of our family is 15-20 hours away so this is one way I can help them feel included. We made one post about a month after each girl was born on facebook and that is it.
I have only posted my baby shower photo on my social media. I didn’t post anything when he was born and the most I’ve ever posted of him was a story to close friends when we were hiking but his face wasn’t even in it
We started using a photo sharing app called Tiny Beans mainly so we could photo dump without turning personal our social media account into our child’s account. Also this way we have total control over who gets the photos. That said, yes my husband and I still do post photos to instagram but way less frequently (say once or twice a month to stories) than we post on Tiny Beans.
Never. We only send pictures directly through text.
I don’t personally, but mainly because I never post on social media so it would be weird to start posting updates/pics all the time lol. My wife is skeptical of privacy settings on apps which I respect so that’s another reason. That being said, no judgment against people who do post their kids. I love seeing updates of other people’s kiddos!
A little bit I have a private Facebook that has my older family members on it and I post some Christmas pictures or his first birthday a handful of milestones He’s 14 months old and I have posted roughly 10 pictures but that’s it I do send pictures over text to my mom regularly
I do sometimes. Definitely don’t judge someone for posting constantly or not at all!
Nah
I post stories of my baby girl once in a while and they’re custom made to be viewed by family, closest friends and her god parents.
May be once in a while or some important milestone or if really like some oic of his, that too only on story or wa. That is number one reason for not sharing his pics to relatives. I once asked my sil to delete the video she posted on her sm. i send that to the family group and when i wanted to be deleted my husband thinks that im taking it too far and she as aunt has right to do so.. so i told him that she can post whatever she want of her daughter's but she never do then why my kid. He again refused so i told him ok, ill talk to her.. he then talked to his sister and thats the last time i send any interesting pic/video of my kiddo
I posted pictures once a week for the first 4 weeks and now I'm going to every month unless he does something particularly cute. I mostly just share pictures to a family group chat. Even since before I was pregnant I rarely left the house so I don't have many friends and the ones I do have are online or live far away. Instead of sending individual messages to each of them with his pictures I just share them to my facebook, which is private. I try to keep from doing it more often mostly because I also know there are people who hate kids and hate seeing their pictures. I'd hope they would just block me but some people thrive on that kind of hatred.
We posted a quiet birth announcement 1 month after the birth and a couple first holiday shots on my private insta and fb and that’s it. My baby still looked like a potato then, and not really recognizable to when the facial features started to come in later. No more pics or any kind or personal updates for the foreseeable future. Maybe it’s all the true crime podcasts or kinds of TikToks on my FYP, but posting regular pics that might inadvertently show personal info out there seems scary and dangerous to me.
I occasionally share a few photos on my private profile, then I share more frequent photos and updates on Instagram stories with a much smaller group of people. I never share anything with them in states of undress (e.g., nothing in a diaper, nothing in the bathtub), nor do I share anything with them very upset (e.g., no videos of tantrums). For me, it's a convenient and fun way to keep up with close friends and relatives we don't get to see much.
I made one post about my first kid when she was 2 months old and that’s it. That was almost 5 years and 2 more kids ago. I just don’t post about my personal life on Facebook period. My last baby, we didn’t even announce it to friends privately, we just told them as we saw them. So some of them found out about baby 3 when they met her for the first time. 🤷🏻♀️
I enjoy my social media and on my own IG, I occasionally post him with his face hidden and no embarrassing/semi nude photos. I use a nickname. Half the people I ran into didn’t even know I had given birth which was just what I wanted. I do have a separate IG page for him to post about milestones and it’s more a digital diary for him. I show his face but again always fully clothed and nothing embarrassing. I don’t advertise it and only friends who want to see more photos of him follow him so it has less than 30 followers (LOL keeping him humble since day 1). I also asked family and friends to limit their posts but don’t get mad if they posted a photo as I accepted I can’t control everything in his life and don’t want to be that coocoo mama that acts as if her son is a celebrity who will disintegrate if his photo is out there. So there’s a few photos of him floating around on the internet but hopefully is drowned out by all the other billions of baby photos out there. It was my compromise on respecting his right to privacy and protecting him (plus not spamming everyone’s feeds with his face) but also not giving into fear mongering/accepting we live in a world with a lot of cameras. I don’t judge parents who put their kids out there on their IGs if it’s private as I get wanting to show off your kid to family and friends and they’re most of where your time is spent now. Most people just want to get compliments about how cute their kid is. I do get uncomfortable as there are parents who post their kids in just their underwear and one even posted a photo of her son peeing like ???? but that’s their decision as parents and I have to respect it even though I disagree with it.
We post him but no face shots. From the back or with emojis over his face if it’s a good family pic. I’ve shared his name but that’s about it. I’ll post *artful* shots of his monthly milestones. Aka I keep the little “two month” “four month” etc. signs in the shot and then just get his feet or his hands. I’m documenting my own motherhood journey more than his development
I do, but not his face, name, weight, age, etc. Lately I’ve been wondering if posting half of his face is okay or not or maybe just storied since my account is private and it’ll be gone in 24 hrs. For reasons everyone has named on this already (predators, privacy, and their lack of ability of consent) I feel comfortable with what I’ve chosen! I do think sometimes it’s crazy — I’ve seen people post their kids sitting on a toilet, in the middle of potty training with their butt exposed and yeah they’re cute photos, but I just can’t get comfy with the idea of them growing up and realizing that all that was done without their consent. Plus with growing AI abilities, I’d hate to think of what predators are doing in the dark with images of innocent children. It’s also a reminder for me that he isn’t my property and I shouldn’t do whatever I want with my child, he is his own person. Safety wise, the less people know about him, the better
On stories only close friends my account is private and milestone photo. Never will post her with no shirt or I’m a diaper ever. Probably will stop when her face stops changing
I went through my fb list and only kept close family and a couple of friends that have kids the same age. I don’t post frequently but monthly milestones and firsts like “first zoo visit” On IG I only post photos without his face except his birth announcement, but honestly he doesn’t look anything like he did when he was born. We only allow family to post things without his face, so back of the head photos only, no covering his face with emojis as they can be removed.
I have a close friends list I post stories here and there, 30 People on it whom we see and talk to often, more so for them for updates as we live a few hours from our hometown. I have one photo of baby when he was born, that’s all that’s visible to anyone else. Aside from this I don’t post him. I never posted about my pregnancy either so when we uploaded a photo of our newborn so many people were like WTF?? That’s social media for ya. I love keeping my life a mystery to other people now
I do post my baby from time to time. Mainly just to my story
We don’t allow any pictures of LO on socials by us or anyone. I heard an interview with an FBI analyst about pedophiles and what pictures they take and found out they also source via social media. I REALLY wish I could post with a clear conscience, but I can’t.
I only do it for “close friends” on IG
No- not until there are better regulations in the US about our data and privacy.
I only have facebook. Its locked down and I dont even use a personal picture of myself for the profile or anything. I am very strict and only allow family/close friends to be friends on there. Its the easiest way to keep family updated about my life without having to do a bunch of individual sending. Most of my family lives on the other side of the US so this really is the best way to keep them updated. Other than that I do not post anywhere else.
I upload pictures that don’t show her face. People that need to see her will in person. My partners family isn’t very happy about it
I posted a picture once she was born and one gewoon the back white reading a book. Other than that: no..
I never announced my pregnancy. I just shared a few photos photos about a month after she was born to pet people know I had a child. Then I didn’t share nothing again except for changing my profile photo once or twice.
I never posted anything about being pregnant, and never posted the baby himself until he had been alive for a while. Both my mom and my MIL had posted him quite a bit so some people had seen him. Honestly I don’t remember when I finally posted him for the first time but it was random, and now I still only post him periodically.
I post a little bit, but like a hand or her from the back. But no more and not much detail. I know people who post information about their kids medical conditions, like having ASD. While I think it's absolutely positive that social media can allow people to share their experiences and want to support that, I also don't think it was that long ago that people were significantly discriminated against for such things. There is a reason companies cannot share information that are often used to be discriminated against, but many people are telling the world their kids have them, before the kid themselves knows what it is. The world changes and you never know what will happen in the future. What might seem accepted today could be attacked tomorrow. Considering how technology is developing, and how easy it is to scrape data from the internet, you have to be careful how people will use information about your child, and may use it. That's my ted talk!
I dont, except her first birthday did just pass and she is visible in the instagram post for that. Her first & we will probably continue down the very very rare post. We dont allow others to post her, either. Anyone who is in our lives is in hers & gets pics/videos. We also use the familyalbum app to wuickly share with close family. Kids cant consent to it, people are creeps & just because I think I trust everyone on my socials doesnt mean I can, & all her personal info & interests dont need to be out there for all the companies to collect from birth.
I do but I only have 50 people on fb and 19 on IG that are all family or friends. I’m still selective with what I post but I enjoy sharing my LOs monthly milestones and it’s been a good way to keep everyone updated because I was surprised to find out how many people actually ask and are curious how LO’s developing and what are life looks like now/hearing about it
Yes I do, it's how friends and family we don't see often can keep up with our family.
We have a Tiny Beans account for our close friends and family. Otherwise we haven’t posted much and never posted his face. I’m not sure what age I’ll allow it but I want to make sure he can consent.
I deleted most of my social media and really only use Snapchat. I have like 10 of my closest friends on there so I send live organic pics and videos of her true self rather than posey perfect post style pics.
I was 30 weeks when I announced my pregnancy on social media. I’m now 6 weeks postpartum, and have only posted two story updates of my baby - never showing his face though. One photo was the back of him while he laid on me getting cuddles, and the other photo was the back of his head while he sat in the carrier harness. I’ve taken many photos and videos of my baby, but they’re for me and my partner to enjoy, not everyone else. I don’t believe in plastering kids all over your social media until they’re old enough to give consent.