Sharing Your Kids With The World On Social Media; How It Can Affect Their Lives

Travelling is often a family event and what goes with it is capturing picture memories on camera.

It feels good to post our family pictures on social media and let everybody know how we spend our dream vacation. We know that baby pictures always get many Likes followed by lots of loving comments filled with compliments about our beautiful children. And of course, this is good food for our souls.

The photos of many babies are shared on social media as soon as they are born and many parents don’t think about the consequences this could have.

The good old times of the traditional vacation photo albums are long gone and the Internet has taken over. We can store our picture memories on cloud drives and online media and share them with family, friends and the world with just one click or tap.

Is Sharing your Kid’s Pictures On Social Media A Good Idea?

Years back I would have posted pictures of children without thinking twice about it. For a long time, it didn’t make sense to me when I had to sign papers not to post kids’ pictures when we had children’s camps at the ranch. I didn’t think much of it but thought it was weird and I couldn’t see the reason behind it.

But then my daughter had her first baby and I was clearly told not to share any pictures on social media. This made me listen and I started to ask questions for the first time. Why not, what is the problem?

The answer is simple; sharing your kids on social media can be dangerous. You click the Post button and you share your children with the whole world. As soon as you do this, you can’t get the pictures deleted from the internet and they will be there forever.

Everyone, even babies should be able to decide for themselves what they want to share with the world and what they find too embarrassing to share. The cute, naked baby in the bathtub will one day be applying for jobs. Is it necessary that the employer has seen your now-grown child naked as a baby?

Did it ever happen to you that you found your own pictures on the Internet without even knowing they were there?

Why Do We Share Pictures Of Our Kids On Social Media?

We don’t share pictures to do something good for our children. We share the pictures for our own recognition in the way of likes and comments and somehow this makes us feel proud and good.

To all the grandparents out there, sorry, I know it’s tough and I feel the pain. It’s normal wanting to share our cute grandkids with the world. Everyone deserves to see how adorable they are and we all do it with the best intentions.

Of course, sharing your kid’s photographs wouldn’t be a problem if there wouldn’t be corrupt and sick people out there.

In a perfect world, you could proudly share photos on the world wide web; your cute little girl playing in the sand, your baby boy crawling around in diapers in front of the tent. In a perfect world, you could keep the public up to date on your whereabouts with daily social media posts.

But stop! How do you know the photos don’t end up with a creep or on a child pornography site? How do you know that you don’t have anyone stalking you? Do you know the risk of children’s photos being pirated and re-shared on predator sites? What about all of the paedophiles searching the internet for the pictures we find so cute and harmless?

This is silly you might say. You know about privacy settings on social media and only your family and friends can see the posts. What about if they share the pictures or they download them to reuse them? Do you personally know all your social media friends?

How To Be Cautious And Some Questions To Ask Yourself

• Be choosy about the type of photos you share.
• You’re advised to review and control your privacy settings for any service you use.
• Be careful who you follow/friend. It may feel good to have hundreds of social media friends, but you might not personally know many of them.
• Don’t add new friends before checking on them.
• Keep track of what people post about you.
• Know that those photos are out there forever once you click POST. You can delete your account, but all the pictures shared by others will still be online.
• Be aware, that there are groups out there where paedophiles meet and swap kids’ images.
• What about your children’s private sphere? Shouldn’t your children have a moral right to control their own digital footprint in the first place?
• Have you ever gone checked to see who is following your Facebook profile? You will be shocked! Of all the people following our profile, many of them we don’t know and many are not our Facebook friends.
• Do you know that child abuse, child abduction and child trafficking are happening in our own country? Go and do some research and you will be horrified.

Summary Of This Article

To share or not to share kids’ pictures is your own decision. The reason for this article is to spread awareness, open your eyes, get you thinking about this topic and get you to be more cautious, for your kids’ sake.

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• Canada with Kids

All content of this blog is based on my personal opinion only.

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Yrene Dee

Yrene lives in the Okanagan, British Columbia, Canada, and is the founder of BackcountryCanadaTravel.com. She was born in Switzerland, lived and worked on different continents and has travelled the world. Yes, that's me, an Entrepreneur, wilderness nut and animal lover who prefers off-the-beaten-track places. I write about things I love. Mostely.