Social media how I love and hate you all at the same
time. It seems odd that I feel
comfortable blogging my thoughts, feelings and intimate moments to be stumbled
across by anyone who logs onto the internet but when it comes to my children
they are nowhere to be found. My husband
and I have made a decision to keep our children off social media. As both my children are under the age of two
that means no pictures of them being posted.
Oh how family members hate that pesky little rule that we have. “This would be such a cute instagram photo”
is usually accompanied by “your no social media rule is dumb.” They argue I will put pictures of myself on the
internet by why not my kids. They are
totally correct. It’s my decision to
post my own story on social media, because that’s what it just is a story. I choose what it is that I WANT people to see
or know about me. I can be anyone I want
to social media. I’m proud of the baby
weight that I lost, I’ll post a picture of myself with a cute outfit on not a
picture of my bare stretch marked ridden stomach. I want people to see the good and not the
bad.
Why do I keep my kids off social media do you ask. The answer is my kids are innocent; they have
no control over what is being put out there for them. Once something is on the internet it’s there
forever. Those images are so freely accessible
it amazes me. An acquaintance learned
that lesson the hard way and her experience was a real eye opener for me. This person posted a picture on Instagram of
her child with a few different hash tags.
A few months later a friend of hers commented on why did she let a particular
entity use her kid’s photo. She hadn’t
given permission; this entity found the photo online and used it in an article
they were writing. Everything was
totally legal and now her child’s photo is in a post and there is nothing she
can do. Thankfully it was a tasteful
publication, but where else is that photo.
I don’t know about you but there
are a lot of places on the internet that I wouldn’t want to find my child’s
photo.
We’ve all seen someone screen shot someone’s facebook page,
shap chat ect. and post it to another forum.
Even with the most stringent of privacy settings, your “private posts”
could be made very public very quickly.
I’ve witnessed people wanting to call child services on a parent or
child that they don’t know because of someone reposting a photo with no context. How many of us have a picture of their child
that taken out of context could be taken the wrong way? I’m sure that photo of my son in the driver’s
seat of my car with the parking brake on holding keys in his hand from a
vehicle nowhere around could be considered very dangerous to someone who doesn’t
know me, my child or the context of the photo.
The fact of the matter is any picture can be used or manipulated in any
way to make it fit whatever story a person wants to tell. It bothers me that people feel so entitled to
share other people’s photos.
Are there times that I want to post pictures? Of course,
what mom doesn’t want to show off their children? I see other people post photos and I think to
myself it was so cute when my son did something similar. Or when a family member comments how they haven’t
seen my kids in a while; it would be so much easier to post a picture online
for everyone to see rather than sharing pictures individually.
I don’t want to make it sound like I keep my entire life and
everything about my kids off the internet.
I made a status update when my son took his first steps. My obligatory Facebook post for my second
pregnancy is found below:
No big brother holding up a sign announcing little brother’s
arrival on facebook, just a simple picture stating Santa brought a little
something extra this year. Did the lack
of my son’s picture detract from the happiness? No. When little brother was born a simple
facebook status was enough. We live in
such a digital society that social media is almost a given. People do wedding invites electronically,
party invitations are online as well, I don’t know about you but if I want to
know the weather today I pick up my phone to check it out… walking outside to
check is a thing of the past. I want my
children to be the narrators of their own stories…. They don’t need mommy to do
it for them before their stories really have had time to begin.
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