Delete all pictures of your kids on social media to protect them

Saw this today. I think it's legit. Thoughts? Feelings?



Privacy and security for my family are always in the front of my mind. To which dangers am I exposing my kids by #sharenting? Predicting potential postponed problems appears problematic, but a parsing of paring on my part would perhaps potentially predominantly protect my poffspring, per their paternal... pater.

Not posting pictures of my kids online: a +/-(-) proposition

Minor gain: if I don't post a lot of pics of my kids, they'll have a mystery to them. This could be utilized, to set them apart from others, and improve their social game.

Important gain: they could use it to improve their safety. The less people know about them the better. Right? Tell me you're a parent, and that you're comfortable with anyone with an internet connection—think about that—having access to information about your kids—which school they attend, where they live.

The less people know, the safer you are. It's a numbers game—most people are not stalkers, but some are.

The metadata contained in pictures was new to information to me. Now I'm wondering—do I go and delete all online images of my kids? What if my Instagram and Facebook accounts contained only me? Would it be improved or lessened?

This could be a good test to see the strengths or weaknesses of our individualities—if we parents deleted all pics of our kids from our social media profiles, would the remainder be worth viewing? Would many of us simply delete our profiles? Oh, no—that would be bad for the social media companies. Think about how they market themselves to us, and how they'd never think to encourage parents to do something as clean-sweeping as a mass-kid-picture-deletion.

Could you imagine how pissed they'd be? Pay attention to how much they're aware we love posting pics of our kids, and how they include images of children in their advertisements and promotions—social media and photo companies, apps, and even gaming consoles, like the PS3, that come pre-loaded with photo-whatever-ing programs. Whatever the thing is on the PS3 has a pop-up background photo of some boy with a red hat on and a big smile, sitting in the grass, and some dumb picture of a cat.

I mean, what kind of photography are we being encouraged to produce these days?

This would follow with my opinion that it's very annoying when parents make their profile picture a picture of their kids—not for the safety factor, but identity. Parents are not their kids.

Granted, when the kid is new and still a baby, new parents are infatuated, and are going through the biggest shift of their lives. Babies take so much work that infatuation is inevitable. Parents tend to have their identities swallowed up in the process.

Thusly, it's understandable that we'd all be posting pictures of our kids. Social media's been blowing up lately, coinciding with us children of Baby Boomers having children of our own.

Now, it's time to break the trend.

It's hard for me to think of any negative outcome that could arise from a kid-picture-complete-deletion. My family won't see them as often, but maybe I can share via email instead?

My kids can start sharing stuff about themselves as soon as they feel they're ready. When the time comes, without a doubt, it's going to be easier than it is today. They don't need my help.

And plus, why are we sharing pictures of our kids anyway? I mean, we have the kids. They're ours, they're home with us every day. Why share? We're showing off, that's why. We're like, "Hey, look at my kid! Jealous at all this happiness I'm pretending to feel with my photos of my kids at their own birthday party that I put together, combined with my half-impassioned, scrawled screed about how they're my light and my world? Are you jealous? ARE YOU?"