Text: Georgina Guedes. Photographs: Gallo Images/Getty Images; Images/Thinkstock photos. Article from the December 2013 issue of Living and Loving Magazine.
We all talk about our kids online, don’t we? The real question we should be asking is, “Should we?”
In an article posted earlier this year on www.slate.com, a mother, Amy Webb (who is also the CEO of a digital strategy agency), explained how she gave her daughter the gift of digital anonymity at birth. She and her husband used a website called www.knowem.com to ensure that there were no negative associations with the name they had chosen for their daughter and that it wasn’t overused in cyberspace.
They then spent hours registering her URL and creating profiles on as many social media sites as they could think of. “On the day of her birth, our daughter already had accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and even Github,” Amy wrote. “And to this day, we’ve never posted any content.”
She says that one day, when her daughter’s old enough to make these sorts of decisions for herself, they’ll give her access to her digital identity and let her be the custodian of what’s offered up for public consumption. They’ve communicated to their friends and family that they have a “no posts about the kid” rule, and they monitor their networks to remove any tags.
“This is known as securing your online real estate,” says Emma Sadleir, a social media law specialist.
Nettiquette : dilemma: Is it okay to post pics of other people without asking them?
While she doesn’t advise all parents to scrub the online world of any reference to their children, she says that it’s very important that they make or allow those references consciously.
“We’re in unchartered territory here,” she says. “This level of digital access is unprecedented, and while it may seem innocuous now, the fear is that it could potentially affect your children as they get older. Ten years ago, we could only view snapshots of the private lives of celebrities, but in the digital age, all our children are public figures.”
You can never put the genie back in the bottle. Think very carefully through every comment or photo you post of your child or on your child’s behalf
√ Take care
One of the things that is commonly advised is that you should never post a picture of your child that could be reused as a passport photo.
The implication here is that a potential kidnapper could create the paperwork that would allow them to pretend to be your child’s parent. It has also happened that the heads of children in innocent photos get Photoshopped onto naked bodies on child porn sites.
While frightening, these kinds of criminal activities don’t happen that often. Instead, it’s the day-to-day concerns that are driving parents like Amy to opt to keep their children off the grid. “It’s hard enough to get through puberty. Why make hundreds of embarrassing, searchable photos freely available to her prospective homecoming dates?” she asks.
There are also all sorts of concerns about future technology. We have no idea what might happen with facial recognition, tracking of ‘likes’ and the mass of data stored about us on social media. “We’re given access to all of these nifty social tools for free, but they’re not free; we’re paying for them with our personal data,” says Emma.
She also says that no matter how secure you think your settings might be in the social online space, this doesn’t really give you the level of protection you think. “I’m a law nerd, so I’ve read Facebook’s terms and conditions, and one of them is that they can change their terms and conditions without telling you,” she says. “So basically, something you have made private today might not be tomorrow.”
“Err on the side of minimalism,” she suggests.
√ What moms say
“One of my friends recently spoke out on Facebook, saying she’s going to give her one-year-old the ‘gift of social media anonymity’, and asked her friends and followers to delete any photos they had uploaded of her son. Since then I’ve been more reluctant to write blog posts and upload photos of my two ‘regular’ kids. I have a disabled son who’s the subject of a blog I write and I’ll continue to do that. But I do see anonymity in the digital world as a gift.” – Stacey, mom to Travis, Ryan and Oliver.
“I’ve always been open about my journey as a single mom on my blog. I try to keep it about my experiences, as it’s also the way my family around the world stays in our day-to-day lives.
We live in a digital world and it will be even bigger when Aiden’s older, so it’s inevitable that he’ll be on it. But I hold back on naked photos and embarrassing stories.” – Jessie, mom to Aiden.
“I talk about my kids on social media. But no naked pics. I struggle to keep a diary, so it’s my way of marking milestones and taking note of the cute things they say and do.” – Victoria, mom to Charlotte and Elliot.
“I don’t post photos. If other people do, I can’t stop that and I don’t make a scene. It brings up the whole netiquette thing though. Is it okay to post pics of other people without asking their permission? I feel the same way about pics of my kid. Maybe I’ll soften as she gets older.” – Yule, mom to Lily.
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