Social Media and your Kid

So I've back and forthed on this one for a while. The statistical number of the amount of images a child has posted of them on social media by the time they are five years old is astronomical. It just makes me want to scream 'Curate your content!'

I'm probably not going to be very popular here, but honestly, you don't have to share every picture of your kid every second of every day. Also, if you are posting pictures of your child in marginally different (but mostly similar) positions doing exactly the same thing - why? Just why! Can you not just pick one?

Okay, that's mostly on a personal note. Most of the time I LOVE looking at pictures of my friends kids (and by extension my son's friends - shame, he thinks he has a choice in his friendships, but really it's all me).

But here's my deal (and this is what works for me, it's definitively not for everyone). I don't post my son's face on social media. Occasionally my friends will post pictures of him, but neither the husband nor I post his image.

Why? And I get asked this ALL the time. Basically I want my son to chose what he wants to put online. So when's he's old enough to ask for pictures to be posted then we'll start sharing curated images. So in this way I feel that we're honouring a) his privacy and b) his individualism. It also means that I have to get pretty creative when posting images around my son and I on different social platforms.

But, I also have a ton of friends that have basically culled their following, made their accounts private and thus when they post images of their children it's to a specific (smaller) audience. So this also plays a role. So because of the blog, all my social media accounts are open, which is also kind of a game changer for me.

Then, let's talk about those naked kid photos. Even if you splash a strategically placed star over their private bits because that bath-time picture is oh-so-cute. It is so easy in this digital age for someone to photoshop the star out and their (or other) bits in. And that's the kicker. There are just too many sickos in the world, and naked images of your child being shared on social media ALWAYS makes me cringe.

These are just my views, and probably don't work for everyone. Some people share all aspects of their lives online (kids included) and it completely works for them (which I love looking at as well - so I'm kind of a hypocrite, whoops). I mean, there are tons of mom blogs that I follow featuring mom and kid fashion that I absolutely adore, but it just wouldn't work for me - and that's okay. And I'm also not going to lie, it's sometimes crazily difficult to not share some images of my little boy because he is all kinds of adorable and I just want to shout to the world "Look at how effing cute my kid is!," but then I've got to curb my enthusiasm.

So this is where we are right now. It works for us. It works for our family unit. In five years time it may be completely different, but for now we're doing us.