My husband and I have made a conscious choice to not post pictures of our girl online. We do share her images with close friends and family in a very private circle.
To be perfectly frank with you, I hadn’t even thought about my girl and her privacy at such a young age. But something that my husband said to me after she was born, really made me think. He asked if I had Eloise’s permission before positing her pictures online. I laughed it off. I mean, come on, the baby’s only a few weeks old. How on earth will she give me her permission? After all, I’m her mum and have the right to take and post pictures of her anywhere I want. Or, do I? As with most things, I spent a large amount of time thinking about what he said and came to a sudden realisation.
The world today is a lot different to what it was yesterday. The same applies to my childhood and that of my little girl. Privacy wasn’t a big deal back when I young. The children born in today’s age are in born into the digital world. A kind of world where everything is on social media. You just don’t know who could be looking at your pictures. Within seconds of posting, your images could be shared millions of times. Everything and anything can go viral these days. So when Eloise is old enough to speak her mind, how do I respond to her when she asks me why I thought it was okay to post images of her for the world to see?
Of course, there’ll always be one or two from special occasions that end up online. For example, pictures of her after she was born. I even have them on one of my blog posts. There will be many christmases, birthdays and other celebrations that we will be part of. Pictures of which will end up on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.
However, I would like to give her the choice of publishing her own images or not. Whatever she decides, it will be her choice and not something I made on her behalf because I felt like I wanted everyone to see how cute she looked in some outfit I bought for her. If I imagine myself 20 years into the future and in my daughter’s shoes, I don’t think I would be pleased to find out that some stranger has a picture of me in their house on their computer and without my permission. Hence, we decided to keep things as private as we can.
I am completely happy to see more confident parents sharing images of their children in social media. And as I always say to everyone, each parent is different and so is every child. I can only do what I feel is best for mine and never judge someone else for what they do. At the end of the day, it’s a matter of personal choice.
Do you think we’re crazy for thinking about privacy so early on? Or just being that extra careful?
Bonita Bennett 