The Dangers of Raising Children in Social Media Era

This may seem like a random topic to most, but it’s something a lot of people aren’t aware of. I’m not here to start a debate, I just want to try to shed some light on another point of view that most of us don’t consider. Eighty percent of the time, we just post photos to share with family and friends so everyone can ‘keep up’ with our lives. And I absolutely got roped into that thinking. I never understood why my husband deleted social media, why he didn’t want to put up photos of his family… and now I get it. We had a talk and I removed nearly every image of our daughter, except one, and made sure no personal information about her was shared. Here’s why you won’t see photos of my daughter.

I fell into the loop where I felt the need to share my baby’s growth and skills every month. But, one time when I was talking to someone they mentioned another person saw the photos I put online. Said person didn’t have social media, and that actually scared me. Who is seeing my daughter, and how? That guy who came to buy something off Marketplace, yup. The neighbors in our neighborhood group, yup. People who don’t have social media, yup. Child predators, more than likely. People are smarter than you realize and it’s a scary world.

In fact, I used to get upset when certain people didn’t ‘show love’ to our daughter and family by interacting and posting photos of us. But, I would rather they didn’t now. If you’re an important part of my life, I will share photos with you personally. I don’t want everyone and anyone seeing our daughter, even if there is no harm behind the photos.

Let’s start with this, your child does not have consent to be online. Photos that will live there forever and might impact their job in the future, impact how they are treated in school, etc. Our parents and grandparents didn’t grow up with social media and it was a simpler time.

You can be proud of your child without blasting photos and information of them all over social media. It seems harmless, especially for us ‘normies’, but there is a reason you don’t see some celebrity children online. Some things to consider.

• Make your photos private, rather than public on social media. Limiting who can see and share information.
• Don’t post photos of your baby in the bathtub or swim suit.
• Don’t post personal information about new things they have learned, where they go to school, their birth details.
• Share photos in a shared photo album with special friends and family.

Not everyone in the world needs to know the ins and outs of your family and what everyone does. Privacy is actually important in life. Some people don’t know what I do for a living, didn’t know I moved from my home town, don’t know how my daughter’s developing or her favorite foods. But, those that are very important in my life know the details.

I used to watch family vloggers as entertainment, but now I watch the Dad Challenge Podcast who talks about family vloggers. I encourage you to watch some of his videos and look at a different perspective to family vloggers and their thoughts. People who feed their children to creeps online and exploit them to make money, some even having kids to get the paycheck.

In fact, some celebrities do everything they can to protect their kids from paparazzi. Unfortunately, family vloggers are undoing a lot of hard work famous individuals have been working on to protect their kids. People online feel entitled to see children, feel like they are friends with these kids and need to see them and know everything about them. For normal people, the scale is much smaller in a sense, but the dangers can still be very present.

As a parent, the number one goal should be to protect your child and provide them everything they need to succeed. Take photos along the way simply as memories, not as ‘I need to share this on Facebook… Smile’. Be intentional with what you share and with who.