Why This Mom Doesn’t Post Photos of Her Daughter

Brut America

Babies can't consent to what their parents post on the 'Gram — that's why this mom wants to talk about children's privacy and their digital footprint.

Transcript

00:00My husband had asked me while I was pregnant with our daughter if I would be okay with

00:20not posting her online.

00:21He gave me a lot of reasons that he felt it was an invasion of her privacy.

00:26He felt like she didn't have the ability to consent to her image being out there.

00:33It felt really isolating at first because when your baby is a newborn, you're home so

00:44much, especially as a mom, you're trapped under a baby that you're feeding and really

00:50all you have is your phone as a lifeline to the world.

00:52It was tempting to want to post it and then I went through a long phase where it wasn't

00:57as tempting and now she's talking and she's doing things that are really cute and funny.

01:02But I found for the most part that just sending it to a group text so that you can get a couple

01:06people's reactions kind of scratches that same itch.

01:15I would get texts from people saying, I haven't seen her in so long.

01:19What does she look like?

01:20What is she doing?

01:21What has she learned?

01:22What is she doing?

01:23And it felt so much more like they really cared about our family because they were taking

01:27that extra step of reaching out to us instead of just clicking like when they scrolled past

01:31a picture of her.

01:39Once I sort of got past that initial phase, I started to realize that this actually was

01:44a blessing in disguise.

01:46Since my social channels were kid free, it forced me to take stock of the things I was

01:51doing that didn't involve her and then post about them.

01:54And that made me feel engaged with a part of my personality that I might have lost touch

01:58with otherwise.

02:07What I try to do is look at a moment that I want to share and ask myself, am I the main

02:12character of this moment or is my child?

02:14And if the answer is my child, then it's not going to get posted because that's her life

02:18story and not for me to put online.

02:21But if the answer is me and my child happens to be there, then I will cover her somehow

02:25in order to share that.

02:33My personal platform is not that parents need to stop posting their kids altogether, but

02:38I think it is a valuable exercise to think about what it would be like if you Googled

02:43yourself now and found out that all your bath time photos were online or whatever, not even

02:50bath time photos, but everything you ever did was hashtagged and archived.

02:55She'll never have to go through that moment of being like, you need to scrub the internet

02:59of me, mom.

03:00I can't believe how embarrassing all this is.

03:01Obviously, I'm sure I'll do plenty of other embarrassing things, but it's a big relief

03:06to know that that's never a conversation we're going to have to have.

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