11 ms·
I’m 14, and I quit social media after discovering what was posted about me
- athenot 8y agoVery good article. However, one point stands out: > Despite everything that had happened with my mom and sister, I had made one of the most common mistakes; all of my social media accounts were public. I've taken the opposite stance and preferred public accounts: that way I don't post anything I'm not comfortable with being seen by the world. IMHO the false sense of privacy setting would end up making me providing a lot more data to networks.
- penciljencil 8y agoWhen I was a child my parents would consistently tell me that I should never put details about myself on the internet. But when Facebook became a thing it was suddenly okay to share pictures of your birthday party with complete strangers. Personally, I don't feel comfortable with the idea of my photos being taken out of context and used in a way that I wouldn't agree with. Oddly enough, most of my friends don't see this as an issue.
- asdff 8y agoWhen Facebook first became a thing you only added people you knew, rejecting friend requests from people you didn't, so it didn't feel as weird to share a group photo from your birthday party. When I first joined the site I really only added my friends and acquaintances from school, I wouldn't even add relatives unless they were around my age.
- wallflower 8y agoA few parents have always tried to use their kids as a means for more than attention (fame, money, power). Now that advertisers see the influence that a few parents have, they are rabid with dollars. On the far left side of the power law curve of that, we have: “Online and Making Thousands, at Age 4: Meet the Kidfluencers“ https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/01/business/media/social-media-influencers-kids.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/01/business/media/social-med... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19286701 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19286701
- gabbygab 8y agoYou mean like the british royal family? Politicians? Movie stars? Which the news exploits for money as well? It's so funny how the media pushes neverending anti-social media stories and yet exploits children themselves for money. Is it okay when the elites and the news industry does it but not when ordinary people do it?
- linuxftw 8y agoIt's important that society maintains the illusion of fame through talent. If we decentralize our entertainment, the established political class has much less authority.
- JeanMarcS 8y agoI remember years ago reading an article stating that a time will come when young adults will sue their parents for posting pictures of them younger or stories. Of course it was a bit extreme, but when I read that I'm afraid it might happens. To my big shame I'm also quoting my kids sometimes on FB. But there are no picture of them online. And I use FB with a pseudo and quote the with aliases only family know, so I guess it's not as bad.
- franciscojgo 8y agoI'm more surprised by the story telling and narrative of the 14 year old author! Impressed. Pretty sure the only thing I was worrying about when 14 was how to get past the min. word count and not use "however" so much.
- dkarbayev 8y agoFeels so fake, to be honest. I don’t know, may be she surely is that gifted or developed, but internet made me skeptical and doubtful about everything.
- VRay 8y agoI knew a lot of kids who typed that way when I was that age.. (not me though, I loved my 1337speak)
- Insanity 8y agoIndeed, really impressive. It also impressed me to see what she's involved in at school: > Sonia Bokhari is an 8th grader and a persuasive and narrative writer. She is also the leader of her middle school’s Gay-Straight Alliance and a member of the school’s Environmental Club. She might not be the average 14yo :)
- coldtea 8y agoYeah, she might be the parent-pressured 14yo.
- TremendousJudge 8y agowouldn't surprise me considering that she has the kind of parents that post online all the time about their kids
- dqpb 8y agoWait, so she's not an engineer? - "We are also the next generation of engineers and innovators"
- legohead 8y agoWe made a rule not to post our children's faces on social media. I just had to ask myself how I'd feel if I grew up and found a bunch of stuff on the internet about me I couldn't get rid of.
- MattBearman 8y agoMy wife and I recently had our first child, and we decided we didn't want her to have any kind of social media presence until she was old enough to make that decision for herself. It's been a challenge ensuring friends and family don't post stuff about our daughter, but reading this reinforces that we're making the right choice.
- 1zee 8y agoWhat is "old enough"?
- MattBearman 8y agoWe haven't decided that yet (she's only 3 months old at this point). We'll discuss that when/if she decides she wants to be on social media. Hopefully by then there will have been more studies into the effects of social media use with age, and we can make an informed decision :)
- delecti 8y agoObviously it's subjective and up to them, but if they're in the US, 13 seems to be a reasonable benchmark. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Protection_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Pr...
- austincheney 8y ago114. A better question is at what age do social media participants stop being toxic or easily offended?
- t0astbread 8y agoSome never
- ninju 8y agoI would hope it would be closer to 16 yrs of age
- 8y ago
- gringoDan 8y agoI sympathize with this perspective. I too would be livid and mortified if my family shared embarrassing photos of me in exchange for the quick dopamine hit that validation from acquaintances provides. I'm hopeful that in the next several years there is a pushback against social media and the idea that for an experience to be valid, it must be shared. There's something to be said for having an album of photos that you pull out a couple of times a year to show a select group of others. It makes the experience much more valuable than blasting out content for everyone to see. Makes me think that Gen Z is much wiser than the Millennials. People coming of age today are much more cautious than those who did 5-10 years ago (lots of drunken party photos on Facebook, etc). They understand the consequences of having information in the world that never goes away.
- sacado2 8y agoYes. The last generation was taught from a very young age that what you put online is available for all, and learned from the mistakes of their older siblings / parents. I see way more "controversial" content on facebook / instagram from my older friends than from the younger ones.
- asdff 8y agoLets not speak to soon until we see this gen at adult age. The self censor in the past was that college admissions will dig for your social media pages. I remember in high school people changed their names on Facebook until they were accepted to their colleges. One kid at another local school got an offer rescinded over a tweet even back then. Once these kids got their first jobs after college, then my feed was a deluge of psuedoscience, political bait, and multi level marketing, all of which these same people would have avoided posting during highschool out of fear of consequence, and now that they are employed adults there are seemingly no repercussions, to them at least.
- jpfed 8y ago>There's something to be said for having an album of photos that you pull out a couple of times a year to show a select group of others. My perhaps unreasonable hope for a Facebook killer is just a paid personal archive of your own photos, writings, etc. with the assumption of privacy by default.
- jaredcwhite 8y agoWe've always been protective of our young children's presence on social media, because of all of these concerns. (Bravo to the author for articulating them so well!) One of the big challenges has been other people (family members, etc.) who want to take pictures of our kids or record some funny quote and post it on THEIR profiles. We as the parents don't always have control over that (and we've had to request more than once that somebody take something down they posted). It's awkward all around, and I'm not sure what the solution is other than developing manners as a society (just like people have been trained to write SPOILER ALERT before they blab about a movie in comments or whatever).
- coldtea 8y ago>When I saw the pictures that she had been posting on Facebook for years, I felt utterly embarrassed, and deeply betrayed. Well, that's because you're 13, the age when kids turn blase and embarrassed about being kids, and of the childish things they used to like. It's not like her mother did anything specially wrong, e.g. posting the letter to the tooth fairy, and so on. It's only embarrassing to her because she's 13. When she's older, she will cringe that she used to be embarrassed about such a thing.
- karangoeluw 8y agoJust because your wound will get better tomorrow doesn't mean the pain today is invalid
- coldtea 8y agoNo, but just because there's a pain, it doesn't mean it's important, or something should be done about it.
- aboutruby 8y agoWon't you mind sharing your childhood photos then? Things you wrote, things you said, things you did? That were captured without your permission?
- samayylmao 8y agoI respectfully disagree. Children have a right to their own privacy from the rest of the world and it is a parents' responsibility to respect that. My son is only 11 months old but neither my wife, our family/friends, or myself post pictures of him or any intimate details on social media. They can be shared privately but not on social media.
- fhood 8y agoI think it goes even deeper than that. I firmly believe in my own right to privacy, but as an adult, I also have some understanding of the consequences and implications of my actions, and this informs what I do, and what I share. Children do not and cannot have this luxury. They should not be held responsible for their choices and actions in the way that adults are, and a part of this is ensuring that their life is not documented with the level of permanency that is inherent in the internet.
- aboutruby 8y agoBeing anonymous or more likely pseudo-anonymous is very undervalued. I think there is already a trend but in the future people are likely to have many pseudo-anonymous identities and one public one with as few data possible and as curated as possible.
- asdff 8y agoEven Kevin Durant has burner twitter handles for flaming.
- ct0 8y agoI support this, and when I have children i know family will be asking for photos. The plan will be to host a blog and link them to photos, for ultimate control of who has photos of my offspring.
- uiri 8y agoeven those who post constantly are more aware than people just a few years ago about how much information the internet is absorbing about us. I'm about 10 years older than the author, and we were aware. The Cambridge Analytica scandal is just the straw that broke the Camel's back. That was Facebook's MO all the way back circa 2010. It was just that most of us teenagers at the time simply didn't care. The adults warned us the same way they warn teens today but for the most part they didn't care about the data mining back then either.
- samayylmao 8y agoThis is one smart kid for that age. The critical thinking and reasoning skills are on point. Its comforting to know that the younger generations are more informed about the consequences of poor use of technology.
- DoreenMichele 8y agoI cannot imagine posting so much about a child of mine without them being aware of it at all. I talk a lot about my sons. They know. If I feel it is a story with sensitive information, I run it past them to see if they are okay with me saying that. I can't really comprehend the thinking here of the family members who did this. They talk about her but not to her? That's the opposite of "social" behavior. That's treating her like an object, not a person.
- aglavine 8y agoThis. She've never seen his mom's Facebook profile in 14 years? It seems fake.
- majewsky 8y agoHow's she supposed to see it if she's not allowed to have a Facebook account?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- DoreenMichele 8y agoJust for the record, I was not questioning the veracity of the story. Lots of weird things happen in the privacy of home. Children are especially vulnerable to having a fast one pulled on them. So I don't see any reason to question the story at this time, though I'm also not up for trying to actually verify the veracity so as to win some internet argument.
- gabbygab 8y agoShe quits social media and writes a public article in traditional media so that people can talk even more about her? Is this her idea or the idea of her mother who probably is friends with someone working at fastcompany? I'd be interested to find out how a "random" 8th grader got to write an article for fastcompany and if she or her family has any ties with anyone at fastcompany or even Mehta, the editor. Also, couldn't this also be viewed as fastcompany exploiting an 8th grader for money and agenda? And is this girl's parents any better than the social media parents? The internal contradictions and hypocrisy in this article is quite something to behold.
- rrauenza 8y agoThe difference is consent. She (presumably) gave permission for her essay to be published.
- cristiancavalli 8y agohn downvote dogma. Don’t disturb the precious group-think!
- caprese 8y agoInformed consent and revokable consent are not novel concepts. The ability to prove consent is novel.
- honkycat 8y agoI'm free of most social media. I only have a twitter, which I use to wile away time and keep up with bands going to my local music venus. I have considered resurrecting my social media presence lately. I live a long ways away from my parents. I think it is kind-of nice to allow my parents to form a para-social bond with my online presence. Just so they can see how I am doing. However, I keep coming back to the same mantra about social media: There is no wisdom here. I love learning, reading, experimenting with new hobbies. I am lifelong learner. Social media does not enhance that. I tend to be a spitfire, and chewing out old people on facebook is NOT a good look. I do not want my past social media posts to come back to haunt me. Also, I get a lot of anxiety when I am on social media. Old friends, old lovers, all of these messy complicated situations and people I have moved away from. Dragging all of that back up... no thanks.
- scott_s 8y agoKids realizing they already have an online presence made by the people who were teaching them about being responsible about their online presence is becoming A Thing. Two other stories with similar circumstances: "When Kids Realize Their Whole Life Is Already Online" https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/02/when-kids-realize-their-whole-life-already-online/582916/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/02/when-... "My daughter asked me to stop writing about motherhood. Here’s why I can’t do that." https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2019/01/03/my-daughter-asked-me-stop-writing-about-motherhood-heres-why-i-cant-do-that/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2019/01/03/my-daugh...
- ilikehurdles 8y agoThat Washington post author is quite the narcisstic scumbag. I feel disgusted reading the writing of someone so extremely self-absorbed.
- glaurung_ 8y agoI'm glad I'm not the only one who felt that way. That article was horrifying.
- LeftTurnSignal 8y ago>> My daughter didn’t ask to have a writer for a mother, but that’s who I am. Amputating parts of my experience feels as abusive to our relationship as writing about her without any consideration for her feelings and privacy. This part got me. To me that article definitely makes it sound like she's a writer first, and mother second. I just hope her child grows up to be a better person than that, or I hope I'm misunderstanding that article.
- 908087 8y agoHopefully her daughter pays it forward by becoming a writer who blogs about her experiences as the daughter of a sociopathic narcissist. "I can't stop writing about you mom. Your attempt to 'amputate parts of my experience' feels abusive to our relationship."
- 8y ago
- clarkmoody 8y agoI love the idea of data locality: your home server contains your trove of photos, videos, music, and you grant limited shares to visitors. The digital equivalent of pulling out the photo album from under the coffee table. This sort of idea dovetails nicely with the Secure Scuttlebutt concept that the social network graph mirrors the physical network: you swap the latest posts with others as you find yourself on the same local network. Perhaps someday we will live in a more sophisticated world that relies less on centralized cloud providers and everyone runs a home server. Stories of youth pushing back against social media are certainly a step in the right direction.
- Jaruzel 8y agoCommercialise a shiny black box that plugs into the power (like a Wifi Extender), that: 1. Connects to the internet 2. uPnPs silently port 80 to itself 3. Registers a name with a dynamic DNS service (remember those?) 4. Has ~4GB local storage 5. Runs a 'newsfeed' type web portal or API. 6. Has a Phone app for easy sharing/creation of content. Make this 100% turnkey for non-technical people and you MAY have a chance at getting people to stop storing personal stuff 'in the cloud'. I don't hold out much hope though.
- Mediterraneo10 8y ago> uPnPs silently port 80 to itself Besides the fact that in the post-Let’s Encrypt world we should start expecting port 443 by default for any web service, for many ISPs running a publicly accessible server violates the terms of service unless your contract with the ISP is their business tier. To make things worse, a lot of people are issued a router by their ISP where uPnP is disabled, and they do not have access to its firmware to change this or other settings.
- Jaruzel 8y agoYeah my bad - should have said 443, with auto-cert from XYZ provider.
- asdff 8y ago
- rangersanger 8y agoI immediately thought of the discourse surrounding Sally Mann upon reading this. The intent is different, the medium different, but I don't think the questions around her work have been satisfactorily resolved. If anything, they're heightened by the ease with which non-famous artists can gain extensive audience. "Can a child freely give consent to be photographed, especially in vulnerable positions including nudity, when the photographer is a parent? Do these photographs unintentionally put children at greater risk given the reality of pedophilia in society? Do they unintentionally encourage a sexualized view of childhood? Does such work on any level exploit these actual children?" https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?cc=mqr;c=mqr;c=mqrarchive;idno=act2080.0039.223;g=mqrg;rgn=main;view=text;xc=1 https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?cc=mqr;c=mqr;...
- pard68 8y agoThis really reinforces a small conversation I had on Mastodon last week about creating mastodon communities for families (ie a family has their own private mastodon instance). Now mom, dad, gramma, and even younger kids can participate in social media together but not in the public eye. Maybe allow white listing of other families' instances so gram can keep up with other families or other grandkids not in her instance or so parents can plan stuff. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc are too big and too open for kids (heck, I am a father of two and I don't feel comfortable on the platforms because they are too public). Also, I have no desire to see my children use traditional social media, they are toxic and are breeding grounds for bullying.
- fakoresgfd 8y agoSad is that right wing is actually allowing people to say.. but dear left wing.. sensure everything like Google and Facebook plus twitter
- foxhop 8y agoDo we think this is maybe more of a mom trait than a dad trait? I know I have posted maybe a couple images of my children (2, 7, and 11) over the last 11 years. My wife on the other hand posts at least twice a day with images and quotes. I wonder if woman sort of use Facebook as a sort of "shared" baby book for their little cubs?
- micael_dias 8y agoTwice a day? Don't want to be offensive but that seems very excessive. Even for people I know on Facebook that post regularly their kids' photos I think the maximum I see is once a week. I'm not from the US and don't follow that many people so that might be why.
- sagebird 8y agoWhile I think this 14 year old and story is authentic, I think this will be misused as a motivational story to fuel Zuckerberg's new white-knighting of privacy concerns. It's really important that Facebook be held to account for their negative influence, and not be allowed to distract with lofty future promises, and co-opt innocent peoples stories for cheap publicity.
- sagebird 8y agoFor example, it would be trivial to default content be shared to friends only. If Zuck gave a true shit about privacy, that change could happen instantly, and years ago.
- anticensor 8y agoIt was the initial default before VCs have came in.
- sixstringtheory 8y agoYup. I remember the “vote” they held that essentially gave away any further say in how those kinds of decisions are made. “We heard you loud and clear–you didn’t vote, you must not care, so we’ll do whatever we want with your stuff now.” (Paraphrasing) of course they never actually intended it to be a democratic platform and knew full well what the results would be before even announcing it.
- peterwwillis 8y agoThis is a pervasive problem, where 3rd parties unintentionally emotionally effect other people with their social media posts. I was going to relate a story about how this effects people in polyamorous relationships, but then I realized this effects literally everyone who cares about anything strongly. And the long memory of digital artifacts creates additional opportunities to mess with people down the road.
- fosco 8y agoreminds me of the onion video [0] on this from a 6 year old. this is really challenging, I do not not have social media [1] and have not since 2007/8 ish and yet I know that people still post things about me and sometimes forward me an email of a picture posted at an event, dinner, gathering. I really do not know the answer here, I look like the bad guy if I inform others I do not want myself on there so I lose and know no way around it. More and more I feel the only privacy that exists is between my ears. [0] https://www.theonion.com/6-year-old-explains-how-messed-up-it-is-that-her-entire-1826840659 https://www.theonion.com/6-year-old-explains-how-messed-up-i... [1] other than HN I suppose
- mrunkel 8y agoThis seems to me (albeit as a probably completely unqualified person to have a real viewpoint here, as a 50ish male without children) to be much ado about nothing. Somehow, perhaps because of the pervasiveness of social media, the sense of self has expanded quite a great deal. In a family, and later in public life, we don't have the right to control how we are perceived in the public. (I know some countries in the EU have differing views on that, but I disagree with them as well). Just as the daughter has the right to not share herself or her life on social media, I don't believe she has the right to demand approval of her mother's or sister's posts. I would argue that the mother and the sister have an equal right to share their lives as they wish, that includes things that were given or said to them by the daughter that is now aghast that these items were shared further. Freedoms are always a balancing act. Every time we expand our personal sphere of control, we are impinging on the sphere of control of someone else. I mean, I get the sentiment, and I get that a 13/14 year old would be embarrassed by these types of things, but that is unfortunately what life is like. We get to control the things we say and do, but we don't get to control what others do with it.
- kyboren 8y ago> Just as the daughter has the right to not share herself or her life on social media, I don't believe she has the right to demand approval of her mother's or sister's posts. A legal right? Absolutely not. A moral right? Absolutely. Knowingly disclosing information about someone that that person has expressly confirmed they would like to remain private is certainly not a friendly act. When the parties involved are in a close relationship, this can feel like (and in my view is) a serious betrayal. Such a betrayal can permanently damage that relationship. The daughter's feelings in this situation are entirely valid, and she is entirely within her moral rights to demand her mother not violate her privacy.
- oarsinsync 8y ago> > Just as the daughter has the right to not share herself or her life on social media, I don't believe she has the right to demand approval of her mother's or sister's posts. > A legal right? Absolutely not. A moral right? Absolutely. Depends on your jurisdiction. In some regions, the subject of the photo is the legal owner, and absolutely has the right to control distribution.
- astura 8y agoI get mortified about some of the stuff I see parents posting about their kids on social media. It's like they don't even realize they are living beings with feelings of their own and not some lifeless prop. Especially when its complaining about the kid... do you really want to publish that comment? Are you ok with them seeing it one day? I don't mind occasional non-embarrassing non-inappropriate pictures and stories, but FFS, please don't live stream their entire life, it just seems so disrespectful to the kid. It's also uninteresting to everyone else but you and perhaps the grandparents to boot.
- JimBrimble35 8y agoWhy quit? Why not just tell your parents to make their accounts private, or remove the images that you're not comfortable with? I feel like there are solutions here that don't involve delaying the parent's participation in social media until the child is old enough to choose to accept it. As much as this concerns the child's social media life, it's also a matter of the parent's experience. Parents post this stuff to share, and commiserate, and participate with other parents in the experience of parenthood. I find it difficult to accept that this girl will grow up and privately horde all of her children's images and information until they give consent to release it. Teenager tend to struggle with the fact that the people around them have lives as well. All that said, I operate my social media very differently than this girls parent's seem to. I prune and keep friends lists very inner circle, I never post anything publicly, and I often show my children the pictures that I'm posting and get them involved in the process. they won't be surprised about social media when they become teenagers. I think the next generation of people are just going to need to develop a thicker digital skin.
- asdff 8y agoPeople have been sharing wallet photos of their kids for generations now, no one has a problem with that because you are basically saying "here's what my kid looks like these days" or "didn't he look like uncle dave in this picture? same nose," all very benign and also maintaining the kids privacy on their daily life, their feelings, and embarrassments and failures that can be so demoralizing when you are a kid. When you start religiously blogging your child's daily life, I'd say you have an unhealthy obsession toward social validation and it's unfair to your kid to use them to further your obsession.
- oarsinsync 8y agoIndeed, my kids did not ask to be in their own real life truman show. Their lives are theirs to live, not for the rest of the world (or even extended family and friends) to constantly observe. We take a lot of pictures and videos of our kids, but we don't share almost all of it. I keep everything backed up safe with the intention of handing it all over to the kids once they're old enough. They're the subjects of the pictures, they're the owners.
- chengiz 8y agoA 14 year old who is embarrassed by what their parents posted == a 14 year old who is embarrassed by what their parents did == a 14 year old. When this girl grows up, she'll understand she was being immature and there's nothing embarrassing about your parents posting moments about you that made them proud. Her parents seem awesome that they're respecting her wishes now. As I write this, I'm reminded of a Louis CK bit when he describes your thought process when you see a woman scolding her kid in public. When you're not a parent (which seems like most commenters here), you're thinking OMG what a terrible parent. When you're a parent, you're thinking what must that child have done to that poor woman.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- potta_coffee 8y agoI've given up on telling family to not post pictures of my kids on the internet. I just deleted all social accounts and no talk to them. Social media is utter cancer IMO.
- barrkel 8y agoI feel sad that making friends online has turned into "contacting strangers".
- teekert 8y agoIt's almost unimaginable that a 14y/o is so wise. I was going to yell "Fraud!" but Fast Company seems trustworthy and the last sentences suggest it really was a 14 y/o. Amazing, when I was 14 I was like an 8 y/o compared to this girl.
- jdlyga 8y agoFacebook launched when I was in college, and we were taught to treat it as a way of sharing pictures with your friends. We never got any training on what to share, what not to share, how permanent an online presence is, or anything since we were the first to use that sort of thing. It was just expected that new parents would post everything about their kid on there. Because you had that illusion of that it was "just for your friends". Most other social media sites like Xanga acted that way, and were usually gone within a few years. I think we have a lot to learn from Gen Z about the implications of making everything public and the dangers of social media. Because I can tell you that us millennials never learned any of that stuff except from news reports and by making mistakes.
- malms 8y agoAm i the only one thinking this is a fantasy piece ? No 14 y.old write this well. The point is absolutely true though and I don't blame the author to impersonate a child to make it more vivid if that's the case.
- charliebrownau 8y agoThis is what MOST women are like after 1995 This is FEMALE NATURE Its just more typical reasons why most men are going mgtow and refusing to date women cohabit with women tutor women marry women
- dcole2929 8y agoIt's pretty apparent the things that a kid would be embarrassed about are not the same thing I as an adult would be embarrassed about. I'm 20+ years removed from those events in my life where these kids aren't. To them this is recent memory and more importantly still stuff they will get made fun of for. How many people do you know who carried a nickname all throughout middle and high school from one dumb thing they did when they were 8? I know some who still have the dumb nickname 20-30 years after the fact. This isn't child abuse by any means but it's just incredibly dumb on the parts of the adults around them. By writing/posting about kids you make them public figures and open them up to all the abuse anyone on the internet wants to heap on them. And this is all happening at a time when they are going through painfully awkward transitions and just starting to discover who they are and want to be. There are absolutely going to be lawsuits about this sooner than you'd think.
- charliebrownau 8y agoWhats the bet this family has no strong father and the wife/mother choose to be a single mother
- dwild 8y agoAs much as I want to believe it's a good thing for a kid to be away from social media, there doesn't seems to be any compelling argument for it in that article. It seems like fear is her only justification, which to me if anything, is the worse reason to do anything. Being aware of the risk and mitigating it when necessary is the right way to do it, instead of simply letting fear control us. The strange thing is that she seems to be aware of that risk and did use methods to mitigate it. Her lack of social media doesn't seems to affect her though, so I guess it's alright in her case. I know personally though that my group of friend and I had ton of trouble to include people without social media in any event organization, and the increased friction slowly pushed many of the ones without it away (while the solution, which did work for some, was simply a fully anonymous account, though I think Facebook now ban theses accounts).
- ThinkBad 8y agoMaintaining a circle of friends is a pretty weak justification for social media use. Many of my friends and I don't use social media at all and we have zero issues coordinating events. It sounds like the real issue is that you didn't value the connection to your friend enough to reach out to them. SMS and phone calls are still a thing.
- nuna 8y agoI share most videos and pics to a family chat group but after reading this I went back and checked there were no embarrassing photos. Also just by posting, even to a private group, who knows if the images and videos are kept forever (whatsapp, instagram, snapchat)
- muzani 8y agoI think a big part of this is consent. My kids know I post their photo on Facebook/Instagram. They pick which one, and even tell me to "like" it after it's posted. It brings up the question of how old they need to be (my kid was about 3-4 when she started telling us to put up her photos). But I guess we can always remove it later, and just don't put anything embarrassing up there.
- kyboren 8y agoI think you're right. How can a 3-4 year old give meaningful consent to having her biometrics irrevocably recorded by one of the world's most aggressive and pernicious surveillance corporations? How fully did your kids understand all the implications of posting photos on social media before you agreed to do it? > But I guess we can always remove it later No. You can't. Maybe you can ask FB to stop showing the photo to other people, and maybe they'll comply, but FB will still retain it and any data derived from it (e.g., facial biometric data). Other people could have saved that photo and could re-post it at any time. Or FB could have a bug and that photo could resurface. Once something is published on the www, there are no backsies. This is something every parent these days needs to impress upon their children. I'm honestly shocked that you, fellow HN poster, need to learn this lesson, too.
- ggm 8y agoI made an X.500 OSI directory services entry for my eighteen month old child. This was in 1993 twelve years later he had to ask me to try and delete it. It was still popping up in searches for his name and he didn't like it. It was remarkably hard to erase since the quipu directory was basically offline then and the data only existed in Wayback style archives.
- djklanac 8y agoThought provoking but ultimately melodramatic. Your family posted the equivalent of your baby book online. There are far worse things. You’ll be fine.
- aiyodev 8y agoMy wife and I don’t use Facebook or Instagram. When we have children I plan to setup an email account for them. I’ll document their life by sending them photos and messages as they grow up. If something ever happens to me they’ll know how much I cared about them. When they’re old enough they can choose what parts of their childhood they want shared with the public.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]