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Why 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

Why 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 ago
People 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 ago
  Indeed, 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.
- JimBrimble35 8y ago
  I don't think it's (always) about being obsessed with social validation though, it's a new societal norm brought about by social media. In fact it's the _hook_ it's why people use social media at all, because you can _share your life_ with people in a way that wasn't possible before. The raising of children being a major part of that life. I would go as far as to say that the children aren't actually the subject in these posts, the real subject is the parent's life and the posts containing images and anecdotes of their kids are a side effect. Maybe this is an opportunity for some social media company to get ahead of this and use facial recognition to tag people across ages. If the user decides that they don't want their image to appear on someone else's account, they can go through the images granularly and take them down. I think what I'm getting at is that this is _new_. It's as new as is the ability of a 14 year old to express their frustration with something and have an audience of millions. I don't think the solution here is to tell parents that it's inappropriate to post about their children online. I think the real solution has more to do with finding a comfortable balance and set of controls so that everyone's interests can be accounted for. p.s. I shuddered while typing "14 year old to express their frustration with something and have an audience of millions". The next 50 years are going to contain some _hard_ times.

asdff 8y ago

People 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 ago
Indeed, 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.
JimBrimble35 8y ago
I don't think it's (always) about being obsessed with social validation though, it's a new societal norm brought about by social media. In fact it's the _hook_ it's why people use social media at all, because you can _share your life_ with people in a way that wasn't possible before. The raising of children being a major part of that life. I would go as far as to say that the children aren't actually the subject in these posts, the real subject is the parent's life and the posts containing images and anecdotes of their kids are a side effect. Maybe this is an opportunity for some social media company to get ahead of this and use facial recognition to tag people across ages. If the user decides that they don't want their image to appear on someone else's account, they can go through the images granularly and take them down. I think what I'm getting at is that this is _new_. It's as new as is the ability of a 14 year old to express their frustration with something and have an audience of millions. I don't think the solution here is to tell parents that it's inappropriate to post about their children online. I think the real solution has more to do with finding a comfortable balance and set of controls so that everyone's interests can be accounted for. p.s. I shuddered while typing "14 year old to express their frustration with something and have an audience of millions". The next 50 years are going to contain some _hard_ times.