I'll begin this post with an issue that regularly gets lost in discussions about Facebook, Pinterest, and other social media 'oversharing' of photos and information about young children by their parents: I still care a lot about my own privacy.
Even as an educated and fully functioning (no wise remarks!) adult in charge of my own choices to post photos or information about myself online, I try to be guarded and conscientious about what aspects of what I define as my personal life I share online for public consumption. For example, whereas I used to be OK having lots of photos of myself on Facebook, I have since come to the realization that I don't like the idea of others having or using photos of me without my control or consent. Related considerations are, for example: will people download and alter photos of me for their own purposes or to manipulate my (however confined) public image? Will these photos be archived in servers whose content and security are beyond my control, and could end up in the hands of people doing things with such information that I wouldn't condone? To what extent are my photos and data already 'out there' being used for marketing at no cost to marketers? To what extent are companies able to use my photos and data to approximate my consumer preferences or lifestyle choices?
You might think some of this sounds like paranoia, given the extent to which privacy has been eroded in the 'online' era, and oversharing is routine (and here I'm thinking less about what we typically conceive of as traditional privacy infringements, like re. medical records or household affairs, and more about more subtle tracking of our quotidian interests and consumption habits via data mining). But just because we have lower standards of privacy today than perhaps we once did before we all acquired a global audience by virtue of acquiring a cell phone with a data plan, doesn't mean there aren't real privacy issues still in play, even for those of us who choose what to post and what to withhold.
I'm increasingly troubled, for example, by the fact that the consumer is now more or less expected to give away valuable personal data and marketing information for free, not through the conscious signing of a contract, but passively, through the ever-changing and labyrinthine 'privacy' policies of online and social media tools whose very livelihoods depend largely on user-generated value from user-generated information. I wonder if users, disparate and disconnected, are getting a good deal in this marketplace by paying nothing to use Facebook, but at the same time handing over our most valuable commodity to Facebook for free. You might think free is free, until you consider that the resale value of a free 2012 BMW is higher than the value of a free pencil.
This is admittedly an unsophisticated discussion of internet privacy, but it's meant merely to frame what I want to say about parents oversharing baby photos and information. It happens that, for my own selfish reasons, I'm one of those horrible people who thinks your kids are less cute and less interesting than you think your own kids are. I happen to think when they shit and vomit it's less of an event in my day than it is in yours. And the gap in appreciation there is something I'm comfortable stating, even if it offends you to know that I don't love your children as much as you love your children, because they're not my children.
But I understand that you're not posting things about your kids for me. You're posting for you. And that's your right. It's your right so much so that when posting for you, I don't think you should have to think about me or my preferences. Your posts, your kids, your life to share. I get that.
I'm only inclined to offer my opinion about your posts when I think (as is my right, my preference) that what you're doing is insensitive and maybe even potentially harmful to your children, not to me. I'm not writing this to moan and gripe about how I'm slightly and unremarkably annoyed by your baby vomit and nosebleed photos. I understand that I could de-friend or filter my Facebook feed to block them out if I were oh so bothered by them. This really is not about me or my personal preferences with respect to you, and that's the first thing here that you need to understand.
I'm concerned about two related aspects of parental oversharing in the abstract, whether I see this content or not:
First, your children aren't old enough to consent to having their childhood documented on Facebook and Pinterest for all the world to see. Second, by putting their images and information out there without filter and without their consent, you're potentially exposing them and their images to creeps, crazies, and pedophiles, to unscrupulous marketing companies and data miners, and to an archive whose further use and exposure we cannot presently know (remember, just as I can filter my news feed, you can choose to only send baby photos and updates to family and close friends; so don't think I'm suggesting either that the people in your life who matter to you shouldn't care about your life or your kids).
When grumps like me bring this up--this broader issue for the future of privacy and children's privacy, which I would think parents would want to consider, even if they disagree with me--the responses are always the same:
"You can block me from your Facebook feed."
"I love my children; deal with it!"
"If you hate it so much, that's your problem/fuck off/you're mean."
"A (parent) should/has every right to show their love for their children."
"You don't have children, you don't understand how much they mean to me."
These are inevitably fortified with cheers and laudatory remarks like:
"Fuck that guy, you go momma!"
"It's no one's business but your own that you love your children so much" (ironically)
"I love your children too!"
"Your children are beautiful/an inspiration/wonderful/adorable/superlative!"
Frankly, most of this is great on its own. There's nothing wrong with being proud of your children and loving them so much that you can't describe it, that you want to share your pride and love for them, that they are the center of your world. This is perhaps as it should be, or as it always will be, between parents and their young children. It's just that this is all beside the point that when you share photos and information about your children online and with little or no filter for whom you're sharing it with, there's still a legitimate question of whether this is in your child's best interest. Making me the asshole may deflect this point, but it certainly doesn't address it, nor change the reality about which it's meant to raise caution.
In the end, it's certainly your decision. It's not my role to tell anyone how to parent their children, or what to share or not to share. But as someone who is getting to that age where we start thinking about children of our own--no light decision--I do have my own opinions and concerns.
