Untag ME! Dad - Fatherhood 2023
Your kids care about the digital footprint you’ve created for them and it’s time to think about it.
My 13-year-old has been casually hinting to me that she is embarrassed by the pictures I’ve posted about her since she was born. Ironically, she isn’t as concerned with the pictures she has with various actors or the one of her and Drake, just the ones of her as a little one with a variety of friends of the moment on Flickr and Facebook.
This got me thinking about the topic from a broader perspective. What do we do when our kids ask us to remove tags, mentions, or posts that we’ve created in the past and currently?
Do we respect their wishes, comply and move on? Do we fight it because we should have control over our own social media profiles?
I did some Dadspotting research and found a few interesting perspectives:
Whereas our digital footprints began when the internet did, as older children and adults, we had a choice whether or not we wanted our lives shared online. A child’s digital footprint begins at birth (before if you shared their ultrasound), meaning that every doctor’s appointment and every milestone has been documented permanently online. We may genuinely want to share with friends and offer those we love far away to join in on our children’s upbringing, but what implications do certain posts create?
Children will have approximately 1300 pictures shared online by their parents or guardians before they turn 13. Most of the pictures will be shared without their consent. That’s a lot of pictures that we as parents would have to go back and delete if we want to respect our children’s wishes. Nowhere does it say in any privacy legislation that the right to privacy only begins when we turn 18. With all these pictures being shared, what are the chances that our kids’ information (and photos) is being used and stolen by strangers?
Are we raising our children to believe that their privacy isn’t a right? Should we feel guilty for violating that privacy? An interesting article on Forbes says that we as parents might be revealing far more than we think when we post information about our children online.
“Add in the increasing number of computers in the classroom and the amount of data collected by schools and there’s very little information about your child that’s truly private. This technology coupled with parents’ behavior is increasingly putting children at risk for identity theft, humiliation, various privacy violations, future discrimination, and causing concern about developmental issues related to autonomy and consent.”
Think about your own privacy concerns as a parent. Facebook has removed the ability to tag friends without permission and often networks and coworkers politely ask permission before posting images of you online. Times have changed since our rowdy teenage years of posting our nights out online. Why? Because we don’t want future employers, partners, etc. to see our pasts in images. We want them to get to know us on their own and for us to have some role in how people gain impressions of us. We shouldn’t be discluding our children’s own right to control who sees them and who knows from this same scenario.
What does the consensus tell us about how we should react when confronted by our teenage children asking to remove pictures? It’s a controversial subject.
You can read more about my insight on Fatherhood here on GlobalNews.ca
Or on this episode of The Parenting Show with Pina Crispo and Jenn Valentyne
or at Dadspotting.com