By D. Hanousek
For a long time, I was one of those parents who posted adorable pictures and videos of my precious offspring on Facebook. On almost a daily basis, in fact. Since my entire extended family lives out of state and out of the country, it was an easy way to keep everyone in the loop. These postings were always a hit, of course. Relatives and people outside my family were liking and commenting on a regular basis. (I'm not friends with many proud kid-haters.) But then, when I realized I was becoming obsessed with the validation and, at the same time, exposing my children to people who do not deserve to have access to them, I developed a serious case of Facebook Fatigue, and immediately deactivated my account. After 24 hours of withdrawal and worry that I could miss seeing the first baby pictures from girlfriends who were about to pop, I logged back in and changed all of the security settings on my pictures (not an easy feat, mind you). And now, I no longer post pictures of my kids on Facebook.
And I feel better. Healthier even. I’ve even stopped with the status updates. Every once and a while I do post the passage-aggressive link to an article I wish some people would read. Other than that, I’m pretty much just a “liker" these days.
Since a desire still exists for faraway family to view media of my children, I created a Tumblr blog for them. I chose a format that does not allow “liking” or commenting, and I love it. It also feels safer, at least to me.
When I told other parents about how I now use Facebook in a different way, many of them applauded me. Not because they were relieved to get my kids faces out of their news feeds, but because they too had had reservations about posting pictures of their kids on Facebook. They thought I made a good choice for my family. After all, we’ve all heard horror stories about stolen pictures used in horrendous ways without the parent’s knowledge. But, is this change in my Facebook behavior reflective of social media privacy paranoia? Who knows. In the meantime, I feel a bit crazy and, yes, overprotective when I ask friends to remove pictures of my kids or to block certain people from seeing them.
The thing is, how well do you really know your Facebook friends? I have 192 of them, (which pales in comparison to most of my friends), but how can I know 192 people well enough to trust that they won’t misuse images of the most important people in my life? (Some can't even trust the one they love!) Anyway. It’s something to think about before posting that umpteenth photo of your wee one.
Follow me on Twitter @DHanousek
