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Can You Be Authentic Without Oversharing? [Video]

Technically the video is about posting your children’s pictures online, do you? Don’t you? I’ve heard people say that they post pictures of their children to connect with their families and friends.

I’m thinking that my family and friends can email with me, and everyone else is an interloper. Am I right? Am I missing something?

For the record, I had the privilege of shooting this video with Heather and Rebecca who are real friends of mine, and who I think are fabulous women and mothers. We’re going to have to disagree on this one issue.

11 thoughts on “Can You Be Authentic Without Oversharing? [Video]”

  1. I feel torn about this one. I would be extremely upset if what happened to Heather happened to me.

    I find facebook a convenient way to share pictures with my family. I just post them and everyone from my family and Jen’s family can see them. Do I have other friends? Yes, and I haven’t run Cori checks on them. But I am pretty picky about who I friend because of the pictures. I only have 150 or so fb friends. My facebook account is otherwise on lock down.

    I used to post pictures on my blog. I do so occasionally, but it makes me nervous. Mostly, I don’t post on my blog. Also, my blog is nowhere nearly as popular as some of these ladies. But I hesitate to post pictures of the kids.

  2. I share lots of things about myself but relatively little about my family. I tend to post very few if any pix of my kids. If you know me than you have pix of the kids. And if you don’t know me, than why do you need them.

  3. Pics of my kids will be posted on the internet when they’re old enough to make the decision for themselves. In my jaundiced opinion, anyone who is promoting/marketing a ‘personal’ blog has no business using their kids for wallpaper content. There are plenty of stock images available if you need something to compliment a post. The world is weird enough for our kids without them finding out 5, 10 or 15 years from now that mommy or daddy has been sharing their baby pics to try to leverage a Unilever sponsorship.

  4. “Privacy is dead.” ~ Mark Zuckerberg

    I want to ask Mark that question when he has children. When the protective nature of being a parent grips him by the throat as we waves that cavalier flag. I believe the video touched on what I feel. I cannot shelter my kids from being online, but I can take the opportunity to help teach them. I share probably far too much. This does raise some good fodder for conversations as parents in schools, at school plays, in your church or place of worship, at the baby sitter’s house, at the daycare center. All of these places have become public broadcasting places now. Do we have a choice whether our kids are publicized in these places? For now we do and we can be cognizant of those areas and the privacy of the other kids.

    I recently spoke in front of a group full of teachers and asked the question about pictures on cell phones in classrooms and other places. Most all kids are taking pictures now of themselves with friends, of their avatars, or their friends avatars. It can be a scary thing for a parent not to have that control.

    So much ground to cover here, but thanks for touching on this one. It is a big area of concern for all of us.

    1. I have little faith that Zuckerberg will ever understand or appreciate the affect that Facebook has had on privacy. The baby billionaire won’t ever have kids that grow up in a “normal’ home. When you have that kind of cash life is different.

      I routinely untag photos of myself and have done the same to photos of my children.

  5. I have a post up on my blog about children, their love of being naked, and teaching them to respect and love their bodies (rather than feeling shame). The post has no pictures in it. Yet the keywords in it are enough to bring in tons of traffic from people who are probably looking for pictures.

    The top 10 search terms for my blog for the last year are:
    1. phd in parenting
    2. naked children
    3. it takes a village to raise a child
    4. children naked
    5. phd parenting
    6. phdinparenting
    7. benefits of breastfeeding
    8. naked child
    9. co-sleeping safety
    10. unethical business practices

    That is 3 out of my top 10 search terms looking for naked children and all going to one post that has no pictures.

    I also have a post up about potty learning that used to have a picture of my daughter on the potty. You couldn’t see anything in the picture, but yet I started to get uncomfortable with the type of search engine traffic that post was getting, so I removed the picture but kept the post up.

    1. I couldn’t agree more with Annie…I see some of the keywords that bring people to my blog. I made the decision a LONG time ago to take pictures off of it that showed my children’s faces.

      It’s a parent’s personal choice, but it almost seems selfish to have their pictures posted on the internet for the whole world to see because it’s easy to say that it was one perv w/ the picture, but how likely do you really think that is? I mean it’s a good rule of thumb/old wives saying that if you catch 1 rat there’s 1,000 others right? What about all the pervs who haven’t been caught?

      If I want to share pictures with people (someone I know) I either e-mail them or post them on facebook. I have facebook as privatized as possible which even then I feel uncomfortable with them being there.

  6. I think as a parent, there’s a part of myself that wants to show off my kids.. like.. look at how cute they are. I mean it’s part of pride and loving my kiddos. I am part of a baby wearing forum and we upload photos of the kids in wraps, ring slings, and mei tais. Anyone who registers can look at them. Of course they are not naked but it feels safe to upload photos on that forum. I also upload some photos on Facebook which most of my family and friends are on. I also do a network of people on facebook as well that I don’t personally know but friends for business/work related.. but I have been more careful about who I accept as friends.

    I think it becomes more tricky when bloggers especially mommy bloggers make money from their blog and use photos of their children to fuel their income. I do think as a parent, it’s our role to protect the children. It disturbs me when famous mommy bloggers plaster their children’s photos daily. It feels like they are pimping them out. I have stopped reading some blogs for that reason. I mean even celebrities have enough sense to keep their children out of the spotlight. I really don’t think it in the children’s best interest to make their life so public. Of course, it’s hard not to share photos of the children if you are a personal blogger and kids are big part of your lives.. but I think we as parents need to draw the lines somewhere and err on side of caution. Those are my personal feelings.

    As a blogger and a writer, I hesitate to start a personal blog for those reasons. Most of my days right now are filled with being with my children. Of course part of me wants to share photos of my kids.. but another part of me wonders the repercussions. It’s something that I think about a lot.. so thank you for bringing it up. I hope more people will chime in with their thoughts.

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