Naked Kids + Internet = Nothing Good
No, seriously, even if your kid is two and looking at their bellybutton. Even if your daughter is too young to lactate and your son’s plumber butt is cute. I agree with you. Your children are adorable, no one is questioning that. In fact I’d be taking the same photos if I were you. I just wouldn’t be posting them online. Even to a closed group. Even to my mom.
Maybe an email, maybe if I needed to get them printed but probably not even then. I’d probably go to a printer, pop in my SD card and get it printed because I’d be really unhappy to find some middle aged loser jacking off to a picture of my naked kid.
Too vulgar for you? I’m sorry. I needed to get your attention.
This morning a Buzzfeed article popped across my timeline and it detailed how a blogger had their Instagram account shut down after repeatedly posting a picture of her daughter in her big girl undies. The internet acted as it always does: it hashtagged that puppy with #bringbackcourtneybabyccino and some well meaning but misguided parents then posted images of their own toddler children with nipples showing.
I gasped because it seems as though we mothers sometimes get so involved with our mothering that we forget the world around us doesn’t have children nor do they particularly care about the health and well being of our children (which is normal and okay).
I challenged my Facebook friends and asked them please to remember that they don’t own their children as one owns a dog or a piece of furniture. It’s really unfair to exploit their images endlessly and no 12 year old wants their 2 year old naked photo lingering on google for their frenemies to find. All I’m asking for is a little foresight.
Of course things devolved and I don’t understand what it’s like to be a mother or a mom blogger. Ahem. Okay. Whatever. So I took less than 3 minutes, looked up toddler undies on flickr and came up with Steven Horne’s profile. These are his favorite pictures.
How does Steven Horne find his images? Why y’all have set them to public and tagged them with things like kids, undies and of course the porn shots are tagged with the appropriate words.
The problem isn’t Steven Horne. The problem is the multitude of Steven Hornes. I found him in moments, hundreds of seconds not thousands which can only mean there are more.
While the buzzfeed baby is unquestionably adorable it’s the wrong hashtag to hop on. I want the world to be safe. I believe in the goodness of people but I still lock my front door.