Most of my friends anxiously awaited the arrival of my daughter, and you know where they got their first glimpse of the little princess?
Facebook.
While my mom and women of her generation might balk at the thought of putting fresh out the womb pictures of their kids online for anyone to see, I didn’t see a problem with it. I’d been putting my pregnancy pictures online, and detailing every other aspect of my life through Facebook – why not to celebrate one of the defining times of my life?
Update 1.1.13: I wrote about this recently with regard to women live-tweeting their labor:
And even though my kids are 6 and 4 and social media wasn’t nearly as pervasive back then, I still remember using social media to keep the people in my life informed about the babies in my belly. But even then, I remember waiting until I got home from the hospital to post baby’s first photo to Facebook.
Now there’s live-tweeting the birth. Several of my friends have done it. The hourly updates of progress took me off guard at first.
“Nurse says I’m 2 centimeters dilated! Time to get this party started!”
“4 centimeters…hanging in there!”
“Whew! That last contraction was a doozy…breathe in, breathe out.”
“Just got an epidural….Ahhh.”
“Getting ready to push! This is it guys!”
And then, usually about an hour or so after baby has entered the world, there it is: Baby’s photo has made it’s debut on social media.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with posting during your labor in the broadest sense. But let me tell you—they’ve made me feel like a chump because there was no way I was picking up a phone or sliding over to my laptop to update anybody on anything during my Pitocin-fueled march to motherhood. No, ma’am.
I think that it’s ok (obviously) to post pictures of anything you feel is picture worthy, but with certain limitations. On Facebook (and Myspace) I am able to control who sees my pictures. This is why I don’t accept friend requests from random people, becuase of certain blogs or pictures I may post. Only my “friends” can view them.
Now do I think its a problem to put pics and videos of your child/ren on youtube and places like that? Absolutely b.c the whole world has access to your child
Be very carefull when posting pictures of your children, also about what information about yourself you devulge on the Internet. Internet predators are real.
When it comes to children, I agree with the first comment, If you have to post them on the Internet, post it in a location where you control access, on Facebook you can now specify who is allowed to see pictures.
I think it’s true that you want to be sure you don’t expose your children to any unnecessary danger. Obviously, that’s a mom’s first responsibility.
I agree that you should definitely be cautious about posting your child’s picture on the web. I chose not to place pictures of my son (or to even mention him for that matter) on my facebook page because although I can control my privacy settings, I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of people seeing his picture or being able to access information about him through other people’s pages. I just send pictures via email to my close friends and family.
I post pics of my daughter on facebook and myspace..yet have all my settings set to friends only.