Should You Be Sharing Pictures of Your Kids on Social Media?

Social media has symbolized a major shift in the way we live our lives, and this has in turn affected the way we parent our children as well. It’s been well-documented that too much screen time isn’t a good thing, but there are other reasons that social media can be dangerous. Simply having one’s face on the internet can be a risky thing because there are all kinds of negative forces out there in the world who can access these photos and do all kinds of bad things with them. This leads us to the penultimate question: should you be sharing your child’s face on social media?

Not at First

When they’re babies, toddlers, and even six or seven years, we’d highly recommend avoiding it at all costs. If you’re a huge user of social media, we understand the desire to share your pride and joy with the world, and quite often that pride and joy is your children. However, you need to understand how vulnerable you’re making your kids by doing this. As mentioned above, there are all kinds of bad people out there who can use these photos to hurt both you and them.

We Can’t Shield Them Forever

However, there is also the school of thought that we cannot shield our children from the world around them forever. Everything in life is a balance, and in the case of technology and social media, ultimately they’ll be exposed to it whether we like it or not. Eventually, they’ll have to make a choice of their own about how much time they want to spend on it, and your job as a parent will be to educate them about the pitfalls of doing so.