https://boards.hellobee.com/ Pregnancy, Baby and Parenting blog, by Hellobee en Sat, 04 Apr 2026 09:28:04 +0000 https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/digital-privacy-for-kids#post-1073407 Sun, 08 Sep 2013 22:59:30 +0000 yoursilverlining 1073407@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>@jmarionsmith: I agree with you. Social media isn't going anywhere; I think it will only become more integrated with our lives, so I just can't imagine my daughter being pissed in 15 years that I shared cute photos of her as a baby with my select friends and family - outside, of course, the usual amount she'll be pissed off at me just being a 15 year old girl! I also don't think not posting saves her from any real security risks. </p> <p>We did not google LO's name options, because again....who knows who will become the many "it" stars in the next 15-20 years? Or porn stars, or mass murders? There is no way to know that kind of stuff, so I just am not going to worry about it.</p> <p>We also didn't register any email addresses in her name, because Gmail will probably go the way of AOL and we'll all be using something else by then. I do actually really like the idea of sending LO emails now, I had never thought of that before. That makes me want to register her an email, but when it comes down to it, that's only for selfish reasons. That's only a digital-age babybook or diary. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/digital-privacy-for-kids#post-1073399 Sun, 08 Sep 2013 22:46:08 +0000 immabeetoo 1073399@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>@Sunderling: yep thought the exact same thing.</p> <p>Even thinking back to when I was in high school, Xanga, AOL, AIM were popular... I'm doubtful a kid inheriting those logins would use them now :)</p> <p>I do struggle with this a bit because I *have* benefitted from other parents' very candid posts about personal things involving their children/pregnancy/etc. But, I would personally be uncomfortable posting about similar things knowing that my LO could read them or be connected to them in some way. But it feels a bit .. slimy to benefit from and enjoy what I would be unwilling to share back. </p> <p>I try to be thoughtful about the pictures I post and where I post them. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/digital-privacy-for-kids#post-1073344 Sun, 08 Sep 2013 21:38:18 +0000 Maysprout 1073344@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>We've tried a few different methods but have family and close friends all over the world and facebook has been the best method to keep in touch. But I haven't figured out how a baby picture will really affect her in adulthood, though we don't post anything embarrassing or write anything negative and we might put a picture up once a month or every other month, it seems like a more frequent version of Christmas card pictures to me.</p> <p>My husband's social presence online is fairly absent and I stay pretty anonymous and don't post any pictures of myself or her on a blog. I worry a bit how that would affect her when she got older and could look back at what I wrote and how others might interpret what I wrote. Even the best of intentions seem to get skewed in the blog world.</p> <p>I like your idea of emailing stories and pictures and making their email like a journal, that's very cute. I do think most of our tech will probably move on in the next 10 years, I really hope twitter doesn't last 10 more years. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/digital-privacy-for-kids#post-1073063 Sun, 08 Sep 2013 19:16:12 +0000 AmandaB8 1073063@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>It doesn't really bother us. We'll have private settings and photo albums. But, just googling our future child's name - there are over 6 million hits. And I'll honestly be surprised if FB is around in 10-15 years. My MIL is a high school teacher, and apparently only about 50% of her kids have FB - they've changed to other social medias. FB is considered their mom's social activity. XD </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/digital-privacy-for-kids#post-1072819 Sun, 08 Sep 2013 15:46:01 +0000 Elderberrygin 1072819@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>We keep photo posting to a minimum and I rarely post on social media about LO. When I do, I have pretty tight custom locks on everything. We've had to have words with both sets of grandparents about not using the share function on photos, and I don't think they really get it, so now I rarely post photos. It's unfortunate, because our families are all overseas and it's an easy way to keep in touch. On the other hand, it's made us stop and think about what we want to follow our daughter round for the rest of her life.</p> <p>As for the other strategies outlined in the article, they don't really make a whole lot of sense to me. It would've helped if she explained what she thought the "digital trust" would achieve. With the way technology develops it'll be a bit like going up to a teenager today and saying "Hey honey, here's the keys to your hotmail, geocities and AOL accounts!" Uh, thanks, mom. Is she concerned about identity theft? Online reputation? </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/digital-privacy-for-kids#post-1072712 Sun, 08 Sep 2013 13:46:55 +0000 Mrs. Jacks 1072712@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>@jmarionsmith: I think it's the idea that the technology is evolving so that you can compile a lot of information about someone just through an online picture. Personally I bristle against the fact that any photo I post becomes property of FB or IG. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/digital-privacy-for-kids#post-1072711 Sun, 08 Sep 2013 13:44:37 +0000 Mrs. Jacks 1072711@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>@LittleFox: I was also surprised that they avoided names with no availability of email addresses. You would think they'd prefer that kind of anonymity. Maybe they are thinking their kid will be famous and need domain names etc? </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/digital-privacy-for-kids#post-1072710 Sun, 08 Sep 2013 13:44:23 +0000 jmarionsmith 1072710@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>i just can't, for the life of me, figure out what the big problem with posting pictures of your children on social networking sites is. i get that if you're posting your address, or constantly "checking in," or, obviously, any nude pictures, that there could be serious consequences. but innocent pictures of my baby swinging at the park? i just don't see the issue.</p> <p>is it because when he's older he may resent the fact that i put pictures of him on the internet without his permission? it's hard for me to imagine that any kid, in this day in age, by the age of 16 won't have an account with whatever social networking site is popular at the time and will be regularly posting pictures of themselves. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/digital-privacy-for-kids#post-1072705 Sun, 08 Sep 2013 13:36:33 +0000 LittleFox 1072705@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>We also don't post photos of our LO, and I keep status updates about him to a minimum. I also have a rule that I don't post anything embarrassing. If it would embarrass me now for someone to say something about me, or it would have as a kid or teen, I refrain from putting it online. We made a conscious decision to allow our LO, as much as we could, the chance to decide for himself what kind of online presence he wants to have. We do share photos of him with family, but via email or on a password protected and invitation only album. If I have a lot of news about him, I use it as a chance to call family members who live far away. </p> <p>As far as the accounts, I thought that was a little too far. I do like your idea of giving them a digital scrap book via dmail, though. I might have to try that out. I also thought the amount of name checking they did was a little much for me. I did a cursory Google search to make sure I was avoiding any major things (political scandal participants, names of major criminals, etc), but other than that I just chose a name I liked. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/digital-privacy-for-kids#post-1072584 Sun, 08 Sep 2013 11:18:01 +0000 Mrs. Jacks 1072584@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>@Sunderling: haha. That's pretty funny. And in the technical world, we all know how fast things change! </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/digital-privacy-for-kids#post-1072572 Sun, 08 Sep 2013 11:01:33 +0000 Sunderling 1072572@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>I think the idea of making all these accounts on current social media things to give to the child when she's older is a little silly. Teenagers do things their parents don't want them to as a general rule. Even if Facebook and Twitter are still around when this kid turns whatever age, unless her parents control her actions to an extreme, she will probably have started her own accounts by the time they consider her mature enough to be using theirs. And if all the current social media is obsolete by then, they'll hand her the master password and she'll laugh and be like 'what's gmail, mom..' </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/digital-privacy-for-kids#post-1072552 Sun, 08 Sep 2013 10:27:09 +0000 Mrs. Pen 1072552@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>I think it's an interesting article... in some ways I agree with it and others... well I'm simply not as concerned. I don't post bathroom/bath tub pictures as a rule of thumb, we never update statuses/pictures on if we're going out of town, we don't "check in" at locations and do keep sharing information about J to a minimum... however I think it's very hard to avoid it all together. We have a lot of family who live on the other side of the US and rely on FB to see updates about J. It would be so many people to continually send pics and updates over email if we didn't have FB and for that reason I do appreciate it.</p> <p>I am careful about what I blog about here as well... but I hardly think that an admissions counselor or employer would base their criteria on what was written about the candidate as a toddler. I could be wrong, but that is just a guess.</p> <p>I think there does need to be a healthy balance. But each parent needs to decide for themselves what that looks like. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/digital-privacy-for-kids#post-1072545 Sun, 08 Sep 2013 10:17:30 +0000 SugarplumsMom 1072545@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>I think the article has taken it too far. It's impossible to know how it would be in the future. Who knows what we'd be "into", what will become outdated and what new avenues will be the norm. There are millions of FB users worldwide, even if they categorized and followed each and every infant from birth to however long they stay in business, and then sold it all their data to the government that continues this "research" for decades. That's a whole TON of data to keep of every person in existence. </p> <p>I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't buy it. The article is unnecessarily alarmist, IMO. Just 20 years ago, we barely had Internet. That was before AOL pasted CD's on magazines with free 5 hr subscriptions. To get online, you had to have a modem that shared your phone line and telnet your way into a chat room. People ripped CD's to make them .wav files before they can convert them to mp3's to be able to share them. Who's to say it'll continue the way it's been. And if it does, then our virtual muggs will be a drop in the constant flood of virtual muggs plastered everywhere already. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/digital-privacy-for-kids#post-1072537 Sun, 08 Sep 2013 10:02:55 +0000 ALV91711 1072537@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>I totally understand not putting photos online. We don't put any pictures of our son online. I don't really understand opening all these accounts in the kids name. Shouldn't it be their choice what they join when they are older? </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/digital-privacy-for-kids#post-1072535 Sun, 08 Sep 2013 10:02:32 +0000 Mrs. Jacks 1072535@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>@allison: I opened email accounts so that I can send them photos, snippets and other details of the day to day. Not to create them a digital trust in the way they meant. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/digital-privacy-for-kids#post-1072531 Sun, 08 Sep 2013 09:59:10 +0000 allison 1072531@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>I recently removed most of the photos of my kid from social media, so I get that. But I don't really get the need to open accounts in their name? I mean, who's to say that gmail is still going even be around in 15 years? Facebook? Instagram? And even if they are, why is it necessary to open accounts now for them? </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/digital-privacy-for-kids#post-1072521 Sun, 08 Sep 2013 09:49:10 +0000 JoyfulKiwi 1072521@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>That's an interesting article and it really gets to the heart of why we're so cautious about pictures and info about our son online. We don't want his name posted all over the place or a zillion pictures of him up. (Although, I would be fine with a handful of shots, maybe one every other month.)<br /> Some of our family members don't get this at all. They think we're paranoid about perverts, but that's not it at all! I think this article explains it a little more, even though I wouldn't take the steps they did to make a "digital trust fund". We just want to keep embarrassing crap out of the digital empires and keep a low profile for his future. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/digital-privacy-for-kids#post-1072513 Sun, 08 Sep 2013 09:36:06 +0000 Mrs. Jacks 1072513@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>This article may take digital privacy and curating to the extreme, but I found myself nodding along with much (but not all) of what it said.</p> <p><a href="http://mobile.slate.com/articles/technology/data_mine_1/2013/09/facebook_privacy_and_kids_don_t_post_photos_of_your_kids_online.html" rel="nofollow">http://mobile.slate.com/articles/technology/data_mine_1/2013/09/facebook_privacy_and_kids_don_t_post_photos_of_your_kids_online.html</a></p> <p>We definitely googled our chosen names when we picked them and we opened email accounts in the girls names where we send them updates on the silly or cute things they've done recently... sort of like a digital baby book.</p> <p>We don't use Facebook for any photos of the girls and never have.</p> <p>I blog, and of course that's always a risk, but over time I've tried to focus more on content and less on photos of my girls (after all, I'm probably the person who thinks they are cutest in the world!)</p> <p>Do you think this Article takes digital privacy to an extreme? What are you doing to protect your children's anonymity? </p>