Hellobee Boards

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.)
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.

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 Who knows what we'd be "into", what will become outdated and what new avenues will be the norm.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.

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.

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 And if all the current social media is obsolete by then, they'll hand her the master password and she'll laugh and be like 'what's gmail, mom..'

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

@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.

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.

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.