Did you hear about the Austrian teen who is suing her parents over embarrassing childhood pictures on social media? If, like me, you also have hundreds of your kid's pictures on Facebook and thousands more on your hard disk, maybe you had better catch up on that story! (link is provided at the bottom of this post)
If you are a parent, on any average day this happens to you :Your baby is making the cutest face and you can't believe your camera is not at hand! Your little girl is wearing her pretty princess dress to school and you click at least a dozen images before the school bus carries her away. A minute later at least one of those pictures is up on Facebook. In an hour 70 of your dearest friends have liked or loved the image and put up the most amazing comments. They share your joy and pride. Your mommy heart swells with emotion. That moment is forever emblazoned on your heart as firmly and deeply as it has left its digital footprint on the World Wide Web. We have all been there. All been guilty of the urge to click and share. How long have we had this absolute need to immortalize every second in the digital space? Not very long actually. We started using Facebook, tentatively, about ten years ago. But the post, like, share and comment era has not been around very long. Our ubiquitous phones with their bigger, clearer, tantalisingly better cameras have not been around that very long. And yet a generation has grown enough to be able to take their parents to court for violating their privacy! In defense of that Austrian teen, however, she makes a fair point when she says she finds it embarrassing to have pictures of herself nude and on the potty plastered all over Facebook. Come on, parents! You have to draw the line somewhere!
My daughters are seven and three. I have a good couple of years left before being dragged to court. But in the meantime, I happily click. Every milestone. Every dress-up moment. Every happy face. Sad face. Pouting face. Excited face. Angry face. And I must confess: I have pictures of my elder one's first dirty diaper and both babies' umbilical cord remains that fell off couple of weeks after they were born. But let me rush to add that I haven't put those up on any public forum. I got my first good digital camera only the month before my elder one was born. So from her first set of colourful nappies washed and ironed and ready for the delivery to her latest drawing of a Cheetah and a snake, I have them all. Recorded for posterity. She has been photographed at least every other day since she was born; the younger one possibly every single day. The couple of times I was faced with a dead battery or shortage of space on my phone taught me to be hugely cautious. Woe betide the parent who stands before a dressed up child with a non-functional camera! I always, always ensure my phone is at least half charged and has at least 1 Gb of space left free for those moments when my children turn on the cute factor without warning! I cannot possibly survive the guilt of not having a chocolate smeared cheek or a delighted shriek preserved intact for all time! And yet the other day I was left racking my brains trying to remember my elder girl's first word. I mean, I have the thousands of pictures and the scores of videos and lost somewhere in all that digital madness is my baby's first word! My little one is in that phase of heart achingly adorable mispronunciations and made up words and I scamper for the camera every minute I possibly can so I can hoard it all for later. I mean, what if I forget? How can I let those precious moments be lost forever? Sometimes I am so in love with those moments that I catch myself replaying those on the phone while shushing my children clamoring for attention in the background!
How much rosier reality is when replayed on a 5 inch screen! Where everything is picture perfect and pitch perfect. You can trim the edges and soften the light. You can brighten up the colours and blot out the blemishes. The children don't get impatient and irritated in the pictures - they are forever smiling, forever posing, forever being cute and perfect, even when you are framing a moment of imperfection!
And then there is sharing bit. We have family scattered across the globe. Uncles, Aunts, cousins...I know all their children by names and faces and what their interests are and where their talents lie, all thanks to Facebook. We may see each other only every couple of years but we are perfectly updated on each other's lives and we have no moments of strangeness or awkwardness when we meet. If it had not been for Facebook, my children and theirs would have gone through life not bothering to find out each other's names. Cant blame them - there are just too many relatives in all parts of the world! Sharing on social media is not just about gloating - it is also the new age newsletter to inform everyone about where your life is at and what is happening with you. It is your virtual joint family where all the family elders gather around to applaud when your baby takes her first step or wins her first ever little trophy from school. Sure there are also the people who barely know your name in your friends list who are also privy to the same pictures and may have far less charitable or in fact downright nasty thoughts about the same set of pictures that brought so much gratification your way. But am I going to stop clicking and sharing for their sake? Absolutely not.
Coming back to the issue of how our children are going to react to all this frenzy when they come of age. Did we have our childhoods recorded so meticulously when we were young? No. Do we resent our parents for not doing so? Absolutely not. But then we knew that cameras and film were expensive and not as easily accessible as digital technology is now. Living in the present age why should we not make use of the technology that allows us to hold on to our memories for as long as we possibly can? And I am sure some day the kids are going to love showing their own kids their first funny dance or how they dressed up as a carrot for play school. Now just so as to not leave that point uncovered - think of the consequences of NOT being a click-happy parent. Surely there is the chance that your children grow up to be teens who feel they were deprived of happy childhood keepsakes? What answer are you going to give to that almost-grown-up who firmly believes you did not care enough to keep a camera ready for all their special moments? When all her friends have a couple of 1TB hard disks each of childhood moments edited and photoshopped to perfection for eternity and your child has a measly few on your old phone that you almost threw away? Do you want to be that parent? I am sure we will give enough reasons for our children to hate us, eventually. Why allow that to be based on something you can so easily fulfill?
So if you want to continue clicking and sharing but would ideally like to be not sued by your children either for violating their privacy or exposing them to potential dangers, the keywords to keep in mind are balance, aesthetics and safety. Balance is about deciding which moments are worth clicking and which to just commit to memory. Maybe we don't click every single moment of a family trip - just a few key points. Maybe not a video of every single milestone but a few that they can also be proud of.
When it comes to aesthetics - or in other words taking pictures that make them feel so ashamed they want to haul you off to court - as a first principle I think we can accept one simple rule: no nudes of children of any age on any public medium. No embarrassing moments like bath time, potty time or the time they were scared out of their wits by a barking dog. How about we restrict publicly shared photographs strictly to moments they are also proud of and would be happy to be reminded of? Who does not like being told 'you were so cute as a baby!' So let's just strive to keep it clean and positive, shall we? And coming to that most important aspect of safety, if for any reason you feel that your child's picture has been misused, please do not think twice about approaching the appropriate authority for cyber safety and registering a complaint. To begin with we could also re-check our privacy settings and control who has access to what we post in the first place. Making lists on FB is time consuming, sure, but if we take the effort once, we can restrict the picture sharing to people we know and trust and who we can be sure are genuinely happy to see how the kids are shaping up. If we can't help the digital footprint we can at least make it something they won't need to resent. As long as we, as parents, are defining the extent of their privacy, let's be respectful of it!
I have a picture of my younger one asleep after her first day of playschool. She was tired as hell; spent from all the excitement of the day. She was sleeping tummy down, knees propped up, her cute diapered bottom raised. Her little face on the pillow was serene and her little lips ever so slightly open. All the peeved teens of the world are not going to stop me from immortalising that precious moment. But I also think I will just keep that one in my own personal folder in my own laptop.
Here's the link on the Austrian case for you:
http://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/teen-sues-parents-over-for-violating-privacy-with-facebook-photos-35051012.html
