I respectfully disagree. Children have a right to their own privacy from the rest of the world and it is a parents' responsibility to respect that. My son is only 11 months old but neither my wife, our family/friends, or myself post pictures of him or any intimate details on social media. They can be shared privately but not on social media.
I think it goes even deeper than that. I firmly believe in my own right to privacy, but as an adult, I also have some understanding of the consequences and implications of my actions, and this informs what I do, and what I share.
Children do not and cannot have this luxury. They should not be held responsible for their choices and actions in the way that adults are, and a part of this is ensuring that their life is not documented with the level of permanency that is inherent in the internet.
Good point, I should have said "responsibility to ensure that" instead of "responsibility to respect that". Parents have the responsibility of protecting their child's privacy.
Okay. Well then parents can go through and delete photos their kids want removed from Facebook.
If the parent's Facebook is private, that'll probably be the end of that.
Since I'm perfectly willing to do this for my child once they're old enough to form opinions about their own privacy, I don't see the problem with sharing photos of them to my private network while they aren't.
Yes, I'm sure "I'll delete it now if you want" will completely negate any feelings they have about the fact that you've already broadcast those things to hundreds or thousands of people (and a massive advertising corporation that thrives on the exploitation of personal information) for the last 14 years.
Okay, so first, I completely disagree with your conclusion; there's absolutely things from my childhood that I wouldn't want on the internet even today as a grown adult. Not because I imagine they're uniquely embarrassing and would somehow damage my "current persona", but simply because they're a part of my childhood and my person, and it would be an encroachment of my privacy if they were publicly available. It's one thing to show your relatives and neighbors pictures of your children and their drawings; it's another for them to be irreversibly published on the most public platform in existence.
Second, which I'd argue is in fact more important, do you realize how damaging it can be at age 14 to experience this sort of betrayal of trust and elimination of privacy? It's as if the bully in your class got to read your diary aloud - times 100x. The content doesn't really matter, the transgression of boundaries does. And of course you might laugh about it once you gain the distance from your past self and its worries and pains, but it doesn't make the event any less exposing and possibly traumatizing. Adolescence is a brittle time in the development of a personality, and the kind of experiences one has aren't any less impactful because they're "just kids".
I have colleagues on Facebook who post literally everything their kids do, which means it's out there for everyone to see, and it will never die. God forbids Facebook gets hacked too.
It annoyed me when I was a kid that my parents were just babbling about everything I did to family, and the internet didn't exist back then. The thought of what they'd have done if I was a teenager today... ugh.
Ill never advocate for parents to never do ANYTHING that makes their kids uncomfortable...that's just part of growing up. But putting it all on the internet for their 750 facebook "friends"...no just no.
>It's not like her mother did anything specially wrong, e.g. posting the letter to the tooth fairy, and so on.
Not sure if it's really "not wrong". There is a growing notion in Western society that kids are actually people and have rights, and not just their parents' trinkets. Would you like someone to share your correspondence on social media, even if it's misaddressed? Or post your naked pictures without your consent (which kids can't give yet)? I suspect you'd mind very much, and no amount of rhetoric like "you're only upset because you're not enlightened enough" will change your mind. Why is it OK then when parents do that?
In France, it is legally wrong, as you cannot share a pricture of somebody without consent. That will be interesting in a few years (very soon, actually), as some young adults are pissed off by the pictures of them their parents shared for cheap facebook karma.
>In France, it is legally wrong, as you cannot share a pricture of somebody without consent.
Wait, seriously? I need to move to France ASAP. I hate the fact I can't participate in any kind of event without assholes taking a ton of pictures and posting online.
I don't know this girl or these people, I'm quite a few generations older than 13, and it's embarrassing to me even reading about it. I hope - and believe - my own offspring would seriously cut me off if ever I did such a thing. At least that's the way I raised them.
If when I was 13, I discovered that my parents had erected billboards within sight of all of my fellow students with pictures and text describing all of the childish things I had done in the previous 12 years, I would have been mortified.
This is essentially what posting things to a public facebook profile is, and while I find it understandable that parents would do it without thinking, I find it horrifying that someone would defend it as "not wrong" with the benefit of hindsight.
She said her mom and sister's profiles were public. I think that's definitely cause for feeling betrayed and very different from having a private profile and sharing with friends/family.
I had this same reaction, as a parent with one tween, and one soon to be tween who are both active on social media already. My wife isn't one of "those" Facebook moms who posts everything, so I could understand if the author had a mom like that, but she does share photos of our vacations, and other moments of our child's life with a close circle of friends and family.
Well, that's because you're 13, the age when kids turn blase and embarrassed about being kids, and of the childish things they used to like.
It's not like her mother did anything specially wrong, e.g. posting the letter to the tooth fairy, and so on.
It's only embarrassing to her because she's 13. When she's older, she will cringe that she used to be embarrassed about such a thing.