“Awkward Photo Database”: How to share your child online while respecting their privacy

The French parliament is currently considering a private initiative bill that would prevent parents from making money by uploading content featuring their children, often with the intention of upsetting or embarrassing them.

There are challenges and pranks that are becoming incredibly popular on platforms like TikTok and Instagram and are making little kids laugh. The “cheese challenge,” in which parents throw a piece of cheese in their child’s face and record their shocked and confused reaction, has become very popular in recent years, as has the child’s assurance that he will be sent to jail. The hilarious the child is upset, the more likely the video will go viral. That’s… quite rude!

But people are making quite a lot of money from it, which could put an end to this law, at least in France – a potential law would suspend the rights of parents to use photos of their children if they do so in an exploitative way. , excessive self-promotion or overtly commercial in nature.

From a legal standpoint, sharing is something of a nightmare: children should have the right to privacy, but their parents are responsible. Basically, parents who share pictures of their kids are giving themselves permission to do so on behalf of their kids, and it’s a confusing situation that isn’t easy to fix.

There have been several cases of YouTube family vloggers intentionally endangering their children or encouraging them to hurt each other in order to create more immersive content and therefore more views and more revenue.

Of course, these are extreme cases, but even in completely insignificant cases without money and attempts at fame, children become satisfied contributors to the social tape of their parents. When they are old enough to surf the Internet on their own, they find that there are already thousands of photos and videos of them, often posted without their knowledge or consent. It’s well-intentioned, but it’s still very creepy.

But parents are understandably proud of their kids – how do you balance respecting a child’s privacy and showing off how good they are online?

You don’t feel like you have to share

There are many ways to share photos of your kids with friends and family without making them public – blocked Instagram accounts, WhatsApp groups, Google Drive shared folders, and more.

You won’t lose the competition of who loves your kids more if you don’t post Junior’s endless updates and if you don’t keep the universe up to date on how they’re doing. (Or actually private consumption—grandparents have gotten along just fine with a weekly phone call and an annual school photo for centuries.)

don’t take it personally

Of course, if you post a photo of your child and it gets 15 likes and someone else posts a photo of a penis wall that gets 50, that doesn’t mean your child is any less good than a heavily engraved wife. Similarly, if your friend’s baby photos consistently outperform yours, knowing it doesn’t matter doesn’t necessarily stop you from focusing on him. A sudden high school dropout spends to piss off your enemy, little third grader Susie, because she has more followers.

Consider context

A social media post about your child is just one entry on an endless scrolling list – it’s someone’s dinner; One of them is wearing pants. People who scroll, sit on the toilet, hunched over on the couch or half asleep in bed – instead of enjoying the majesty of your gorgeous brood, most register it as an image of your child and double-tap the image to like one of them. keep scrolling. This means nothing.

Don’t lose focus

When your trip to the park gets stressful because you can’t get the lighting right for your Instagram post, or when you demand frame after frame when your baby doesn’t sound as cute as it could – “Again, damn take it! tilt this one.” Indeed, on the Pisghetti – then something does not go quite the way it should. Ordering a crazy looking cocktail because it looks good on Instagram is one thing, looking at your kid through your phone screen instead of actually spending time there is pretty sad.

Don’t forget that you can delete things

If you’re looking to intimidate someone, the best you can find is a database of his infamous lifetime photos – that’s the end of the asshole’s rainbow. Someone doesn’t have many dubious reasons to scroll through your posts over the years, so they probably don’t need to stay there.

Don’t convince yourself that you will get rich

A lot more people want to be rich influencers than actually become rich influencers. The odds are not really in your favor – for every person who gains a huge following and makes a fortune, there are thousands of people who waste a lot of time, spend a stupid amount of money on a beautiful lamp that they don’t make. I really know how and by the end I felt like crap.

Remember how wild the internet is

Everything posted on the Internet may be taken, transferred, modified or otherwise used. The image of your baby crying in the toilet can be absolutely funny, but what if it takes on a life of its own online and becomes a meme and your baby grows up known to millions of people as Poopy Jo, the status they have? never asked and what can’t they get too? not exploit? They will definitely make a funny story out of it, but they may not be happy.

Don’t back yourself into a corner

It’s easy to get over-enthusiastic and over-ambitious and end up under pressure to bring something to market. A million parents have made huge commitments to post something every day or document every outfit or whatever, and end up beating themselves up for it. But it’s all work. Being a parent is an incredibly hard job with a terrible salary – do you really need to do more unpaid work?