Why I Don’t Post Photos of My Kids on Social Media (Even With a Private Account)
Last weekend, I stood in my backyard wiping green dinosaur frosting off my 7-year-old Milo’s cheek while the bounce house in the corner slowly deflated. My sister scrolled through her camera roll, pausing on a shot of him mid-laugh, face completely covered in sugar. “This is perfect,” she said, tapping her screen. “I’m posting this to my private Instagram, only family follows me anyway.” I paused mid-wipe and said, “Actually, could you not?” She looked up, surprised, and said, “Come on, my account’s locked. No one outside my followers sees it.” That’s when Milo piped up from the cake table, crumbs stuck in his eyebrow: “Yeah, I don’t want it on there anyway. Remember when Aunt Mandy posted that picture of me on the potty when I was three and all my cousins saw it?”
That moment wasn’t some big, dramatic standoff, just the latest reminder of why I stopped posting any photos of my kids anywhere on social media three years ago, even though my own account was set to private for years before that. When I first had Milo, I posted everything: the first ultrasound blip, his first messy bowl of oatmeal, his wobbly first step across the living room. I had 180 followers, all people I’d met at some point in my life, account locked, so I thought nothing of it. Then I got a random follower request from a guy I’d shared a gym class with in 10th grade, someone I hadn’t spoken to in 16 years. I didn’t accept the request, but it got me thinking: how did he even find my account? The answer was simple: he was friends with my cousin, who had a public account, and my cousin had commented on one of my photos of Milo. My profile popped up in the suggestions, and even though he couldn’t see my posts, he knew I had a kid, what his name was, and what we did most weekends.
That same year, Milo’s pre-K teacher did a unit on personal boundaries and body safety that completely shifted how I thought about this. She wasn’t talking about social media specifically at first, but when a parent asked about posting photos of class field trips, she said something that stuck with me. “A kid’s image is their personal information, same as their home address or their birthday. They can’t consent to having it shared online, so it’s our job to hold that boundary for them.” She went on to say that by age 5, most kids are developing a clear sense of what feels public and what feels private, and ignoring that can erode their growing sense of autonomy over their own bodies and identities. I’d never thought of it that way before. I’d always seen posting photos as just a fun way to share milestones, not something that impacted my kid’s sense of safety or control.
A lot of people push back and say “but my account is private, what’s the risk?” I get that, I used to think the same thing. But private doesn’t mean protected. Any one of your 120 or 300 followers can screenshot a photo, save it to their phone, repost it to their own public or private account, tag your kid, tag you, and add your location. Once that photo is out there, you can’t take it back. I have a friend whose sister posted a photo of her toddler running naked through the sprinkler to her private family account, and a distant cousin screenshotted it and posted it to a popular meme page about messy kids. Five years later, that photo still pops up if you google her son’s first and last name. She can’t get it taken down, because it’s on a third-party site that doesn’t have to comply with her requests.
I know it feels like cutting off distant family from seeing your kid grow up, and that’s a fair concern. I have parents who live 800 miles away, and they want to see new photos of the kids as much as anyone. But I found a super simple alternative that works for everyone: I have one password-protected shared photo album that I update once a month with new pictures. I only give the password to immediate family and close friends, and I can remove anyone at any time if things change. If a cousin or grandparent wants a specific photo to print and put on their fridge, I text it directly to them. It takes me 10 minutes a month to update the album, that’s it. No extra work, no stress, and the photos never end up anywhere accessible to strangers.
Last summer at a family reunion, my cousin posted a whole album of photos from the weekend and tagged me in all the ones of Milo and my 4-year-old Lulu. I waited a day, then texted her politely and asked her to remove the ones with my kids. She was annoyed at first, said it was just her private account, but a week later she texted me back and apologized. She said her 13-year-old daughter had been bullied at school a few months earlier because someone found an old photo of her having a panic attack at a birthday party that her dad had posted when she was 9, and it got shared around the school’s Snapchat group. She said she’d never thought about how old posts can come back to embarrass kids when they get older, before they even get a chance to decide what they want to share.
That’s the big thing I’ve learned: consent doesn’t start when kids are teens. It starts when they’re little, with small things like asking if they want their picture taken, asking if they want it shared. I don’t just keep my kids off my social media—any time we’re at a party or an event and someone asks if they can post a photo of my kids, I turn straight to the kids and ask them what they want. If they say no, I back them up, no questions asked. It’s a small habit any parent can start tomorrow, no big overhauls required.
I get a lot of side-eye from other parents at playgroup, and some family still thinks I’m being overprotective. I don’t judge parents who post photos of their kids, it’s not my place to tell anyone else what to do. It just works for me this way. Sometimes people forget, and I have to ask to take a photo down, which is awkward, but it’s worth it. Right now, my kids don’t have a digital footprint that they didn’t choose themselves. When they’re old enough to make social media accounts and post their own photos, share their own milestones, that will be their choice. I don’t know what the future of social media will look like by then, or what choices they’ll make. All I can do right now is hold the line for them, until they’re ready to hold it themselves.
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