Sharenting: When are sharing moments of our kids considered too much?

Julian Tang, MDFrom the desk of Julian Tang, MDWe all love our kids and want to show them off by taking their pictures at their best moments and sharing them with family& friends. In our digital age we constantly take hundreds of photos of our children growing up. It is a great way to document our life with them, to acknowledge how proud we are of them in what we have accomplished and what they are becoming. It also helps strengthen our identity to each other.The vast majority of the time, this is a wonderful thing. The big question is when it isn ’t. In one survey, 80% of kids said they were embarrassed of a picture that their parent posted of them. Another scary stat is that 50% of pictures found in pedophile cases come from social media pictures. A lot of pictures can be taken innocently and then twisted in a perverse way.One rule we always remind our own children with smart phones is that nothing posted on the internet is private. Everything we send over the internet gets stored or transferred from one server to another.  A person can also take a picture of a picture that was meant to be private and then disseminate that information.The other main point is that pictures or videos of our children posted online actually belong to them. It is their digital footprint. Any future google searches of a particular person will start with their childhood photos. The conundrum is this occurs when they have no say in what gets posted online.It is a time honored tradit...
Source: Pediatric Health Associates - Category: Pediatrics Tags: Healthy Habits Source Type: news