There is something surreal about scrolling through Instagram and landing on a photo of your own child that you didn’t post. And if, like me, you’re someone who doesn’t share your child on social media, it’s enough to cause a pit in your stomach. Cue the awkward conversation with yet another friend: “Hey, could you please take down that picture of Cooper, crop him out, or put a sticker over his face?” They always oblige, but it’s also always a little uncomfortable — if I’m asking them not to post my kid’s photo online, what must I think of them for posting theirs, right?
In March 2023, my husband texted me a news article. A teammate from his college days had been arrested and charged with possession of child sexual abuse material. (It only made headlines because the guy had also been a contestant on a popular reality TV show.) My world went silent for a minute when it clicked for me that he followed my husband on Instagram, though he mercifully doesn’t post much anyway. And that was when the reality set in: Being private on Instagram wasn’t enough. Predators can sometimes be people you know, who are already in your circle, the ones who are all green flags. Shaken, my husband and I agreed right then: No more photos of our son on social media.
But just over a year later, what felt to us like a personal decision based on very specific circumstances is starting to feel less and less radical. Parents are deciding to keep their kids’ likenesses offline for all kinds of reasons. For some, it’s about letting their kids have privacy, deciding for themselves how they want to share photos of and details about themselves when they’re older. For my husband and I, and a growing contingent of parents, it’s honestly just about the predators.
For us, the first question was how, or if, we should tell our friends and family about our decision. We decided to text a few loved ones, like my mom and sister who loved to proudly post grandma and auntie photos. Thankfully they were, of course, happy to respect our wishes. When it came to our friends, though, things were more complicated. So many of them post pictures of their own children on social media, that issuing some statement in the group chat felt too holier than thou, when really, we don’t pass any judgment on them about it.
By setting this boundary of not posting him, I can drastically reduce the number of photos AI and child predators have to steal. If that takes a lot of awkward conversations with friends and family, I’m happy to have them.
Earlier this year, The New York Times published a bombshell report about how the profiles of Instamoms who use their kids as content often end up becoming favorites of child predators (and some moms lean into it). Men exchange the photos and links to their profiles on messaging apps. While my profile may be private, I’ve learned the hard way that the people who might screenshot my kid’s photo and send it to a disturbing thread of strangers might already follow me.
Which is how we wound up with our current method: approaching each of our friends one by one, apologetically asking them to take down photos of our kid with their child, swearing we aren’t trying to shame them.
Recent news reports about AI being trained on real kids’ photos makes me wonder if our awkward confrontations with friends will soon be commonplace. Whether or not your profiles are set to private, according to a report from Scripps News, AI can still access them, and learn how to generate fake images of kids using your own child’s likeness. In other words, if a predator requests that AI make sexual images of a child my son’s age or with similar traits, somewhere in that image, will there be a trace of his golden hair or blue eyes? In all likelihood I would never, ever know it happened. Even if I did, what could I do about it? A composite image of hundreds, if not more, children — are they all victims, or none of them, since the child in the end result isn’t actually real? There’s just no law for that yet. And how might a future bully use my son’s photos against him with the help of AI? Ask the parents of the high school girls in New Jersey, or the ones in Spain, whose classmates made nude deepfakes of them to circulate online.
When I take an adorable picture of my son in his Harry the Dirty Dog costume for Book Character Day at school, or get a hilarious video snippet of him saying the dog is “buh-skusting” because all she does is lick her butt, I want nothing more than to show everyone. But when I compare the temporary high of likes and comments next to these kinds of risks, I always come back to the same conclusion. We are opting out.
Of course, anytime I leave the house with my son, I accept the fact that other people can photograph and record him. When he strolls through a pumpkin patch or pets the stingrays at the zoo bumping elbows with all the other children, he’s going to be in the background of those parents’ photos. I will never be able to control how his image is shared 100% of the time, but that’s not really the point.
As his mom, I get to choose how much of him I serve up on a platter. I will never be able to erase his existence from the internet, but by setting this boundary of not posting him, for myself and our loved ones, I can drastically reduce the number of photos AI and child predators have to steal.
If that takes a lot of awkward conversations with friends and family, I’m happy to have them. Just this weekend, our neighborhood had a Halloween block party for kids. A group of my friends, all with kids 4 years and younger, took pictures of our children on the front porch steps in their costumes, all excited because we promised them candy if they stood still and smiled. The next morning, one friend texted me. “Hey, [our mutual friend] mentioned you don’t want pictures of Cooper on socials. Do you mind if I post and cover his face?” I thanked her for checking, and got the warm-and-fuzzies knowing my friends are happy to help me do what I think is best for my kid.
I am grateful to have such thoughtful friends, but it’d be really, really nice if we could stop treating posting photos of each other’s kids like they’re not a big deal. Because I didn’t know who was lurking in my own friends list, and I definitely don’t know who’s hiding in theirs.
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