Last week on my Facebook page I lamented about the sharing on the internet those pictures we take of our children in the bathtub when they are young. Or just hanging around the house in their underwear. We all know these pictures exist in every family. There are pictures of me in a box in my mom’s closet I’m sure of me in the tub. You will never see those pictures of me though because they are nicely buried under dozens of other pictures. I prefer to keep it that way. Times are different now though.
It’s The Digital Age
Everything now is digital. I’m pretty sure my children have come across an old canister of film I have laying around from oh just over a decade ago that they are like what is this? All of our pictures are on the computer. We might get them printed professionally, but it’s no longer a matter of dropping off a roll of film where half of the pictures will come out over exposed and blurry or completely out of focus and has us wondering what exactly were we trying to capture a picture of when we took it.
Now we can view our pictures right when we take them and decide if it’s worthy of keeping. And then we have photo editing software on our computer that we use to crop out what we don’t want to see in the picture and enhance what we do want to see. We are our own professional photographers now and we electronically send pictures over the internet to Walgreens and CVS to develop for us. Or sometimes we might skip the whole editing process and go right to the store with our memory card and pick and choose the pictures we want.
It’s really a great thing. Now we are paying for only the images we truly love and we are making them beautiful works of art. We no longer have a photo envelope filled with 20 of the same picture in different levels of clarity.
We Still Need To Be Careful What We Share
I may or may not have pictures on my computer of my children in their birthday suit. Well, my young children. Once they hit oh about 4 years old I’d say we cease to find the cuteness in them running around the back yard naked in the summer time. We stop taking those pictures, or maybe it’s just the kids begin to find the joy in actually having some clothing on and covering themselves up. Those photo ops no longer seem to present themselves.
I’ll admit, I’m a sucker for those bare baby bottoms, it is adorable, but you are also aware of how dangerous it is to share it so publicly on the internet right? Well, maybe I better back this up a bit. You are aware that you don’t know who’s actually on the other side of the computer screen right? I mean okay, if you have a Facebook page that is locked up tighter than Fort Knox and you know every single person on your “friends” list intimately, then sharing these darling pictures might be just like our parents who kept them in a box and took them out for the video slide show night that they would have every so often for only our closest friends and family. So we were only completely mortified in front of the ones that truly loved us with those pictures of our bare naked bottoms. Not billions of complete strangers.
Don’t Forget The Safety Of It All
Lets not forget that the people perusing parenting sites and mommy blogs are not just parents. Our blogs are a breeding ground for pedophiles. So that completely innocent picture of your children dancing around in their underwear one beautiful sunny morning has now caught the eye of a sick and twisted pedophile. Now, call me paranoid, but I don’t want to take any chances with some sicko becoming sexually obsessed with my children. No matter how obscure I might be here on my blog about my children I also know it’s not hard to figure out who they are and where we live. I am not that naive to think I have any sort of anonymity on the internet. If someone really wants to I have no doubt that they could find out everything about me and my children and I will not invite that into my home by giving them anything to look at.
Now one might argue that just a picture of my children’s smiling face is enough to set off a pedophile. And yes that might be true, but I most certainly don’t need complete strangers knowing about that birthmark that may or may not be on one of my children’s hip. Or that dimple on a butt cheek or the scar they got from falling off of a swing on their upper thigh. Not saying any of these marks exist on any of my children by the way, but those possible distinguishing marks are something that only the closest members of our family should be aware of. Not the entire world wide web.
Just Owning These Pictures Could Be A Legal Nightmare!
Police have become hyper vigilant about half naked pictures of children on the internet. So lets say that completely innocent picture of your child in his underwear gets picked up by a known pedophile and it begins circulating amongst circles of other pedophiles. That picture is eventually going to get traced back to you. And then the police begin looking into every aspect of your life. Trying to see if you are a part of this pedophile ring. You have opened yourself and your child up to tons of terrifying situations. With lots of very personal questions being asked.
Does anyone remember the case of a family who had some pictures developed at Walmart? The clerk saw these pictures of children in the tub and either naked or half naked and he reported it to the police. Now some pimple faced teenager on a summer job is scrutinizing your pictures and determining if she thinks you are a child abuser. This family ended up going through hell all because of how one Walmart employee viewed a picture. A year of having to prove they simply loved their children and they were just innocent photos that were not staged or posed, but just snapped because they thought it was fun or cute in that moment. Their children’s innocence was taken from them because of a hyper vigilant Walmart employee who thought he was saving young children from a lifetime of abuse reported those pictures.
So now you have posted pictures of your children on the internet playing in the swimming pool naked or dancing around the living room in their underwear. Now that hyper vigilant person who perhaps spent his childhood being abused himself spots this picture and reports it. You now have to explain why that picture exists.
Is this the world we should be living in? No, probably not. Is this the world we do live in? Yes, it absolutely is. So why would we put our children out there like that? Why would we put ourselves out there like that?
The Internet Is Forever
Never forget that your cute adorable one year old who is running around butt naked in the back yard is going to grow up to be an easily embarrassed teenager. That picture that you posted a decade ago on the internet can and will be found by his classmates. And it can and will be used as a way to humiliate that child. And your son or daughter is not going to come to you about this torment because you are the one who posted it for the world to see to begin with. As wrong as the actions of these children might be, we cannot control what other people do. We can only control what we do. So if the threat of pedophiles and the law doesn’t do it for you, then maybe your sullen 15 year old who is constantly angry at you for seemingly no reason will do it for you. Because if you had just kept that picture in the family’s private family album to begin with, then he wouldn’t be humiliated in this way.
Do you think it’s okay to share pictures of your children naked or in their underwear on the internet?
It is a little scary to think that our kids photos are all over and can get in the wrong hands, but with the digital age as it is, we just have to practice as much safety as we can and teach our children to be safe.
I’ve never really even considered this! I don’t think I have posted any of my kids since they are older but I’ll defintely make sure.