Babies – Trending Now

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]e all get annoyed by young parents who post pictures of their children online. Every now and again I’ll see someone from my year in school upload a picture of an ultrasound onto Facebook with a million likes and congratulations and I sigh… great, here comes the next onslaught of baby pics on my newsfeed. I’ll tell my friends so-and-so’s pregnant, and we instantly change the expecting parents from Friends to Acquaintances.

That’s all pretty universally known. Baby pics on Facebook and Twitter – once the hallowed grounds of teen coolness – are annoying. But has anyone considers how the babies feel? Well, how they will feel? Allow me to explain.

Assuming that Facebook, Twitter, or something similar still exist then, all of these kids’ lives will have been irrevocably documented online and there’s nothing they can do about it.

I imagine back in the day my parents showed round my baby photos to their colleagues around the water cooler and they all had a good giggle. But that was in small social circles, and I’m none the wiser today. As for the videos of me playing in the bath or whatever, they’re all on VHS tapes in the loft. But even if my parents’ offices had a cassette player, which they indubitably didn’t, showing a video of me in nappies to Sally from Personnel is not the same as parents today publicly tweeting vines of their kids for the entire world to access.

While the presence of paedophiles able to save all of these photos and videos is the most extreme danger associated with this new trend, my personal grievance is that in roughly ten years, these kids are going to be entering secondary school with all of their peers being able to stalk through every embarrassing moment ever posted online. Assuming that Facebook, Twitter, or something similar still exist then, all of these kids’ lives will have been irrevocably documented online and there’s nothing they can do about it.

While these misguided parents might be getting the likes and comments and the associated ego boosts, it can only be detrimental for the actual children in the future.

Just because these mummies and daddies physically created these children, it’s still their lives and it’s not right that their photos get circulated God knows where without any form of consent. Of course, a one year old doesn’t understand the concepts of consent, privacy or censorship – but that’s exactly my point. Babies today are getting likes and comments and retweets before they can even walk and talk, and that’s just not fair.

I’m not saying these parents are bad parents, nor do I think they’re stupid. I think they’re well-intentioned and simply proud to show off their children. It’s kind of narcissistic, sure, but if I had a child I’d think they were smarter and prettier than everyone else’s and want people to know it. It’s just the medium of making it known that I believe goes unconsidered, and while these misguided parents might be getting the likes and comments and the associated ego boosts, it can only be detrimental for the actual children in the future.