With all the scandals going around social media on privacy hacking, it makes us wonder, where should a parent draw a line and keep pictures of their kids more private? How much information about your little one should you share without affecting their private life?

What Has Happened In Media Accounts Hacking?

There have been concerns over Facebook, Instagram, over its capability to handle personal information posted. Scandals, massive slip-ups, followed by breaches all serve to continually remind us that the platforms are unable to protect the realms of personal data it collects from its users, even though it professes a desire to do so. Statistics indicate that 14% of parents feel another parent shared too much information online whereas 27% shared inappropriate photos of a child, 51% gave information that could identify a child's location and 56% gave embarrassing information about a child.

As a parent, have you thought of the fact that what is suitable for all these social media platforms might not line up with what is your child's best interest?

This is not a case of third-party apps scrapping these social media data but rather, what it means when your kid's personal information and pictures are posted, with or without your consent.

When you are not aware of being taken your photo, you'd normally get upset about it, as a rational reaction. So what makes it ok that a photo of your Baby circulating in the public social media without you realizing she is. It is logically not ok.

What does it mean for your kid's present and future well-being when hundreds of photos showing every stage of her development have been hacked by big social platforms that brush off an acknowledgment its service may indirectly contribute to real danger even before she is old enough to have a Facebook account?

And how do big social media platforms protect those children from being monetized, categorized, and exploited by the same algorithms put in place to track and profile its users? Are these platforms that, even despite all the evidence to the contrary, publicly deny awareness of the shadow profiles it creates? Is this the right corporate entity to which you should entrust to safeguard your child's life story?

An example is the pictures we have used; we just took them off the internet. This is a perfect example to show you that you have no control over the photos you post. You can never know where they end up.

We have seen several micro toy entities using beautiful images of toddlers playing in the comfort of home. The big question is, do they seek permission from the owners of these pictures first? How about social campaigns of toy companies asking their followers to share photos of the kids playing with the toys as a publicity gain for the corporation?

Most parents are unaware that they are being taken advantage of. Instead, these precious moments for which these companies are seeking should be shared only to a private network: family and close people that matter which in turn react positively to those pictures, to the moments, to build a family bonding memory that can always be referred to in future.

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Future Risk

There are so many parents posting their children pictures on Instagram, with all sorts of hashtags, names, personal information, check-ins, there is a case of a lady on Instagram who has decided to document her daughter's journey (she has hydrocephalus) on Instagram, but boy oh boy does she get negative comments. To make matters worse, she posts her alongside her other sibling, and I can't help but ask myself, what will happen in the future when this other kid reads the negative comments that people post about her hydrocephalus sister? Won't it affect her psychologically?

Do we ever pose to ask ourselves what kind of confidence we are taking away from our kids just by sharing these pictures? Our Children might feel as perhaps we invaded their privacy, considering an example of the case above. You might argue that parents taking photos of the kids is a way to show off a superficial aspect of their life but look at how shy children naturally get in front of the camera when being taken a photo.

What Now

The truth of the matter is, taking and sharing our children's cute and possibly not so cute pictures is not going anywhere. In a world where the only platforms we rely on to share these pictures are inherently problematic, where does that leave us?

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It is quite unrealistic to tell parents to stop sharing their kid's pictures. In the real world, do you opt out of that big family photo because you know it's going to end up on public social media? Are you ready to be the whiny wheel that asks for it not to be posted for the faraway relatives to see? Would the rest of your family members abide by that request even if you did make it? There aren't easy answers.

Going the private direction seems like the only option left for us here. There are amazing apps that have come up such as Momee where you get to post and share pictures with only family members.

Momee App is founded upon an idea that parents and family members can securely share photos of Baby despite the long distance. The need to keep up family bonding while living across the globe from each other is the motivation for the 02 mom founders, Ava & Tina to develop a secure network where everybody in the family can post without worry.

Mark Zuckerberg posted advice for his newborn baby on Facebook and said, ‟The world can be a serious place; that's why it's important to make time to go outside and play."

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And the next time, while you and your little kids are outside playing and you feel inclined to take pictures, you might as well consider sharing them via private networks.