Written By Nicole Pierotti
March issue of Duo Magazine
Everyday we scroll through our facebook messages, ‘like’ our friends photos of their kids, let our family know the latest happenings in our lives. It’s a nice, quick and easy way to keep in touch with everyone and most family and friends love this way to communicate and those phones of ours make it so seamless.
It’s struck me over the last few months, as I’ve checked friends profiles and seen their list of friends, just how much of a online profile our children have. We snap them from day 1, we talk about our thought of parenthood, we complain on our bad days, we let everyone know our good – we are actually writing our thoughts down on the internet there forever, never to be erased. I do a bit of a detective game myself when looking around facebook – you can tell by someone posts if they have had a relationship breakdown, if their partner left them for someone else, their occupation, figure out their family members, their photos, what they like to eat, drink, etc. By the end you can get a pretty accurate picture of their life….. this is certainly something to stop and think about for a bit.
The same is with our kids, however we, parents are the ones creating their profile (that’s if they’re not doing it for themselves!) – this profile can never be erased and it’s pretty accurate to think that in the future their potential employer will facebook /google their name and have a look and their whole life and your thoughts, feelings, frustrations and personal photo album will be on display! I know this is true because I have advised others to facebook a person before employing them – you soon know how they spend their weekends plus much more.
As a parent I would suggest that you stop – look at your childs facebook profile – and see what picture you build from what is there….. be a bit critical because remember others may not personally know your child, what have you posted? What needs to be deleted? Another way to think is worst case scenario – something tragic happens in your life….. your facebook photos and thoughts about your child could be front page news. Would that bother you? Make you uncomfortable? Wish you had edited earlier? If so, a good edit is probably a great idea.
Another tip: with facebook you can select who sees your photo's and who don't. If you like to post pictures of your children so friends and family can see them, set your family photo albums up as "friends only" can see or if you have your facebook friends list categorised into categories of eg. family, friends, workplace friends etc etc. You can select the pictures of your children and family life only be viewed by your family list or family and friends. My suggestion would be to go to your settings and try it out, at lease your pictures won't be out there for everyone to see.
