Una Mullally: Why must parents put pictures of their kids on Facebook?

One thing that older people love saying about younger people is that they are “entitled”. Entitled to this and entitled to that. With their Skeptas and their intersectionality and their triggering and their smashed avocados. Entitled.

What young people and children are entitled to is privacy. That's something an Austrian family learned recently when their 18-year-old daughter decided to sue them for invading her privacy and embarrassing her by posting almost 500 pictures of her as a child on Facebook.

It seems like a lot of photos, but the average parent in Britain will post nearly 1,500 photos of their child before they turn five. Maybe they should have spent that time researching the potential fallout of Brexit.

In Germany teenagers can sue their parents from age 14 for invading their privacy with online photos. In France parents face fines and jail time if they post pictures of their children without their permission. Proper order.

Why do parents plaster social media accounts with photos of their children? Why does anyone plaster their social media accounts with photos of anything?

Identity

It’s all performance. It’s all trying to manufacture a version of your identity that you project online in a strangely transparent way in order to show people (many of whom actually know you in real life, so why try to fool them?) that you is smart, you is kind, you is important.

Photos of ourselves illustrating the nice-n-healthy-n-authentic lives we pretend to lead are annoying, but at least the person posting them is doing so willingly.

How many times have parents reading this asked for their kid’s permission to use their photo online in order to bolster their pride or projection of virtual wholesomeness as a parent?

Parenting is difficult, yet parents seem to make it even more so by turning it into a competition.

Previously the "my child is better than your child" game was at least confined to occasions where parents hung out with each other; playdates, dinner parties, Bruce Springsteen concerts. Now we all have to suffer it.

Photos of babies always look so cute and serene. They are rarely followed by photos of puke down a parent’s back or red faces screaming at 4am.

September saw a spike in photos of children online as kids went back to school. Everywhere were pictures of kids smiling in uniforms, as if this was the common reality. There were no photos of them whining about how they don’t like their new shoes or pretending not to know their parents at the school gates.

When I tweeted a link to the Austrian story saying “good on her” a few people got back to me saying that embarrassing one’s children is a jokey pleasure of parenthood.

That’s a weird thing to feel, especially when serial oversharing photo-posters aren’t necessarily embarrassing their children but are definitely embarrassing themselves.

Private networks

Naturally some people are interested in some other people’s children, and want to see how they’re growing up in the world and the gas and cute things they’re doing.

I love seeing photos of my nieces and nephews and of my friend’s children, but they are shared in private networks by text or email or the odd WhatsApp group.

If parents want their friends and family to see photos of their children they might be surprised to learn that technology has in fact created methods of communication in which this can be done relatively privately, rather than publicly posting pictures of your children’s private moments on the internet.

Who, of the acquaintances that make up a glut of people’s “friends” online, wants to see a picture of some random child covered in food or muck just so a parent can brag about the kid’s existence?

We are all in on the social media pretence. Everyone knows this stuff isn’t real. We like and post emojis and plaudits and reach for ridiculous hyperbole when someone posts even the most benign of things.

A bowl of porridge with some fruit in it is now greeted with the same enthusiasm as the release of Nelson Mandela. Really exciting things are often, paradoxically, posted in a deadpan manner. "Don't mind me, just discovered a new tomb at Luxor. No biggie. *painting nails emoji*."

Ballet lesson

I don’t have a baby. I don’t even have a car or chairs or a pension. So speaking not-as-a-mother perhaps I don’t understand the compulsion to constantly bang on about every single thing a child is up to, from the colour of its faeces to the cute thing they just did at their ballet lesson.

Parents don’t own their children, but they are responsible for them. Children have rights, and they have a right to privacy, a right to not wake up as a teenager and realise their folks spent years dealing in their image online behind their back.

If parents are responsible for children, part of that responsibility is about respecting their privacy. So the next time you reach to upload a photo of your kid, ask yourself why are you doing it, and who are you really doing it for?