The Tricky Balancing Act of Online Sharing and Privacy Concerns

Sep 16th, 2008 | By Jeremy Toeman | Category: Advice

my kidI’m a big sharer, or at least I think I am. I have over 11,000 photos on my Flickr account, over 100 videos on 12seconds, and a handful on YouTube as well. But if you go through them, you’ll notice only a few of them include pictures of my 16-month-old son. When my wife and I had our baby (our first), we had a long discussion about what we felt comfortable with regarding online sharing.

Our decision was to keep him as far out of the public eye as possible. We didn’t like the idea of random people with unknown intentions seeing pictures of him. We also didn’t feel it was necessarily fair to him to have pictures of his tushie (however cute) visible to the general public. It’s virtually impossible to envision the connected world he will grow up in, but I’d like to think he’ll want some degree of control over it. So there’s our family privacy policy as it pertains to the wide-open ‘net.

On the other hand… we love sharing fun pictures and video with our friends and family. I’d guess about 1/3 to 1/2 of the pictures in my Flickr account include him. We first tried using a password-protected blog, but it was a major pain for the family to use. We do have private sharing to friends via Flickr (which it does a very good job managing, btw), and then often create private share links (for all our friends who aren’t using Flickr). This too is a pain, but it works. None of the video sharing sites I’ve tried have a good balance of privacy features specifically designed to support non-registered users.

One of the sites I’ve always wanted to try and have heard good things about is Multiply.com. I know there are a suite of new “social sharing” sites targeting parents, but they all seem to have big hurdles to adoption. I think the key balance is following Flickr’s model: allow me to set my privacy filters, but also allow me to extend that content beyond registered users.

Ultimately, I think every family needs its own sharing/privacy policy. I think it’s important to think in the long term, not just “baby time”. There are, unfortunately, a lot of creepy people out there, many of whom are spending quite a bit of time online. There’s definitely no one solution for everybody’s disparate needs, so make sure you figure out your own needs and priorities. Keep in mind the rights of your child, but don’t forget to find a balance that fits well for you and your friends and family.

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  • I have also debated this with myself in regards to our family web site. First and foremost, I certainly am an advocate of protecting my children (and any child) online or offline. However, I have not yet found the happy medium in this.

    For instance, our school system requires a yes or no signature for media releases as part of the beginning of the school year. Why? Because the school is proud to show off our kids doing good things. Is that bad? I don't think so, but it seems to me that someone looking for information on my child could easily gather more information from the local paper than online (maybe not in all cases).

    In another instance, the local paper happens to be at a local event and wants to include a picture of your child. Johnny Appleseed gets his face painted at the Annual Pumpkin Festival. This article then also gets posted on the paper's web site. Do you balk at this, even think twice or do you think it would be great to show grandma that her grandson made the local paper? How about local cable or the news instead of the paper?

    While I certainly do not want to willingly invite predators into my family's environment, there seem to be more ways for someone to access that information than just sharing my photos. I think most people use some caution in doing this. I think that it is the public opportunities such as the paper that many people do hesitate for or consider.

    I believe that regardless of which side of the issue you take, the most important thing to do is educate your children about stranger awareness, online safety and what to do if confronted.

    While the Internet certainly makes your child more accessible, one thing to keep in mind is that according to U.S. Department of Justice statistics a child is more likely to be abducted by someone they know rather than a stranger. http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/...

    With all that said, I still can't make up my mind.
  • We don't worry about the family photos that we have online, because we use a site called DropShots. You can't find our page unless you know the exact URL: it isn't open to search engines, and you can't browse other users' pages. You can share your URL with friends and family, and as long as you don't go posting it all over the internet, nobody else is going to see it. (I think there may be a password-protect option too, but we've never bothered with it.)
  • This is a serious issue and in other popular websites like Parent Dish, some people are pretty militant on either side of the fence. One thing to consider for you dads out there, even if you are careful about privacy of your kids, we have discovered some of the biggest culprits are the moms.

    http://www.noodad.com/wp/instructions/your_wife...
  • I was deliberating this just recently, and your post has now made me password protect the video I just uploaded to Vimeo of my son. That said, Vimeo does have a decent way of password protecting individual files.
  • This is an important subject for me as well. My wife is very nervous about any mentions of her online. Even the preceding sentence would make her nervous. In contrast, I am all over the internet with photos, video, and words, words, words. This is why, when we thought of doing a podcast with my daughters, we hid their identity as well as mine. There's a really great Harry Potter podcast out there I did with my girls that nobody but my closest friends ever knew was linked to me. My 16 year old has a podcast that's been online for 3½ years and we've never shown her face or let people know who she is despite the fact that she wants to be a country music singer/songwriter and performs openly locally.

    It's a dangerous world and we as parents need to be careful. Whenever I see people's blogs filled with photos of their kids, complete with town names, school names, etc. I cringe. Within a few hours of my 16 yr old (then 13) setting up a Skype account without my knowledge, she was sex chatted by a pedophile. We must constantly be on guard to protect our children.

    Just because I have made the decision to be public, doesn't mean my wife or children have. When my daughter finally has some songs for sale, we'll pull the veil of privacy aside. It will be a big move that we won't take lightly, but we'll still keep the faces and names of our other children private and far from the public eye.

    Great article. Thanks.

    Douglas Cootey
    ☆ @TheLaughingImp/@DouglasCootey on Twitter
    ✍ The Splintered Mind - Overcoming AD/HD & Depression With Lots Of Humor And Attitude
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