It’s pretty much a rite of passage for anyone who has a kid. From the very moment you pop out your baby, before your stitches have healed and your milk comes in, you’re plagued with the age-old question new parents have been dealing with since the dawn of Facebook: Should I post my child — and, more specifically, my child’s face — on social media?
Since you want to Do Parenting Right, you think, “No. No way. My offspring deserves privacy and autonomy and safety, dammit.” But then you realize parenting has overtaken every moment of your life and your entire camera roll. So, how TF are you supposed to get that like-induced dopamine hit without posting your little cherub to the grid?
Faced with such a tough moral dilemma, you decide to do the only thing that makes sense in your sleep-deprived, desperate-for-validation, nursery-rhyme-riddled brain: You post a pic with an emoji slapped directly over your kid’s face. There! Voilà! You beat the system!
It doesn’t matter whether it’s a heart, a gif, or — creepiest of all — the actual baby face emoji. You figure this way, you get the best of both worlds. You hide your kid’s mug but still get some attention and let people know, “Hey, I’m doing the hardest job in the world! Praise me!”
And while sure, I completely understand where you’re coming from, I’m sooo over it. I don’t know if it’s because I myself am a sleep-deprived mom whose threshold for bullshit and lame Instagram posts has reached an all-time low, but nothing infuriates me more than seeing a baby, toddler, or kid with a sticker crudely slapped over their face.
I hate it. I hate you. And I hate your baby. Way harsh, right? Hear me out!
The Case For Keeping Your Kids’ Faces Off Social Media
Again, it makes total sense to want to keep your kids’ identities off social media. Which hard-hitting reason should we address first? The fact that they didn’t consent to becoming content (and even if they did, they’re children, so can they truly give consent)? The unknown future of tech? The sheer safety factor? I mean, hi, there’s a bunch of weirdos and group texts full of people who didn’t like you in high school out there. How safe *is* your child when you post them online?
Honestly, all great cases for not uploading your kid to social. You want your child to pave their own way in this world, dammit, and you don’t want them to be the topic of frenemy brunch conversations.
But if that’s the case, shouldn’t you not post anything about your kid at all? Not even the fact that you’re pregnant or how many weeks you are along. Not their name, their birthdate, or their assigned gender at birth. When you post an emoji-faced baby, your fans and followers still know you have a kid. They still know (generally) how old they are. They still know what milestones they’re hitting, what city they live in, their general build, and what they do for fun.
The only thing lurkers don’t know is the color of their eyes, the shape of their nose, and whether or not the baby is actually cute. It’s like putting a pillowcase over someone’s head; we know a person is there, but they kind of scare us and make us sad at the same time, ya know?
The Case For Posting About Your Offspring
Which brings me to why most moms say “fuck it” and post about their children, even though we’re all mama bears who would actually contemplate murder if someone so much as thought a negative thing about our babies.
The true reason we post our kids isn’t because we love them (we do), think they’re adorable (it’s true), want to brag about how advanced they are (obviously), or are simply super happy and proud to be their parents (duh). Nope! That’s not the reason!
We post our kids because we literally have nothing else to post about. Unless you want to give up social media entirely, you’re SOL. It’s the reason people who want to protect their kids’ identities post about them with an emoji face anyway: Our children are basically our lives and take up every goddamn second of our existence. What else could we possibly post about? The few hours of brainless TV we get to watch after 7 pm bedtime rolls around? The semi-annual date night we get with our significant other, where we go to a mid-tier restaurant and try to think of things to talk about besides our kids? Our online shopping addiction?
Even if we have adult hobbies other than binge-watching and reading, we indulge so rarely that it doesn’t come close to sustaining the grid or algorithm. Desperate times, people. So we try to ignore the guilt and post our kids’ cute little smiles to the masses anyway because we’ve already sold our souls to the social media devil, and it’s only so long before our offspring do the same. Right?
The Only Solution That Makes Any Sense At All
If the thought of not posting your kid seems impossible, but posting their face feels very “Bad Mom,” there’s one obvious solution: Be like Mindy and only upload skillfully chosen pics that hide your kids’ faces. Them with their backs turned to you. Just their little hands. Their ponytail flapping in the wind ahead of you as you run through a field together (or whatever parents who don’t believe in screen time do).
Not only does it give a very mysterious, artsy Tumblr vibe, but it also lets you brag about your child whilst keeping their identities somewhat under wraps. It’s the best of both worlds, people!
The truth is, we all know the best thing to do is just not post about our children at all. But that would mean trying to rewire our brains from over a decade of messages that say social media influence is everything. We’re conditioned to seek validation from likes, comments, and shares. We crave the dopamine hit that comes with every notification. And to be honest, sometimes the only way we feel seen as parents is by sharing the little moments that make up our chaotic lives.
So, if you really want to protect your kids while still scratching the sharing itch, do it with a touch of creativity and a dash of privacy. Show off your little one’s outfit with their face turned. Capture the joy or misery of a family outing without giving away their identity by just posting their silhouette.
Whatever you do, don’t just slap an emoji over their head and expect me to like it. What am I even liking? The fact that they’re alive? The onesie I can see popping out from under your random sticker choice? I don’t get it.
Ultimately, it’s lazy, it’s creepy, and I now envision your kid with the face of a fucking heart emoji. Not only will it haunt my dreams, but it’ll be awkward if I ever meet them and realize they’re actually a person and not a strange emoji-human hybrid.
Let’s move past the emoji trend and embrace a more thoughtful approach to showcasing our lives online. And if that feels like too much work, simply delete your account or sip the sharing Kool-aid. Sure, maybe I’m saying this because I wish I would have done the Mindy tactic from the start, but I already posted pics of my son, so now it’s too late. But honestly, anything is better than the emoji-face nightmares. Join us, won’t you?
