I love Instagram. It’s like one giant, live inspiration board offering glimpses into the mostly pretty bits of millions of people’s lives. I love scrolling through the images in my feed. It’s my queue-waiting, tram-riding, stolen-moment default. I double-click scores of photos each day, sending likes to people I know and many that I don’t. That’s the good thing about Instagram. You feel like you’re on friendly terms with people you may never meet. You witness their happy moments and are privy to captured details that may never have made it to film in pre-digital days.

It’s these widely shared little details that create a kind of instant intimacy between the photographer and the viewer. When you’ve seen someone’s lunch or favourite shoes or cute kid on a regular basis, you tend to feel closer to them. They seem like a familiar friend (even if you never meet them!) as you share the day-to-day pieces of their life. You chat and like. They post more  photos and so it goes.

It feels like everyone’s doing it this way. Instagram has grown to more than 100 million users and for the people I know, it’s the favourite place for image sharing and chatter. While a few people I know have private Instagram accounts, many don’t because they love the social aspect of the platform. They want people to see their photos and they love the interaction and community that brings.

That said, because we’re navigating fresh waters and Instagram has only been around since 2010 there are issues that are only now coming to the forefront.

Is it really OK?

Many Instagram users are freely posting pics of their kids online for all to see. They’re posting them alongside other beautiful images and gathering followers by the day, (people who are interested in lovely people and beautiful things one would hope.) But this is different from sharing your photo albums with people who come around for a cup of tea. It’s pushing things out to the world at large (unless you have your account set to private.)

That might be fine if you’ve taken a beautiful image of a cinnamon scroll you just baked and want the world to see. But how about if you’ve captured a shot of your adorable child and posted that instead? Are we okay with the wide exposure that image may receive? Are you cool if people screenshot and save it? Download it? Republish it elsewhere? Are you okay if those images float around online indefinitely on other sites you can’t retrieve them from? These are worrying thoughts.

Generally people post images of their kids for other lovely, like-minded people to admire. But a public Instagram account is open slather for all. Other users (strangers! possibly non-lovely!) can view them, too.  They might find you by your username, by the explore option on Instagram, by a hashtag you’ve applied to your photo or via a friend of a friend or a company you follow on Instagram. And then there they are, viewing your adorable child.

Issues of consent

I’m not saying this is necessarily an insidious thing. Most people are pretty awesome. What I am wondering is if all parents who post photos of their kids publicly on Instagram are cool with these strangers’ eyes? Is it a case of what you don’t know won’t hurt you?

The other things I wonder about is whether it’s okay for parents to assume that their child consents to their image being shared, and whether it’s up to parents to manage their child’s online image as they see fit. Today’s two-year-old wandering in a daisy filled meadow or three-year-old dressed as a dapper gent may be tomorrow’s surly teenager seeking to control their digital footprint in their own way. They may not want hundreds of photos of themselves growing up in the public domain. Or they may be totally fine with it and never think to question it. Each child will have their own thoughts and response.

When we post photos of our kids online we’re often assuming their consent and we’re controlling their digital image. Sometimes we’ll say things like, “I asked my five-year-old and she loves it! She said yes!”. But is it really okay for parents to assume our kids will always be happy with it? And are we really prepared for the trouble it may bring?

What happens when your pics go main-stream

Recently images of Kate Oliver’s cutely dressed sleeping kids went viral and jumped from Instagram into the mainstream media. The photos were clever and creative. Many comments I read on Facebook praised Kate as a great mum. Kate created the shots for her own family and friends to enjoy. It probably came as a complete shock to her when the images appeared elsewhere. Not only were the photos debated fairly widely but Kate’s character and parenting were called into question and her kids became public fodder. I’m sure that was never her intention and I send her virtual hugs. From something cute came something that must have been really hard to deal with.

Similarly, images from the Instagram feed of Kordale and Kaleb (along with their gorgeous kids) went viral globally a week or so ago (above). The shots sparked debate via media outlets and commenters discussing race, family, same sex relationships and more. It was their cute family Instagram feed that prompted all the discussion and some really important topics were raised (and of course some ugliness ensued, too.)  I’m guessing that Kordale and Kaleb had no idea the images of their family would be so widely shared and jump from Instagram to big media sites.

There are lots of other cases too. The baby and the bulldog made it to Buzzfeed and a heap of other sites, and was shared by hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of readers. Theo and Beau, another cute tot and pup duo received the same coverage (here they are on the Daily Mail!) And there are more popping up all the time.

Interesting Instagram feeds are great viral fodder for big websites and they’ll continue to be mined for content. This is obviously a big problem in terms of family privacy. But even for those parents who escape this kind of viral attention we need to consider how our kids are going to feel about their image being so widely available and whether it’s really okay for us to assume consent in the first place.

We’re spending a lot of time trying to teach kids about online safety, but are we ignoring our own potentially risky behaviour? Yes, our cute kids make for a fantastic, ever-growing Instagram feed, but is it really okay to share them around? Are you sure that your future 15-year-old will be happy to have their life online? If your shots were to go viral like these, would you be ready for the attention or possible criticism that could bring? So many questions!

What are your thoughts about sharing photos of kids on Instagram?

Read more about online safety for families on Kidspot:

• Our kids are doing what on Instagram?
• Internet safety for kids
• Ask.fm: the anti-social media site

More reading about kids’ online privacy:

• Hacker exposes big Facebook security flaw from The Huffington Post
• Do we reveal too much about our kids online? from PBS Parents
• Facebook parenting is destroying our children’s privacy from CNN