Hi all!

This post has been a long time coming. I know I don’t have to explain myself, but I wanted to help other parents who may be on the fence about the same thing. Since we had Abigail, my husband and I have discussed this topic. He has never been comfortable sharing her online, especially on platforms like Instagram and X, where anybody can see her. I have always felt quite content discussing my breastfeeding and first-time parenting experiences on here. I wanted to help other mothers who were struggling. I also love having the first year of her life documented, so I can reflect back on it. However, now that she is a toddler, I don’t want to feature her photographs online any longer. The one exception are images where her face isn’t visible. I have linked two videos about the dark side of family vlogging. I don’t vlog but I know of many others that do. You can check them out here and here. Without further ado, let’s get into it.

1.) NO CONSENT

Abigail is too young to understand anything that is happening at the moment, but one day, she might resent the fact that I put up images of her on the Internet for strangers to see, without her consent. I try to place myself in her shoes, imagining how I would feel if my mother did the same thing when I was young. I just don’t want to risk potentially embarrassing her in the future. I recently heard about a successful blogger, who documented literally everything about her daughter’s life, until the girl turned nine and asked her mother to stop. Her mother refused, as she had gained so much popularity and income from exploiting her child. This is just awful and leads me to my second point.

2.) EXPLOITATION 

Let me be completely honest. I am not making money off my blog yet. I feature ads, but I cannot receive an income until I reach a certain amount of revenue. I am in no position to exploit my child financially, even if I wanted to. I know a lot of family vloggers get huge amounts of views, purely because their children are in them, but what would happen if the child no longer wanted a camera in their face? What would those vloggers do then? It just feels so wrong to me. I don’t ever want to get paid because Abigail’s face is plastered all over my social media accounts. Having said that, I do plan to continue writing about motherhood, but I can do that without featuring her face or revealing anything too personal about her life. I just want to talk about motherhood in general. 

3.) THE DARK SIDE 

The majority of us look at cute pictures of children and think ‘aww’, but there are a lot of sick individuals out there, who think differently. Once an image is uploaded to the Internet, you cannot remove it completely. On more public social media accounts, like Instagram and YouTube, predators can search via hashtags, or just in general, for photographs of kids. They can save them, sharing them around to other predators on The Dark Web. I don’t want to sound judgmental, but a month ago, a creepy looking guy started liking pictures of Abi on Instagram. It freaked me out so much. Who was this person? Why was he liking pictures of my kid? It sucks that we live in a world like this, but we have to be mindful and intelligent. These days more than ever, predators are exposed to so much content featuring children. Some children even have their own Instagram accounts, set up by the parents. As a parent, I want to do anything I can to protect my daughter. I don’t want to be providing fodder for these creeps. 

To anybody reading, I ask that you respect and understand our wishes as parents. I will keep the posts and images already uploaded on this website, but I won’t be showing Abigail‘s face moving forward. My husband and I are in agreeance that sharing things occasionally on Facebook is fine. We both have our privacy settings turned on to the max, trusting our friends and family members on there. I have deleted all her images on X and Instagram, as well as her highlight reel. I feel so much happier since doing this. I don’t want any parent reading to think I am calling them bad parents if they share their children on social media. I am not judging you at all. You have to do what feels right for your family and I completely understand wanting to share the love of your life. I just hope this post might give you something to think about. I didn’t even think about consent, exploitation or predators, until just over a month ago. 

Thank you so much for reading. I welcome all comments and feedback below, provided it is respectful. 

Peace & Love xoxo