Concerns over posting on social media

Sorry, this is a bit of a long post. I’ve always used Facebook and Instagram and was fine with posting pictures of my son on there until recently. I don’t really use Facebook much any more but I did announce the birth of my baby with his full name and a picture and so did other family members. Since then (my baby is 4 months) a few other pics have been shared by family or friends. I only post to my Instagram account which is private and recently I’ve gone through my friends list and really cut it down so I’m comfortable with who is seeing his picture. It occurred to me recently that this is pointless if other family members are posting to their Facebook as they’ve got hundreds of friends who I don’t know. I’ve also started to feel really uncomfortable about his photo being shared online. 1. My mother-in-law has used his photo as her profile picture which I find odd although I know she’s just a proud granny. There are lots of comments from her friends - people I’ve never encountered. 2. My mum has used his picture as her cover photo and again people I’ve never met are commenting things like ‘he looks like his daddy’. They don’t know me or my husband so I find this weirdly familiar. This weekend I told my mum and sister that I’m no longer comfortable with his photo being shared online - they think I’m being over the top, which I knew they would. They over share and love posting photos so are disappointed but I explained how there are hundreds of people we don’t know seeing him and I don’t like it. Also I’m a teacher and don’t like parents of the kids at school seeing my personal life (a friend/colleague has lots of school parents as friends so they can see the pics she has shared). I told my sister this and how I like to keep a professional image separate from my personal life and she laughed at me and said she doesn’t see my problem. She asked what I wanted to do about family pictures eg exclude him from photos, cover his face etc and I said I suppose it’s ok but I don’t want photos of him exclusively being posted. I don’t really like the idea of his photo being on their accounts at all but am finding it really tricky to navigate. Also, kind of a side bar but there is an extended family member who I no longer have contact with because they are just vile on my mum and sister’s accounts so I know she will see photos they post and I just hate the thought of her seeing photos of my son. It’s stressing me out and I don’t know what to do. I’m trying to enforce what I’m comfortable with but my family have completely different views and think I’m being stupid. Rather than delete the pics my sister posted, she edited the privacy so only she could see them even though I asked for them to be deleted. I just think their obsession with sharing everything is overriding what I want.

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Oh my gosh I'm the same. I made my Instagram private and got rid of half my followers. I love posting on there as a sort of journal and I don't share it to Facebook as FB is full of work connections etc but family are sharing pics I've privately sent them and it's so awkward knowing how to address it as I too feel uncomfortable. You are not alone we just love our babies and want to protect them 🤍

You’re not being silly at all. I don’t share any photos of my son on either accounts. I told everyone they weren’t to post it either. Especially with the amount of hacking happening! I would knuckle down and demand they take photos down. He’s your baby and you make the rules. If they don’t listen… could you report them to Facebook?

I’ve told all family and friends not to put stuff on social media because don’t know whose looking and I’m not taking that risk plus I don’t want people to know what I get up to 🤣. I also used to work in a nursery and the horror stories I heard about pictures and social media so big no from me. I do have a pic on peanut but you can’t see her face but that’s it.

Never posted my baby on social media. Even though my own profiles are locked down I wouldn’t post her there either. When they ask about family pics just tell them they don’t need to post them, why is your child’s safety online less important than Sandra from down the road seeing ur family in a pic on Facebook? People’s attitude towards social media is insane these days.

I'm so sorry your family aren't respectful and doing this, it's horrible 😔 Just a thought and I don't want it to cause any more issues for you so you can totally ignore me on this but are the photos your family sharing, ones you initially are sending them? If so, when they ask for more photos, can you politely say you're not willing to do that until they respect your wishes on the photos not being posted everywhere. I hope you're ok x

My husband and I decided not to post our daughter on social media unless her faces the other way Another way you could approach it with them explaining that when they post photos of themselves or of your little one , that Facebook and Instagram use those photos for their artificial intelligence They keep a copy of the photos on Facebook and you’re basically giving them permission to use it whatever they wish to posting on there It’s in the Terms and conditions when you put an account on Just be firm and say you originally thought it was okay, but now you’re not okay with it and they need to respect your wishes as it’s your child and their privacy

Adding to that if you found any more photos went on there we had to say that supervise contact would happen and phones would be kept out of the room when you visit in the future

@Kellie I took my mum’s phone and deleted her ones for her because she’s useless with technology, so I know they’re gone, although I reckon she’ll forget and post family photos with him in, in the future. Although I don’t care for Facebook any more, I feel like I need to keep it so I can monitor this now.

@Lauren We have a google photos album that we just share with family so they can see all of our photos of our baby, and they can post their pics of him in there too. Some of the photos they posted on Facebook are ones we posted in there. My sister was the only one who hadn’t actually signed in to this, so I helped her do that so she can keep up to date with them. To me, it’s much more personal as we are sharing his life with them and don’t need some randomer to be following his life.

That's a lovely idea and I can see why you'd say it's much more personal. Maybe create a new album with all those photos and add new ones but only share it with your partner for now?

There is an option on OneDrive I think to stop people downloading but they can see them :)

Thanks for the support ladies. It’s made me feel like I’m not being melodramatic after all and I think I just need to make it clear to my family that I’m serious about this and try not to care about how they’re judging me.