My view on this subject contains no judgement to any parents out there who post pictures of their children on social media channels or any other outlets, we each are free to choose what’s right for our own family. I never even thought twice about it myself and would always be snapping pics of my girls and the fun we’d get up to. It was nice for my distant family and friends to see too, as we live so far from them. However, it was when Willow started getting older and developing such a strong personality that I started to get this uneasy feeling if ever I shared personal images of her; it was my social account, not hers. In fact, my girls didn’t know anything about that world. I realised that in seeing someone’s face often, you feel you know them. The thing is, out of all my social media contacts, only a small handful were lucky enough to have a personal relationship with my bright-eyed wonderfully wild little girls. Then on a more serious note, it was for their protection too, for their privacy and safety as once a photo is on the internet, it is there forever and travels far and wide very quickly (there’s also awful examples of children’s photos being used without their parents even knowing (!) in both innocent and sadly, not-so innocent contexts. I didn’t even mull it over or over-think it when this thought came, which is a rarity for me, I can spend far too long choosing which toothpaste to get! But this just felt organic to me, time to create a little change. Without a second thought, without telling anyone I simply started only using images that contained their back-profiles, their silhouettes or simply covered their faces with one of those emoji things. It felt healthier, safer and more conscious. I was still able to share my memories, write my captions which I loved doing, all whilst respecting her privacy a little more. You know the BEST thing about it? It made me actually connect with friends and family, directly. I’d send messages to people with a picture of the girls and what we were up to and not lazily hope they knew her through my social media channel. I took a social media break during the summer of 2021, which is when the idea for this blog was born because I realised how much healthier and happier I was without it…but I missed writing (I was always annoyingly running out of space on my captions anyway). So here I am with a family blog, but no perfect family picture to go with it. I intend to keep the (facial) focus on Rich an I as we are consenting adults, but don’t worry it won’t just be pictures of our exhausted smiles…I’ll throw in some pictures of my food and some coastal scenery too 😉
thelivingfamily.blog 