This baby’s privacy was exposed on LinkedIn. My dad was vigilant in protecting my privacy. He never allowed me to go anywhere without telling him first. And when I didn’t follow his instructions, there was hell to pay. Fathers who lead by example may be in short supply; however, they must still protect their babies’ privacy before anyone else. For as long as there have been humans, fathers have been the primary protectors of babies. Mothers may nurture and feed babies, but it’s up to the dads of the world to ensure their family looks for safety and security.
You may take this for granted in the concrete jungles of South Africa and elsewhere in the industrialised world. The more people in your “tribe” or group, the less privacy you can expect. And on a recent weekend retreat in Tsitsikama, Eastern Cape, I was introduced to the libertarian philosophy of the Consent Axiom, explained by Trevor Watkins:
I believe that the basis for successful human coexistence can be reduced to a single statement, a single concept. This statement is the Consent Axiom: No action without consent. This statement is as brief and uncompromising as the biblical 5th commandment, “Thou shalt not kill”. Like most 4 word sentences, some further elaboration is required for better understanding.
Trevor Watkin’s at TEDxPortElizabeth on the Consent Axiom
Your Baby’s Privacy is Important
Of course, a 1-year-old baby cannot give consent to its photo being published for everyone to see on LinkedIn. Therefore, it should not be published on any social networks. All parents must take the long-term view before posting family photos and protect their baby’s privacy like it’s their own. Nobody will post photos of their bank account statements, so why do you post photos of your children without their consent?
This morning, I stumbled across one of the many personal things people share on social media. A father, Patrick Korie, shared his baby’s 1-year photo on LinkedIn, asking people to “wish” her happy birthday. This baby’s privacy was exposed on LinkedIn. The likes and comments were streaming onto the cute photo of the baby playing with the laptop. I decided NOT to like this and wished I could ask him this question, “Why do you abuse your baby’s privacy on social media?”
The idea of wanting your friends or co-workers to wish your baby a happy birthday seems innocent enough until you realise that the baby never asked for this attention. It may seem cute to share random baby photos online, and yet it is also dangerous, to say the least. The fact is that predators and pedophiles have used the Internet to find new victims much more easily than before the Internet. The sheer amount of child pornography and child sexual abuse material hosted online in the United States alone is staggering.
Reminder to Parents about Privacy
Parents, please stop sharing your baby photos on social media. When they grow up, they will not be happy with all this exposure unless you want them to become attention-seeking reality-show watching crybabies with low self-esteem. A baby’s privacy is not more or less important than that of an adult; it’s of equal importance. Please remember, and we will keep reminding you to avoid this stupidity. Someone once told me, the way you know you’ve raised your children successfully, is when they don’t want to be famous!
A final point I want to share is that exposing your baby’s privacy on LinkedIn and other social media is like grooming them for the attention-seeking behaviour that has become so common among the new generation of teenagers who grew up with smartphones. The rise of reality TV came first, and now people are sharing their most intimate lives on social media, mostly for attention, and sometimes for income as influencers.
This article raises an interesting issue. If you cannot get a person’s consent because they are too young, or disabled in some way, then their guardian becomes responsible for that consent. What principles should guide the guardian in their choice? The most obvious one is “Do no harm”. For less simple cases, the principle should be “What decision would you make for yourself” in such a case? Most of us would object to photos of us being published on the internet without our permission. The guardian should come to the same conclusion.
I agree with Ramon that parents should be cautious about publishing pictures of their children widely on the unrestricted internet. There are plenty of privacy controlled facilities for sharing family pics, such as Google+ and Photo.