Guest Article: Posting Your Kids Is Good, Actually

Keturah Hickman disagrees with me about keeping pictures of your family off the internet

Not long ago, I wrote against influencers who turn their families into content. Keturah Hickman disagrees: in this guest post, she argues that keeping your kids’ faces out of the public domain makes the world even less child-friendly.

What do you think? Tell us in the comments. And don’t forget to follow Keturah at The Social Porcupine.

Posting Your Kids Is Good, Actually

by Keturah Hickman

My father is an activist for prison reformation. He’s a simple man with a lot of haters. He has a lot of fans, too, because of his down-to-earth sincerity, and because he freely, fearlessly shares pictures of his twelve children, usually all of us huddled together with wide open, toothy grins. There’s no gimmick. We’re just a real family who are concerned about legal injustice, and it shows in our smiles. 

Growing up I was known by my smile among strangers. Sometimes it was because of my grandfather — a traveling evangelist. And then it was because of my father. Now, I continue to be recognized in public alongside my husband, who is known for his “vagabond” travel writing. 

I never thought to resent my father or grandfather for determining my “digital footprint”. There was a brief spell where I thought it would be nice to be known for my merit alone, but I got over myself, and reverted to being okay with being the daughter, or granddaughter, or wife of xyz. It’s okay to be the credibility of another’s glory. A man’s family is always going to be the testament of his character.

Nevertheless, many people don’t feel as kindly as I do when it comes to sharing pictures of children. There’s a lot of talk about a child’s right to consent, allowing children to establish their own digital footprint, and protecting children from online pedophilia. 

‘Sharenting’ isn’t new. But social media has amplified it by giving it a platform. In the old days a grandmother might be on the train,  pull out her pocket photo album, and say “Do you want to see pictures of my grandchildren?” Her fellow passenger would politely say yes, and try to attentively listen to what Dorothy and Richard and Harry all liked to do, their favorite toys, their school shenanigans and scores, and how they were all so sweet and well-behaved — even Richard! Now it’s all this, but online and to more than one stranger. 

It’s understandable that there’s a level of concern — but is it fair to say that parents shouldn’t post anything about their children? And that if parents do, they are abusive or enabling potential abuse? Thinking like this might eventually lead to parents who overshare (we would first need a legal definition for what it actually looks like to overshare) personal information and pictures of their children becoming targets of CPS.

Mary Harrington writes about digital modesty in her essay Behind Closed Doors. She shares:

Digital modesty is a general disposition: an effort, however difficult it is in practice, to avoid any form of online self-presentation that veers into spectacle.

Understood thus, such a practice of modesty implies much more than “privacy”, which most understand today as something conferred by laws, conventions, rules, and rights. The kind of digital modesty able to hold space for intimate family life has to be more: a deliberate practice of self-veiling, against constant pressure in the other direction.

But without such a practice, there is no intimate domain that can’t become sponcon; no relationship that can’t be strip-mined for clout. And relationships thus mined are quickly exhausted. An economy of total exposure would be one of total alienation.

‘Sharenting,’ if not a danger, can be something of a spectacle even when the child’s face is blurred. It’s no more modest than a nipple cover. Often such photos are still accompanied by plenty of personal details. There is little thought put into such posts other than hiding the child’s face. It’s a trend after all, and trends — such as fashion trends — are rarely worried about modesty. In other words, trends are rarely concerned with humility or conserving propriety and boundaries. It’s more about peer pressure while “virtue signaling” to friends that you’re doing the  “safe” thing for your child.

No matter how you decide to post, you must determine what standards you will use for yourself and your family, and these standards should be based upon virtue rather than fear. Just as the topic of what is modest is complex, so will be the method in which you post online. 

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the world hates children so much they don't want them visible in any sphere and that's why they fear-psyop parents out of posting pictures of their kids' faces online. like who cares if someone has devious AI plans for your kids' face? The world needs to see your child's smile

At the end of August, I had posted the above on X, and within 24 hours, I was being attacked from all sides. From the Christian right: “You’re a pedo-enabler.” From the queer anime avatar left: “Children have a right to privacy.” The post generated over 2.9 million views.

Over the last decade, there's been a growing trend to blur your child's face before posting their pictures online, and the trend seems to have amplified post-COVID. Those who aren't with the program are subjected to accusative peer pressure to desist from exploiting their children, or enabling pedophiles.

At the same time, there seems to be an ongoing, not-so subtle attack against families in our culture. Birth control and Child-free, Pet Friendly bars are the new norm. It’s not cool to kiss babies anymore — not even a politician can do it without being categorized with Biden as a pervert. Children aren’t automatically welcome at weddings or social functions anymore — often they are explicitly not invited. It’s assumed everyone has — or wants — a babysitter. Nobody wants to see a child’s face on a plane, at a restaurant . . . or online.

The trend is even hitting Christians. Despite scripture — “Don’t hide your light under a basket”; “Do not be afraid”; “Preach through example, not word”; and “Do not send the children away from me [Jesus]”  — Christians families are increasingly  adapting to progressive lingo: “Well, yes, but it’s important that my child gets to consent to how much of a digital footprint they have. It’s not up to me to decide who they are.” 

But parents don’t save decisions for their children to later “consent” to: they educate them, clothe them, and provide them with toys, chores and interests. They tell them where to go, restrict their movement by grounding them, and teach them how to think about gender, religion and politics. They might let them have a sip of booze, or pierce their ears, or circumcise them, or make other major medical decisions without their consent.

It’s one thing if you’re in a volatile line of work and have to keep everything about every member of your family classified. But if that’s not you, it’s cowardly and ignorant to think you can post whatever you want except your child’s face and that they're actually protected from anything. They’re not. The only thing that is happening is the world is being further denied the presence of children.

The “I’ve Had It” Podcast nailed it on the head when they implied how weird it is to post a picture of your baby at all if you’re just going to cover it up with an emoji. “It’s performative,” they said. “Why do you think your baby is so important?” After all, babies (and toddlers) basically look nondescript to strangers. 

Ironically, there's no consensus protocol for what it means to exploit your child's personality or privacy. Last year, Deutsche Telekom released a short video called "A Message From Ella: Without Consent." In an emotionally distraught voice, a digitally created older version of a child named Ella shares the horrors that await in her future because of her parents' indiscretion. Her identity is stolen, she’s constantly harassed with memes that depict her younger self, and she’s plagued by AI-generated deepfake porn clones. “My digital footprint will follow me around for the rest of my life,” she weeps. No real numbers or statistics are offered. Like all propaganda, it’s solely designed to elicit fear and neurotic paranoia, and never speaks to any actual online dangers posed by posting a happy pic of your kid smiling.

Various Christian influencers have come out with similar content against sharing images of their children online. In July, host of the Blaze TV podcast Relatable Allie Beth Stuckey posted a video to her various social media platforms in which she shared her reasons for not sharing pictures of her children: to protect their privacy, not give them a digital footprint, hide them from potential creeps, not treat the relationship with her children as “content material.” But despite her principled stance on the issue, she nevertheless shares personal details of her children when she posts images of them with their faces distorted. Furthermore, regardless of her explanation for not posting her children, Stuckey shares pictures of other people’s families, and heavily endorses “We Heart Nutrition,” a supplement website run by Christian mom and wife who claims she can be trusted because she has four kids, who she names and pictures on her website.

The narrative Stuckey — and others like her — have bought into is fundamentally neurotic. Parents should blur their kids faces in photos for their “safety,” they’re told, but parents are also told that — again for their “safety” — kids should have phones, which they can almost certainly use to take selfies and post online (or if their parents have restricted which apps they can use, AirDrop their selfies to one of their friends who can post them). A helicopter mom will viciously dogpile a parent who doesn’t hide their child’s face in a picture, but allows her own kid to play his violin at the state fair in front of several hundred people recording him with their iPhones. Afterwards, he’ll go back home and spend hours with his anonymous gamer buddies on Fortnite or Call of Duty.

At the same time, discussion of child modeling, child artists and child actors is far more rare on the topic of child safety. Public surveillance cameras — both publicly and privately owned and easily tampered with by random people — are never mentioned. And despite the fact that 42 percent of children have a phone by the time they’re ten, and the number increases to 91 percent by age fourteen, there are no firm, agreed upon guidelines, other than blurring the child’s face, from any official, relevant body, for how to post about your children in a way that's not exploitative or dangerous. 

There are certainly dangers associated with kid-posting, especially if your child has a phone and can be easily solicited. "Happy Birthday" posts, sharing things that your children said to each other (even if you don't share their first names), naming their school or homeschool curriculum, and asking for advice about health or developmental issues they have in public or private Facebook forums are just a few of the real details a predator is going to remember and use if they want to traffic your child. 

A predator doesn't care about your child's face — they want your child’s body. Sharing anything about your kid is enough for a predator to begin their work, but the only way to keep them from having a digital footprint is by posting absolutely nothing, not even the fact you have a child. 

Blurring your kids’ faces prevents little in the long run. A blurred image can even be unblurred. Christopher Paul Neil, a Canadian teacher, used a swirling app to obscure his face before sharing explicit photos of himself with boys. Authorities were able to reconstruct the images when they discovered which filter he'd used, leading to his arrest and imprisonment in 2008. As technology advances, it’s a gamble to think your child's face is safe because it's covered by an emoji, or distorted by a filter.

Those of us who love children have to ask ourselves — is there a psyop at play? Who is it, specifically, who wants the joy of a child’s smiling face erased from the public sphere? Is there an online agenda against families that even crunchy red pill helicopter mom-fluencers have fallen prey to?

Hannah Neeleman, co-founder of the homemaking Instagram page Ballerina Farm, is one of the few mothers out there sharing the faces of her eight children with the world — there's nothing she could try to say that her children's smiles wouldn’t better disclose. She freely posts pictures of her kids, while allowing them extremely minimal access to devices and screens for personal use.  

And she’s hated for it. How dare she not allow her children to play video games or have technological devices? How dare she keep her children separated from the world? How dare she post pictures of her children — how dare she determine their identity, gender, and personas? 

How dare she show her children, for all the world to see?

Countless young women — friends of mine — follow Hannah Neeleman and are inspired by the happy faces of her children. They too want beautiful families, and will have them because of her example.

Two other X influencers Bernadine Bluntly, mother to six, and Bug Hall, father to five, are two more examples of families choosing not to fall for the trend despite backlash and CPS threats. While some question whether or not a parent who is in the limelight ought to share pictures of their children online, none other than Bug Hall, former child-actor who starred in the “Little Rascals”, is saying a whole lot by posting wholesome pictures of his own children. Many others in the prolife movement are coming to realize that if you are passionate to say, a picture does more good than a thousand words. 

Ultimately, there's no pleasing people who hate families. They don’t want to see your kids playing. They don’t want your kids smiling for a picture. Instead, they want everyone to be afraid, masked, and invisible. Especially children. 

The spirit of the trend isn’t new. Only about twenty years ago it was “fingerprinting your kids makes them safe.” According to 2006  FBI archives, having their fingerprints could help you find a wandering toddler. All the moms fell for it — they wanted their kids to be safe, after all! There were free finger-printing booths at fairs and events to promote “child safety.” Mothers who started asking, “How does this actually make my kid safer?” were belittled and advised to “trust the experts.”  Sure, the authorities could finger-print a child if they were murdered — but the finger-print wasn’t going to make them magically “safer” and alive. Eventually mothers began refusing to allow their child to be finger-printed when they realized it could be used to track or incriminate their kids if they were involved in crime.

Many will get through all this, and then respond, “Yes, but … AI.” However, AI will possibly put even prostitutes out of business. It doesn't need real children to make AI Porn. It is only a further fear tactic influenced by power of the “unknown”. In a world where everything might become AI generated, it will become only more essential to have real pictures of real children for the general populace who will only have deepfake images available. 

There’s a pertinent passage in Colossians: Whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men. If you feel called to protect your child’s extreme digital modesty to not post anything, remember to be consistent and don’t post anything whatsoever — no blurred pictures, no  tidbits of conversation, no birthdays, no personal details about their health or schooling. If you are going to share pictures, share them freely, and include their beautiful smiles. You can still practice digital modesty by posting only wholesome pictures, and sharing them sparingly. If you want to “protect” them, remember that you only have so much power — and you have absolutely zero rights in public spaces with how your child might be photographed or video because of the First Amendment. Your child has a footprint in the world, and as much as you try to shelter him or her, the lines between their physical and digital footprints are the only truly blurring a parent has no control over. 

Unfortunately, today, innocence is disallowed. There’s no more room for the roaming child. A child at play is worrisome. Fear is based, fear is progressive, fear is safe. And with fear we’ll never have to see pictures of happy families again. But if we lay aside fear, we might be able to strike a modest balance that will do both us and the world a little good through the smiles of our children.

Keturah Hickman is the founder of the Living Room Academy, an immersive program that equips and empowers women to be well-rounded community members. She is traveling the United States with her husband for their "Falling Back in Love with America" series; she also writes about what it means to be a woman with third-world values in the 21st century on Substack at “The Social Porcupine.”