The Tantrum: Should You Put Your Kids’ Photos on the Internet? Part III

(This is the Tantrum, in which Dadwagon’s writers debate one question over the course of a week. For previous Tantrums, click here.)

Any reader who has been following these Tantrum threads–we know that there are thousands of you, and by “thousands” I mean “possibly dozens”–is starting to recognize my role: that of the appalled scold. Well, I’m staying true to type. I’m not posting a picture of my child here. In fact, you regulars may notice that I don’t even use his name, even though I admit that a little investigation could figure it out easily enough.

Two reasons. One, the Internet is, pretty much, forever. Once a picture gets out into the world, it can’t be un-got-out. Call me controlling, but I don’t like the idea that someone could take that photo and alter it, deface it, place his face in a pile of poo. The genie can’t get back into the bottle, and the smoke won’t go back in the radio. In the most extreme case–let’s say, God forbid, we somehow end up part of a news story–I’d like to avoid handing everyone one of those snapshots that end up in the New York Post.

Second, he can’t consent. No, a child’s permission is not something to be asked for: I am (as we all learn to say) the dad, and what I say goes. But that won’t be true forever, which brings us back to my first point: If he doesn’t want pictures out there when he’s old enough to have decided, I don’t want to have made that decision for him.

But I’ve granted myself one exception, and I know that it has the potential to blow up. I have, in fact, posted my share of baby pictures on Facebook, for relatives and friends to see. I tell myself this is a closed community, one where only people I’ve approved can see what I’ve uploaded, and that’s true. But I also know that half those people—current and former colleagues, freelance writers I’ve worked with—are employees of media companies. If that news story ever does erupt, they know where to look, and they will. Ulp.

In the meantime, I offer one other solution: go analog. Yes, I take plenty of digital pictures of my kid, but I also shoot him, often and far too expensively, with a Polaroid camera. Because a Polaroid picture has no negative and no digital file, it is entirely contained. If you don’t scan it, and you keep the only copy, that’s it. It’s yours. It can’t escape onto the Internet or onto the AP wire. (Polaroid itself has quit the film business, but a new manufacturer has jumped in, and Fuji makes instant film as well.) It’s pricey but also very pretty, and I am slowly but surely assembling a sweet little album of his first couple of years that is entirely sui generis. It was good enough for parents in 1970, and although you can’t e-mail it to the grandparents, it’s mighty nice.