This is an interesting thought.....and we have gotten thoughts in both ways as far as reactions. First let me say this: I do not judge anyone for making the choices to share their baby pictures online and I really in truly do enjoy looking at the ones you post.
That being said I also believe that we all need to make our own decisions based on what is best for our family.
For one thing my husband and I are over all pretty private people. If I know you and you ask I will be glad to share most anything with you, however I do not see the point in telling you unless you show honest interest.
While I am a Facebook user I also try not to say or post too much, we all have at least one person on our friends list guilty of sharing information (or gossip) that is no one else's business and yet there it is for the Facebook world to see. So here are a few reasons we decided that this was the bear choice for us and the privacy of our sweet girl.
1. Regardless of privacy settings facebook is not private. Shocker I know! But we had the feeling that even though we both cleared out our friends list and deleted anyone we didn't care to keep up with and that we didn't care if they even knew we had a baby facebook is not private. Part of this is while both my husband and I have only people on our friends list that we wouldn't mind showing pictures to it isn't private. We felt that us posting would make it ok for others to post and we didn't want to explain to people that we didn't want them posting without knowing their friends list and privacy settings. There is no reason distant friends of family that no one had seen in 15 years or even said more than happy birthday online to needs to know how cute and amazing my baby girl is.
2. The Internet is permanent. Yes there is a delete button but you don't know what happens between the time you post the picture and the time you delete it. Screen shots are possible for whatever reason, even accidently. A few months ago a friend posted a few pictures of herself with her young baby and I scrolled through them smiling. A few days later I was looking through my phone and saw I had somehow accidently saved one of those pictures to my phone. I deleted it but I am pretty sure I accidentally saved and deleted the phone without my friend ever knowing. If I can do that on accident what can someone do on purpose?
3. We want to respect her privacy. Growing up in a public world is so much different than when I was a kid. People...ANYONE can know much or little about her based on what I post. Facebook is like the tabloids of our friends list and we want to protect her from the limelight until she is old enough to make that decision on her own.
So there is our reasoning. We have gotten many mixed responses on this. From people asking what is wrong with her that we aren't posting pictures to the understanding friend that offered BEFORE taking our large group selfie to get one that didn't show baby E's face.
So as much as I would love to show her look of glee on her first Christmas or the confusing eating her first real food, or just the pure amazing perfect adorableness this is the decision we made and why.
