You'll never see my child's face

I became a dad recently, and I’m not publishing a bunch of photos of my kid like most parents do. Some people started asking me why, so here it is.

1. There’s no clear advantage in doing it

Like, really, besides fake internet points (from mostly bots at this point), why would I? Would I, my kid, or anyone I care about, get anything out of this?

If a friend or relative wants to see pictures, I can just send them some, or show them on my phone, or if they really care, they can visit.

I don’t see the point of sharing it with a coworker from 10 years ago who still happens to follow me on Instagram.

Of course, I could clean up followers and whatnot, but first: who does that? And second: that doesn’t really prevent anything. Keeping the account private doesn’t really do much, either.

Think about it: @example might be someone I know today, but they might delete their account, and then someone I don’t know creates another account with the same handle, or, more commonly, they might get their account “hacked”¹.

This point alone should be enough, honestly. But I have a couple more that I think stand out.

2. It’s not really my choice

I grew up in the ’90s. I’ve seen the pictures my parents took of me. While I’m sure they thought the pictures were perfectly fine and cute, I don’t, and I would definitely not want them online for everyone to see.

That is to say that I might think a picture is cute today, and my kid might disagree in the future.

If I just post them now, I’m not allowing them to choose in the future.

A study in the Italian Journal of Pediatrics (2024) found that 92% of U.S. children have images shared online before age 5, and by age 5 a typical child appears in ~1,000 publicly posted photos. Source.

That’s a thousand decisions made before they can even have an opinion.

The University of Southampton (2025) published the first empirical study directly linking sharenting to harm: 1 in 6 children whose parents share their images online experienced cyberbullying, harassment, identity theft, or contact from strangers. Source.

If my kid grows up and wants to share their life online, that’s their call. But dealing with the fallout of my decision shouldn’t be.

A thousand photos, and a one-in-six chance it goes wrong - all before they even understand what’s happening.

3. The internet is full of degenerates

Not only predators, but all sorts of bad people.

An interesting anecdote here: I’ve seen a random mother on the internet (so you know it’s true) showing her Instagram stats, and all the posts containing her children were delivered/seen by men, mostly, while posts without children went mostly to women.

A mother might share a funny/cute video of herself with her children, thinking other mothers will see it and somewhat relate, but the reality is that it’s getting delivered mostly to men.

Some of them, I’m sure, are husbands getting videos forwarded from their wives. But the difference was too great, so, yeah, it’s at least suspicious, isn’t it?

You may think that it is an isolated case, but it isn’t. In 2023, The Wall Street Journal, with Stanford Internet Observatory and UMass Amherst, found that Instagram’s recommendation algorithms actively connected pedophile networks. Following just a few suspicious accounts was enough to flood a test account with content sexualizing children. Researchers identified 405 sellers of CSAM on the platform. Source.

If you think about it technically, it’s obvious, though: they want to see children, so they search and like content that has children, and the algorithm keeps delivering more content like that to them, because it is programmed to hold users’ attention as long as possible.

Then, there’s the AI angle: as published by the IWF in their annual report in 2024², criminals are using fine-tuned models trained on known victims’ existing abuse imagery and famous children to generate realistic nude/sexual imagery.

But it gets worse.

Combine all that with posting your entire routine online: I’ve seen people posting addresses, child names, school names/uniforms, activity schedules, everything. It is just too much information to give away like that. You wouldn’t walk around the street giving random people photos of your kids with all their information and schedule, would you?

I know, I know…

I’m aware it is impossible to be 100% safe from all of this.

After all, people now walk around with the Meta-RayBan-whatever-it’s-called-sunglasses recording people in the street and publishing it (not to mention it’s being reviewed by random people somewhere).³

I understand the urge people have to share their lives online - I used to have more of it myself. It’s because of that feeling that social networks exist and are as successful as they are.

Unfortunately, we can’t have nice things.

Initially, I didn’t even want to share anything, not even on private chats, but as you might know, grandparents get really anxious and want pictures every day, so I had to concede a little bit on that one.

Finally, I’m not judging you, or telling you that you shouldn’t share whatever you want to share, I’m merely giving you my rationale for why I plan not to.

A little confession

That all being said, we did post 2 pictures: one with our hands (the cover of the post), and another one a couple of days after she was born, showing a bit of the side of her face.

That last one was just so people would stop asking us if she was born yet, it was a calculated risk, so, yes, you will probably never see my child’s face.