“If nothing up to this point has made you stop posting your kids on the internet, maybe this finally will.” That’s the current consistent message to mothers on social media, it has been for months, it’s heating up and I have a bone to pick with it. (here’s the podcast version of this post if you wish to listen)
Me in 2011…
When it comes to not sharing your kids on the internet, I’m the “O.G.”. Levi and I welcomed our first born in 2011 back when we still had flip-phones. Posting pictures on facebook meant logging onto a computer and uploading images. Even though it was a cumbersome process, everyone I knew was doing it.
So, when I told all of my family and friends that our daughter was not to be posted on the internet EVER, I was met with strange looks and sometimes… a lot of annoyance. But, to me, this child was precious and I had a true instinctual drive to keep everything including still pictures of her beautiful face to myself and those close enough to see us in person.
This took a lot of communication and clarification because then, no one gave posting kids on facebook a thought. We were alone considering the broad nature and use of images posted online and by alone I mean we were the ONLY people I knew taking this measure at the time. Bible school, church programs, softball, family photo sessions, school events (before we were a homeschool family our girls attended a Christian school) we had to notify all of them that our daughters were not to be shared on Facebook, then remind them of that fact often- again, because it was a weird thing to ask.
But then, not posting your kids actually kept them offline
At that time, surveillance through technology and data collection was much much less prevalent. That’s not to say it wasn’t happening, Google AdWords launched in 2000, Google Earth in 2005 and the Patriot Act was signed by George W. Bush in October 2001 broadening surveillance of average Americans in the name of preventing terrorism. But, people didn’t have their phones up photographing and videoing everything 24/7. You weren’t always in the background of someone else’s capture, someone else’s post. Healthcare systems were just beginning to implement electronic health records. You could log onto social media accounts without being target marketed for a product related to your last internet search or private conversation with your spouse and Flock cameras weren’t lining the roadsides. In my first years as a young mom you could still live mostly offline, if you chose to and that meant not posting public images of your children online, actually kept them offline.
but life was in a technological transition…
In 2019 after being a parent for 8 years, noting technology’s increasing prevalence in our lives and the building online presence regardless of guarding against it, my husband and I decided to change course and share, sparingly and judiciously, pictures of our children. Initially this might sound like a throw your hands up in the air moment but it wasn’t. It was something I thought about very seriously. For some time, what had started as a protective measure started to feel like white knuckling my grip so tight that I was trusting my own power over the Lord’s provision. My concerns with the internet and technology had not suddenly changed, I was aware of the dark corners and danger. But I also knew realistically with the way technology was moving, me not posting a picture of my children would not actually keep their faces 100% off the web.
It was freeing to share glimpses of the part of my life that brought me so much joy while maintaining rules around what I shared to ensure their physical protection and the decision brought me peace.
In the last few years I have received a few, not many, messages insinuating that I must not understand the dangers the internet and AI pose since I still occasionally share images with my kids. On the contrary, I have considered this subject more and well before almost anyone else did.
If you care about your kids, you’ll stop posting them
One hundred percent of the commentary I’ve seen about AI images as it relates to children and their safety is directed at moms. “If you care about your kids you will stop posting them.” The comment sections are demeaning, “how could you not have known how the images would be used?” and the tone is one of the virtue signaling nature. Moms, the burden is yours to bear and if you want to be seen as competent and caring you will comply.
Stand alone target: Moms
What I haven’t heard in the commentary is a collective call for legislators to hold A.I. companies accountable, only moms. What I haven’t heard is a call for clothing companies to stop using children to model their clothing, news networks to stop using video or pictures of children or schools and sports programs to stop. I haven’t heard any collective call for anyone to stop using images of children outside of moms.
To some extent I understand this. Parents are supposed to be the protectors of their children and since evil will continue to exist despite our best laws, protections and efforts we hold the line on the home-front. But we are existing in an age where we are simultaneously being told A.I. is the future, we must win the A.I. race for national security, A.I. can do anything… we can’t create an algorithm that disallows the use of children’s images? We are supposed to believe that A.I. is the future when it comes to warfare and protecting us as a nation but we can’t protect our children from A.I.? I’m not buying it.
A perversion of the first amendment
Last week a federal court decided that A.I. generated CSAM content was protected under the First Amendment as there were no real children used. Never-mind the fact that this is a total perversion of the First Amendment, A.I. only exists because of real people, with real thoughts and real images of real children. Every A.I. output is a prediction made based on inputs from real people. So yes, these images are effectively of real children. Whomever put together this case and failed to bring that fact into light failed in a huge way.
As an aside – but a very concerning one. Imagery is a gateway drug to the real thing. Even if the court sees these images as “not real children” they are tools of desensitization and will increase the likelihood for real children to face real physical harm.
This is an insanely disgusting abuse of the first amendment.
Does visual representation matter?
For a while there was a missing piece to my rub with the “moms just stop posting your kids” campaign. But when Jesse Ridgeway (a youtube star known by his fans as MCJuggernuggets) and his wife, Ashley, decided to abort their baby due to a Downs Syndrome diagnosis, it all came together. They publicly discussed the decision via live feed and people of the internet spoke up in a big way. Videos of children with downs syndrome flooded my feed. Their parents, mostly moms, sharing them not out of ignorance about how dark the internet can be but out of absolute love and care for not only their own children but the 60-90% of babies with a downs syndrome diagnosis that have their lives ended before they are even born. These videos softened hearts and served as a reminder of just how worthy and uniquely valuable each life is… and no one shamed these moms for exposing their kids to the dangers of A.I. training and abuse of the images (and they shouldn’t).
Let’s say for a moment the mission to get all moms to stop posting their children were successful. Children and families will no longer have any visual representation in the public sphere. The internet and specifically social media exists right now as a primary source of information for many people. In a country where many consider abortion a right and motherhood oppression. There is something almost dystopian about no longer ever seeing children’s faces in the place most people go to be “informed.”
But again no one has called for news sources, political campaigns, clothing companies, sports organizations or schools to stop sharing images of children, so I suppose those who use child images for promotion or monetization will still remind us children do exist.
The real problem
The real problem is not moms sharing pictures of their family on the internet. The problem is what information can be gathered from children’s images on the internet and how A.I. companies allow children’s images to be used and altered. So why is the energy being poured into this topic almost exclusively avoiding the real problem as their target?
The fact then that we are not focusing our attention on messaging targeted at legislators and tech companies speaks volumes. It says that our expectation is that the neither the judicial or legislative branches of government will protect children, that they will continue to protect tech companies and tech companies will continue to abuse the information that they have access to.
Additionally, no one is calling for a boycott of these tech companies allowing them to feel the uncomfortable squeeze that comes with decisions that are not in the best interest of the consumer. Rather the people shouting this from the rooftops continue to feed them all of their information and have a frenzied conversation about how bad they are right on the very platform they are telling ONLY MOMS that they may no longer share images of their children if they wish to be seen as fit parents.
It feels off
Doesn’t this all feel a little off? Isn’t the intensity and self stated “begging” a little bit misdirected? Something about the way this conversation is unfolding makes moms out to be the villains instead of big tech and big government’s protection of big tech by way of abuses of the first amendment and rapid A.I. advancement at the expense of everyday Americans.
I’m not telling you it’s wrong to warn about the dangers of technology or to decide to stop sharing your kids faces online. That is a personal decision each of us as parents must personally contend with then make a thoughtful decision… and there is more than one decision to be made. Will we share images? If we do share: how often, what kind of images, will the metadata be stripped, will we share other personal information like names, birthdays, favorites, the city or town in which we live or the baseball team they play on. There are layers of protection to be considered that go past just the image.
In 2026, there is so much more to the online protection of our children than just not posting their picture. It is almost impossible in a day and age where you are recorded, photographed and information about you is placed online by companies and the government to keep your children’s image and information private and out of the hands of A.I. companies. When every family around you at public events takes a selfie, records a video and posts it online then Meta A.I. asks “who is this child in the background?” does it much matter if you didn’t post a picture? Your child still ended up online, tracked, traced and connected. Flock and other surveillance technology is recording you, buildings have cameras, the Airbnb you stay at has a Ring or Google camera on the door videoing every time you enter and exit (something I actually noticed while staying in TN with my family over the weekend). It’s impossible to avoid.
Hold Big Tech accountable
So, the question is: are we handcuffing moms to virtue signal to the world that they are good and care by no longer posting their kids all while their kid’s images still end up online – just not through them? Would the most caring thing moms could regardless of whether or not they share their own kids images actually be to start speaking up loudly for ownership of the content they post online, to ask legislators to pass laws that require A.I. companies get consent for content use and for these companies to only use content to train their models from those who have opted in? Would it be more caring to advocate for legislation that requires these companies to create algorithms that recognize and ban use of children’s images for CSAM content? I thinks so.
We must at the very least hammer on the fact that A.I. companies are exploitative in nature. They have become what they are through skimming and stealing your content and now want to make money off of you and cause you to change the way you live and interact with the world simply because they exist.
So, maybe you’ve stopped sharing your kids on social media or maybe this isn’t something you feel convicted to do. Either way, there is so much more to protecting your children on social media than just whether or not you blur their face and there are several ways you can fight for children’s safety as it relates to the internet and A.I.that possibly achieve a better outcome longterm.
