A few months ago, my 5-year-old daughter McRae put on a big backpack. The backpack was almost as tall as she is, and it was an adorable moment there in the kitchen.

I said, “McRae, stay for there for a second. I want to take a picture.” Without missing a beat, she said, “No.” I asked her why, and in the way that only kids can, she threw a grenade into the room:

“No. I don’t want you to tweet it.”

As a dad, I felt horrible, in large part because that’s exactly what I was about to do. I wanted to take that photo and then share it on Twitter via Instagram. But McRae stopped me in her tracks with her words. Here is what she was really saying:

“Let me be your kid, not your content, daddy.”

“Treat me like your child, not your content, daddy.”

“Let me be 5 and silly, without turning that moment into a tweet.”

She was right. I was using her for content. I was getting lost in the push and pace of social media, and I was treating her like content.

It’s not an easy subject to talk about either. A lot of us share our kids’ lives with people online, and I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes I tweet funny things my kids have said or things they’ve accomplished because I’m so proud of them! I love sharing funny things they’ve said. Twitter can be like a big virtual fridge upon which you hang a bit of artwork they’ve made.

I also honestly think that when my friend Carlos shared his son’s adoption story on his blog, he and his wife sent ripples online that touched thousands of lives and inspired countless adoptions.

There is great potential beauty in the things we share online. But most of us never stop long enough in the midst of the fire hose that is social media to admit that there is also potential danger.

We don’t have it figured out yet. We don’t have 100 years of precedent to fall back on. We can’t say, “Remember how Roosevelt handled social media with his family? What can we learn from his actions?” If the internet is a teenager, then in many ways social media is a toddler. We’re all just trying to figure it out. And I don’t want to figure it out on the backs of my kids.

McRae is my kid, not my content.

And I hope your kid never has to remind you of that.

Question:
Have you ever shared anything online about your kids?