Do You Let Your Kids Follow You on Social Media?

If you’re a parent of a toddler or teenager, you’ve probably spent a lot of time thinking and talking to them about social media. Social media can be an important way for older children to connect with their friends, especially right now. But it can also be full of predators, cyber bullies, and inappropriate content. You probably follow them to stay on top of what they post and how they interact with others, but what about what you post and how you interact with others?

You already know that you should limit the number of posts about your children on the Internet. You need to protect their identity as well as their privacy – they should at least have a say in which photos of them you post. But posting images of them isn’t the only way to confuse you; no, you can be awkward in many ways.

We each have our own special, unique characters on social media, and these characters may differ depending on the platform. Personally, I keep my Facebook and Instagram accounts private and they serve as a way for me to stay connected and share photos with family and friends from different countries. On the other hand, Twitter is a completely different story.

My son is 10 years old and is not on social media, but recently I started thinking about what he will be like one day. Maybe it won’t be on the same platforms I most often use, but if it were, how would I feel about it after seeing what I post? Would the cute anecdote I shared about him seem less cute and more an invasion of privacy to him? (Quite possible.) Am I using a language on social media that I would never have used in front of him? (Yes.) Am I more politically frank than I would like him to see? (No, he knows where I stand.)

I want to see what he posts, but what do I think of the opposite? As adults, we are certainly entitled to some degree of privacy, but how far are we willing to go to achieve that? Do we make our profiles private and do they close them? Make them public, but block them? At least censor ourselves a little, knowing they can see what we’re posting?

Tell me in the comments: do you let your kids follow you on social media? And if so, does it affect how you use the platform or what you publish?