A Grandparent's Guide to Sharing Photos Online
Sharing photos of your grandchild is dramatically different in the digital age. Learn how to safely navigate digital photo sharing while respecting parents' boundaries and protecting your grandchild's privacy.
If you are a grandparent, you likely remember your own mother or grandmother having a small photo album in their handbag. They’d whip it out when they met up with friends to share the latest photos of their pride and joy, their grandchild.
In this digital age, Grandma’s Brag Book has been replaced by Facebook. For grandparents sharing photos online, platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and messaging apps have become the new norm. Today’s grandparents can share the latest photos of their grandchild with all their friends without even needing to meet up with them. You can’t deny this is far more convenient!
However, that convenience comes with a price. Unlike the photos you keep in your purse, you have little control over who sees digital photos. No matter how closely you monitor your privacy settings, a photo you post online or send to a friend has the potential to be seen by a much wider audience than you intend. How can that happen? Here are some scenarios:
You send a photo to a friend from water aerobics, who thinks your grandchild looks just like her niece’s baby and forwards it to her family.
Your former neighbor may want to share the news that you’ve become a grandparent, so they share your Facebook post in a neighborhood group that you are no longer a member of.
An old coworker who was always secretly jealous of you screenshots the picture you put on Instagram and posts it on a public site dedicated to embarrassing photos.
These are all things that wouldn’t happen if you showed the photos to friends the old-fashioned way. And unlike printed photos, digital photos can be used for purposes beyond their original intent.
When grandchildren’s photos go beyond your control online
When a photo of your family is shared beyond your immediate circle, it’s probable that nothing bad will happen. However, at the very least, strangers have access to your family’s intimate moments.
It’s possible, though, that the funny photo of your grandchild pouting on their birthday could strike a chord with your friend from water aerobics, who has a nephew with thousands of followers on Instagram. He adds a clever caption, and suddenly your grandchild is a meme that reaches millions. This is one reason why safe photo sharing practices for grandparents are increasingly important in our connected world.
There’s a far more disturbing possibility, however. Child pornographers can and do take innocent photos of children from the internet and manipulate them. You have no way of knowing if someone in that neighborhood Facebook group is a predator.
These are very real possibilities, however unlikely they may be. For some parents, the risk of their child’s photo ending up in places that they can’t control isn’t a concern. For others, however, any risk is too much. It’s important to know and respect how your adult children feel about their child’s photo being shared.
Learning to navigate social media and photo sharing can be challenging. You might find yourself finally comfortable with the technology, only to discover there are unwritten rules about what should and shouldn't be shared. This is new territory for everyone—previous generations of grandparents never had to think about digital privacy or online safety when sharing photos of their grandchildren. Many resources for grandparents about online photo sharing are now available, but the most important guidance will come from your grandchild's parents.
Why parents set boundaries for grandchildren's photos online
Besides the risks we’ve discussed above, parents may have other concerns. They may be worried about their child’s digital footprint, and not want to have a public record of their child’s life before he or she is old enough to understand and give consent.
They may be worried about cybersecurity, and the details that unknowingly get shared in a photo. Road signs, names of cafes, school locations—all these details could be pulled from a photo and potentially be used to identify where a child lives.
They may simply want to protect their child from future embarrassment. No thirteen-year-old wants to be introduced to Grandma’s friend only to be told, “I still remember seeing that photo of you when your mom caught you eating the cat food!”
What grandparents need to do to protect their grandchild’s digital photos
First and foremost, you must have the conversation with parents. They may be fine with you sharing photos far and wide. They may be comfortable with you sharing photos so long as no faces are shown. They may not want you to share any pictures on social media, ever. They may not even want you to forward photos to your friends. What ever their comfort level is, you need to respect it without question.
If you have parents’ permission to share, always ask yourself if you are sharing something that might someday embarrass your grandchild. As adorable as those bathtub pictures are, those photos are best kept within the immediate family.
Safe social media practices for grandparents sharing photos
Privacy settings are essential tools for grandparents on social media who wish to share photos responsibly. If you are allowed to share photos of your grandchild online, you’ll want to make your account settings private. That’s not full protection, though, so make sure you clearly understand the risks of posting photos and other information on social media. Beyond the photos you share, it’s easy to accidentally give away personal details that are of interest to identity thieves and other criminals. Read What Grandparents Need to Know About Social Media Safety for more tips.
How to share photos while respecting parent boundaries
Technology has transformed how we share photos of our grandchildren. While social media makes it easy to instantly share updates with friends, there are other ways to document and share family moments that might work better for your situation.
Private photo-sharing apps designed specifically for families offer more control over who sees your photos. Apps like Google Photos, Family Album, or Tinybeans let you create private groups where only invited family members can see and comment on photos. Many of these platforms also offer the option to create physical photo books from your digital images.
If parents prefer to keep things completely offline, consider returning to traditional photo albums or scrapbooks. Unlike social media posts that get buried in newsfeeds, physical albums provide a tangible way to organize and revisit memories. You might create a dedicated album that includes photos along with notes about special moments you've shared with your grandchild.
The key is finding ways to share that work for everyone in the family. When you respect parents' wishes about photo sharing, it shows that you understand their concerns about privacy and safety. This kind of cooperation helps build the strong family relationships that make grandparenting so rewarding.
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