I saw a special on Dateline one night about a “family” that was catfishing an entire online community. Their children were sick, the mother was pregnant, and sadly passed away in a car accident. People all over the country were wearing support bracelets, posting on their behalf, praying for them and genuinally cared for this family that did not exist. Red flags started sprouting up, and a simple google image search led one supporter to the real blog – a mommy blog in South Africa! This catfisher stole her photos and led thousands of people to believe that it was her family – turns out she was a teenager in the Midwest (Indiana, Ohio maybe?). How would you feel if you were that blogger in South Africa? Betrayal, violated, scared, among many, many more.
When I started this blog, my husband and I decided that I shouldn’t post any pictures of the girls, or really use their names, because “what if bad people get ahold of their information?” Isn’t that every parents worse nightmare?
I blog to share my stories, connect with others and have a history of my own saved somewhere. A huge part of my life are my children. What kind of story am I sharing if you don’t know their names or have faces to the stories?
 |
| Who wants to see this when reading a story about my family? No one, thats who. |
It’s not just my babies. If I want to post pictures of my friends or family – do I need to tell them first? What if they say they don’t want to be online?
Social media has changed the way we share information. I post pictures to personal Facebook and Instagram accounts – both of which are private. But I know some people that won’t have pictures of their children anywhere, and I can see that side of it as well. I am having this internal struggle between “share it all!” and “why are you even writing about them?” and I cannot figure out which way to go.
For my readers that are also bloggers, how do you handle this? Did you have this struggle? What was the ultimate deciding factor? I’m guessing that I am thinking too much about this, but I can’t help but to feel a little protective of my family and friends. For my readers that aren’t bloggers – I’d love your perspective as well. Help me out! (It’s ok to also tell me that I am looking too far in to this… nothing new there!)
