Welcome to the Daily Dad podcast, where we provide one lesson every single day to help you with your most important job, being a parent.

I'm Ryan Holiday, and I draw these lessons from ancient philosophy, modern psychology, practical wisdom, and insights from parents just like you

all over the world. Thank you for listening, and we hope this helps.

At least they're getting paid for it. There's something that strikes us as a little gross, the way that politicians trot out their families to win elections,

to humanize themselves or get sympathy when they screw up.

There's something exploitative about the way that celebrities use pregnancy announcements or events in their kids' life to get publicity.

And there's something that's just plain weird about the way that some

influencers turn their kids into content. We see these things and we judge. We tell ourselves we do it

differently or maybe we even pity their kids. And then what do we do? We get back to posting about

our own kids on social media for free for imaginary internet points and

validation for the benefit of these multi-billion dollar tech companies and their daily active

user accounts at least the pros are getting paid for it at least their kids have a chance to be

nepo babies or they have a chance to inherit whatever their parents got paid by people magazine

for the exclusive photo.

Us? We're just doing it because we can't seem to stop ourselves from doing it. Your kids deserve

a private life. They deserve a present parent, not one who was always filming or recording them

to show random people on the internet. To enjoy the time you guys spend together as time you spend

together, not grist for the content mill. Put the phone down, or at least try to keep most of what

you capture with it inside the family. It is, as always, to everyone's benefit. And my wife and I

made the decision early on. We weren't going to post photos of our kids

on social media until they were older, until we could talk to them about it. And every once in

we'll post them, but never their faces. And I think what's been most helpful about it is it's

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