So I stopped sharing pictures of my kids on social media, and I've gotten some questions about it.

So I figured I would share a little bit as to why and what led to that decision in case anyone else is on the fence.

And it's kind of one of those controversial topics because I think those who choose to share their kids in social media can feel like there's like a judgment or something around it.

And those who choose not to feel like it's like the best decision ever and exactly how

every parent should do it.

You're listening to Shee with me, Jordan Lee Dooley, a faith-based wellness podcast to support you

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So when my kids were infants, they had their first Halloween, they wore the cutest Winnie the Pooh and Ticker outfits. I, like, loved it. I made the cutest little video of them with,

you know, a sound from Winnie the Pooh and posted on social media thinking, this is so cute.

And it was so cute. cute like I was accurate in

thinking that because apparently the entire world thought they were so cute as well because

the video went mega viral and it had millions and millions of views and it was actually picked up

by a lot of accounts in other countries on TikTok that were just using the video to get views on their

page and grow their following and never asked for permission from me. So that kind of weirded me out.

Like people would send me the video of my children on all of these different pages that I never

gave any permission for it to be used on. But by putting it out there publicly, you're kind of

indirectly risking that, even if you're not giving direct permission to use your content. And so that happened. And then on top of that, on the video itself, on my page, and then on a lot of those pages that I didn't approve it to be on, there were a lot of perverted comments, which was shocking to me. I'm like, these are literal infants in, like, Halloween costumes that were way revealing. Like there, you could hardly even see most of their face. You can see like their eyes. And there were some really alarming comments in the comment sections and it really made me bad. And I was like so angry about it. And then it kind of dawned on me like, this is no one's fault but my own. I put this out there. I chose to put this out there thinking it would be innocent and harmless, you know, and it dawned on me very quickly that you never know who's watching. You never know what people are doing with your videos. People can take your kids picture and do whatever they want with them. Your video, their video, you know, do whatever they want with it, put it on their page, use it to grow their

page. You can ask them to take it down. You can report it. Doesn't mean it's going to get taken down. I don't know that it ever even has been taken down from any of those pages. But my, you know, protective instinct came out like full force. I was like, how can people be like this? Like, it wasn't hidden. You know, like there's people doing that on so many kids' photos and videos and just not

commenting about it or not saying anything. And parents are completely unaware that that's probably happening on potentially their kids' photos. But when it became really obvious that that was happening on my kids' photos and videos, I was like, heck, no, we're done here. So that was kind of, and you know, I never had a complete piece about putting it out there, especially publicly, but I thought, well, I'm probably just like overthinking it. People share their kids all the time. I've been on social media for, you know, more than 10 years and things are fine. And anyway, so I kind of would brush off that feeling of just slight hesitation

that happened every time I shared their photos. But once that experience happened, it was almost

like a confirmation for me that I needed to rethink things. And so I still wasn't 100% sure

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