Journal #2

On Saturday morning, I woke up, checked my Facebook, and saw that my sister had uploaded a photo album with some photos of me and her--from when we were 3 or 4 years old! Apparently, she uploaded that album because she wanted me to use one of those childhood pictures as my profile picture. I'm not sure yet if I will or not, but probably not. However, it's not the first time I've seen albums of baby and childhood pictures on Facebook. When I see my peers' early childhood photos, they always make me smile. Some of them are just so cute! I'm not sure, however, if having early childhood pictures of yourself on Facebook is inappropriate or weird. They're not the most professional pictures for potential employers to see, but then, aren't they much "safer" and more innocent than the current photos of you at crazy parties with alcohol? Also, I feel like people will say that baby pictures should be private, for you and your family, not for the hundreds of strangers in your Facebook networks. I don't know about that, but I don't personally feel threatened by strangers seeing those pictures of me. We were all children once, right?

Now although I don't mind the childhood pictures my sister posted, or the childhood pictures I posted subsequently, I do have to wonder about parents who post pictures of their young children online right now. I guess their children aren't necessarily tagged in the photos right now, but what about when the children grow up to be [whatever the new age is for starting Facebook these days]? What will they think of having all these baby pictures of themselves already online, with doting comments from their parents' friends? I think that would be weird. I wonder if there are young teenagers online who are already experiencing this (not with Facebook photos, of course, but with the blogosphere in general). Even though people can untag themselves from photos easily enough, I sometimes feel like they shouldn't have to do so in the first place. I'm probably way more sensitive about this than most people, but I generally don't upload pictures of people in the first place, baby pictures or not, because I think maybe the people don't want this photo shared. If it were me, I'd like to have control over which photos of me are shared online.