Sharenting: Should You Post Your Baby Online?
"Sharenting" is the habit of sharing your children online. It's normal, it's well-meaning — and it deserves a more honest conversation than it usually gets.
What "sharenting" means
Sharenting is the everyday practice of parents posting photos, videos, and details about their children on social media and other online platforms. Most of it comes from love: you're proud, family lives far away, and sharing is how we celebrate now. The question isn't whether you care about your child — it's whether the public, permanent nature of online posting matches the care you'd want.
This article lays out what the research actually says, without scare tactics, so you can decide for yourself.
What the research says
A footprint the child never consented to. Harvard Law lecturer Leah Plunkett, author of Sharenthood, was featured on NPR's Life Kit in May 2024 explaining how parents posting their children's information online build lasting data records — a digital identity assembled before the child is old enough to have any say. Peer-reviewed research on sharenting published in 2024 (PubMed Central) echoes this: parents consistently underestimate how widely and how permanently shared content spreads.
Faces are biometric data. A baby photo isn't just a picture; it's facial data. Public platforms apply facial recognition and algorithmic analysis at scale. Even family-focused apps do significant collection — FamilyAlbum's own privacy policy lists facial "feature vectors," estimated age and gender, and facial-image classification results among the data it gathers.
The law is catching up. The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) received its first major update in over a decade in 2026, adding protections around children's biometric data, including facial-recognition data. Regulators increasingly treat a child's facial data as sensitive — which is exactly what's in the photos being posted.
Parents already feel uneasy. This isn't only an expert concern. Surveys on parental sharing (for example, Security.org's 2021 research on parents and social media) have found many parents are worried about their children's online privacy even as they continue to post — a gap between instinct and habit.
The honest trade-offs
Let's be fair to both sides:
Reasons parents post publicly
- It's the easiest way to keep distant family updated.
- It captures support and community at big moments.
- It feels normal — everyone does it.
Reasons to think twice
- Permanence: once public, a photo can be copied and re-shared forever.
- Loss of control: you can't fully delete what others have saved.
- Identity building: posts compound into a profile of your child.
- Future consent: your child may not want their younger self online.
The good news: you can keep almost all the benefits and drop almost all the risks by changing where you share — not whether you share.
A middle path: share privately
You don't have to choose between "post everything publicly" and "share nothing." Private, family-only sharing keeps grandparents and close friends in the loop without putting your child on the open internet.
- Use a private family Circle instead of a public feed — only invited family can see the photos.
- Let family view with a tap, no app install, so even less tech-comfortable relatives stay included.
- Keep separate groups for different sides of the family.
- Avoid services that mine your photos for ads or facial recognition.
I'll be honest about where I land on this personally: my partner and I made a firm decision not to put our daughter on social media at all — not a single public post. It's not a judgement of parents who do; it's just the line we drew, and building a private alternative is partly how I made that line livable. That's the entire premise behind Keepr Circle: a private space for the people who love your child, and no audience beyond them. (Full disclosure: Keepr Circle is the app I built.)
Start your family Circle — 5 GB free, private by default.
A simple sharenting checklist
Before you post anything about your child, ask:
- Would I be comfortable with this being public in 18 years?
- Does it reveal location, routine, or anything identifying?
- Could I share this privately with the same people instead?
- Am I the right person to decide this is public — or is it my child's to decide later?
If a private channel gets the photo to the same people, there's rarely a reason to make it public.
Frequently asked questions
Is sharenting actually harmful? Researchers don't claim every post causes harm. The documented concern is cumulative: permanence, loss of control, and building an identity your child never consented to. Sharing privately removes most of that risk.
Is it okay to share baby photos with grandparents? Absolutely — just do it privately. A private family app lets grandparents see everything without the photos being public. See How to Send Baby Photos to Grandparents.
What if my family is already posting my child? You can ask them to keep photos to a private family Circle instead. Many families find a shared private space removes the urge to post publicly.
Does deleting a post fix it? Not entirely — others may have already saved or re-shared it. Avoiding the public post in the first place is far more effective than deleting later.
Last updated: May 2026
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