Comments of the Day: Should Babies Be On Facebook?
Today we told you that the majority of babies are on Facebook. But should they be? Should babies be using the computer at all? Naturally reactions were polarized. So here's an argument for and an argument against.
In the Yea category, from SavetoFavorites:
Posting ultrasounds— especially the Gollum-y 3-d numbers— and creating profiles for newborns is beyond the pale, granted.
I'm a relatively-new parent. I'll stipulate that it's mundane as a morning coffee, this babymaking— hell, as walking, talking bags of genes, it's our primary imperative— but on an individual-life basis, it's a game-changer. Unless I'm completely off about the nature of my relationships with people and/or have poor language comprehension, it's the sort of life event that most people who care about my wife and me like being informed of, and appreciate having shared. I've got dozens of family and friends from various walks of life— previous work lives, college, selected high school— who live in various far-flung locales, with whom I still share warm relationships, but whom I only get a chance to see once every few years, if lucky (and really, that's pre-child). FB and Flickr are simply convenient ways to share pictures with those people (who are still a part of my life, if at a distance), and with some semblance of control, as well. I'm fairly certain that a few of them could do without shots of us at the Mets game or botanical gardens every other week; those people are more than welcome to remove me from their news stream, and I'm sure some of them have. The others seem to enjoy seeing these shots, and say so.
I understand a good amount of the annoyance, and the conflation of parent and child identities— whether online or "real"— is a little spooky at times. But frankly, nobody's forcing you to look at their kids' pictures; as pervasive as they are in general, they're easier to avoid than people walking side-by-side-by-side on the sidewalk, and the tools to avoid 'em are literally right in front of you. If someone's really upset at you— or, worse, posting passive-aggressive messages on your wall— because you, childless bon vivant, won't look, then you've got more concerns with that relationship than the "eww" factor of pictures of their pooping 1-year-old.
You don't want to see my pictures, click a fucking button. It's not that hard.
I have a friend who is a FB psycho. She created an account for her youngest while she was still in the hospital after giving birth. She created one for her older daughter too (she's 3).
For as irritating as just that is, the status updates that she posts for her kids are enough to induce mass vomiting. They go something like this:
3yo thinks I have the best mommy ever!
Mom replies: Oh thank you and I have the best daughter ever!
Then the baby replies: Hey, what about me?
......you get the picture. If she didn't live in another state I would go to her house and punch her in the face.
She has over 1,100 pictures of herself (seriously!?), older kid has over 3,000 and the baby who just turned 1 has over 1,800 pictures. People like this need to be stopped.