Should Grandparents Be Allowed To Post Kids On Social Media?

There’s a clear divide among parents online right now: the shares and the share-nots. There are those who still post photos of their kids on their summer camping trip, their first day back at school, and then those of us who keep their faces off the internet at all costs (I’m in the latter camp). And for parents who prefer to keep their child’s likeness private, there seems to be one group of people who keeps the debate alive and well instead of just saying, “Sure, sounds good.” It’s the grandparents.

My personal experience with my son’s grandparents has been wonderful. They not only respect our wishes not to post him online, but if they see someone else has, they ask them to take it down on our behalf. When we shared our new boundary with them, there was never any pushback or hesitation, and that was that. Unfortunately, that is not everyone’s experience. As we all know, relationships with our own parents and our in-laws can be complicated.

As a result, Reddit is awash in posts from parents looking for advice about how to approach this topic with the grands:

• “How to approach in-laws not taking down photo of my baby?”
• “What are your rules regarding posting pics of your baby/kids on social media? Boomer grandparents are making me crazy. AITA here?”
• “Woke up to my 8-week-old on Facebook.”
• “AITAH for asking my father's partner to remove photos of my daughter from her social media?”

In each of these scenarios, the parents made clear to the grandparents that they did not want their child’s face shared online, and yet they’d hop on social media only to find their child’s face plastered all over their feed, courtesy of Grandma or Grandpa. When the parents asked for the photo to be taken down, cue the fuss: “Well, we’ll just take it down and not post anything else,” or, “Everyone else gets to share their grandbaby but me.” (Oh, boo hoo.)

Many of the comments on these posts revolve around boundaries, with commenters telling the original posters they need to get very clear about their boundaries and hold them if they must. (Often, it sounds like these grandparents are not super involved with the grandkids anyway, or have had issues adhering to boundaries of other kinds in their relationships with their kids.)

In this scenario, that could look like telling grandparents, “We’ve told you before we do not want our child’s photo shared online. Please delete your post, and if this happens again, we will no longer share photos with you or allow you to photograph the kids.” And if the pushy grandparent tries to snap a photo anyway, you literally step between the camera and your kid. Hold the line.

If you are not super confident at boundary setting, you could also try a subtler approach, some of the comments suggest.

Find links to articles about people who learned too late that someone in their friends list was a child predator, or whose children’s classmates found old photos of them and turned them into nudes using AI as a form of bullying, and share them with the grandparent in question. AARP has a guide for grandparents about the potential dangers of sharing photos of grandchildren, and how a seemingly harmless photo can spread far beyond where they imagine it will. Help them feel like part of the team of people protecting your child, and show them real-world examples to prove you’re not just being a worrywart.

In short, the answer is no, grandparents shouldn’t be able to post grandkids on social media if the children’s parents have asked for privacy.

As with any other child-rearing decision, it is the parents’ choice to make and the grandparents’ to respect. In healthy relationships, it’s OK to ask genuine questions about those choices when you don’t understand, but ultimately, Mom and Dad make the rules. Post-happy grandparents who continue to share may soon find themselves in a photo drought — and rightfully so.