Ask Dr Golly: 'Should I be wary of sharing my new baby on social media?'

The digital age is making communication — particularly with a baby — well… tricky. (and sometimes a little icky).

You would have seen your fair share of social media birth announcements disclosing information about recent babies' arrivals, including full names, even middle names and surnames, dates and times of birth, weight and height. Tagging the hospital where the baby was born is often included too.

These social birth announcements originate from a traditional birth announcement that previously our parents paid to place in the local newspaper… I had one of these… am I showing my age?!

Most modern parents (including myself) have followed this tradition on social media — it's become a rite of passage to an extent.

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We place a beautiful picture of our newborn up on social media and text it to everyone we know with all the stats. And if you're a dad, or non-birthing new parent, it almost goes without saying you make a remarkable comment about what you've just witnessed your wife or partner do (the miracle of life and the power of women never ceases to amaze me — giving birth is superhuman, in my opinion!).

But unlike a newspaper, our digital posts aren't in tomorrow's recycling.

They are archived in the digital universe forever more, and the reality is that the information we include in them could be setting your kids up for issues like digital theft in the future.

If we think about these traditional birth notices, given that naming the hospital offers the postcode at birth, online deviants potentially have all the details of a future passport (except the passport number!). In the wrong hands, this is a lot of information.

Protecting a newborn's digital identity.

Now, I'm not a panic merchant and I don't want anyone who has placed a birth announcement like this on social media to flip out — remember, I did it too. But it's about adapting our digital behaviour to the evolving technologies and social platforms, not to mention the power of AI and facial recognition.

The term 'digital nesting' is something I'm becoming a big advocate of. It's the practice of preparing and establishing digital boundaries and safety measures for a newborn or young child before or shortly after their arrival. 

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The two most common problems I'm witnessing in real time with social media birth announcements are parental misalignment, and the risk of digital theft later down the track.

One of the most important steps in digital nesting is to talk to your partner or co-parent openly and honestly about the boundaries and digital rules you want to set around your child's digital identity and exposure before your baby arrives. If you don't have alignment as a parenting team, it won't work, and in my experience, can lead to lots of friction when one parent's risk profile or digital sharing is higher than the other.

Once you have found alignment, you then go to work towards making sure all your online profiles reflect these boundaries in your chosen privacy settings.

Tips on digital nesting for parents.

A few digital nesting questions to ask each other as parents are:

• Will you share pictures of your children publicly or only with close family?

• When is it okay to publish your children's location?

• Have you both updated your social media privacy settings?

• Have you both done a cull of who follows you or who you're friends with on various platforms before the baby arrives?

I've worked with my friends at Tinybeans, who are also passionate about protecting kids' digital privacy, to put together the Top 10 Tips for Digital Nesting and E-Safety, which is a comprehensive guide to step you through this process you can download for free.

Don't panic if you have overshared in the past. Seek alignment as a couple about your boundaries and adapt them as we learn more about the digital landscape and its capabilities. It's important we evolve at the same pace as it does.

Stay vigilant. Be mindful.

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Feature Image: Getty.