Rage against the Meta machine

Hey dads, I joined the club last year, and like many of you, we couldn’t wait to show off our little guy. Leading up to the big day, I was trying to convince my wife to keep him off Instagram and Facebook. Most likely, they already had a data footprint for my unborn son, and I didn’t want to feed them more info about him as he grows up.

To some extent, it’s too late for me, but I hope my son can have a smaller digital footprint - or at least one that he can control when he’s ready. Some families say they won’t post anything until their kid is old enough to decide for themselves. I didn’t want to go full lockdown mode, though. His out-of-town grandparents would RIOT

Both sets of grandparents are divorced and remarried, so all the different group chats were a pain in the butt and fizzled fast. I’m an app developer, so I whipped up an app for us to share photos privately right around the time he was born. Our own little Instagram, basically

One year later, and we still post pics every day. It’s been awesome for all the grandparents to see him daily without us having to text them separately all the time. But when I talk to my friends, none of them seem interested. They don’t see privacy as a big deal and just throw whatever up on IG. It’s like everyone assumes that nobody has privacy anymore, so why fight it?

Anybody else feel like that mindset is kind of f'ed up? Or am I just paranoid? Were you able to convince your wife not to blast your kids on IG or did you have to build her an app too?

Much love to all the dads out there. This community has gotten me through a lot of long nights!