How are you letting technology damage your child's future?

I’d like to put a twist on my blog today.  When thinking of the effect of technology on children, I’ve been thinking a lot about how children’s use of technology takes away from their time outside and their ability to think for themselves.  However, what about the information, pictures, and videos that technology allows to be shared so easily of children by their parents or other people in their lives?  I’d like to use the example of the Time magazine cover that just hit the news this past week.

This shows a three year old boy breast feeding.  He’s not just breast feeding though, he’s standing on a chair to reach his mother’s chest, breast feeding, and looking at a camera along with his mother.  Before television and internet became so popular, the only way someone would have seen this cover is by seeing the actual magazine.  I haven’t seen a copy of the magazine, but I’ve seen this cover featured on news channels and talk shows, and numerous times on various websites.  The internet and television have allowed the cover of this magazine to go viral.  This three year old boy has no idea what effect this may ultimately have on his life.  The cover of this magazine will probably always be accessible in some source of technology, and this picture will never be able to be taken back.  When this little boy is 15, he may no longer want to have been on the cover of this magazine, and he may have really not wanted it to go viral all over the internet and television, but technology allowed and pushed this to happen. 

Everyone knows about that moment when you start dating someone and you bring them home to meet your mom, and she has all of your baby pictures ready to show them to embarrass you.  Well, maybe that doesn’t happen to everyone, but with technology today, pictures and videos of you as a child are all bound to be shared technologically.  If you have a cell phone with a camera or a camera and the internet, then this technology is allowing you to take as many pictures as you want of your children and post them online.  Who knows who is seeing and spreading the pictures you post of your children who have absolutely no control over it? So the next time you see someone allowing technology to spread picture and videos of their children, remind them that they will still probably be accessible years from now and that child may not like it once he or she is old enough to understand!