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Is it time to rethink sharing your family’s life online? This topic has been on my mind for many months, and recently, Drew and I made the decision to no longer show our children’s faces on the internet. 

When it comes to online sharing, I’m an experimenter rather than an expert… but I wanted to report on my personal results of this experiment and invite you to explore your own thoughts and questions on the topic.

This conversation is not meant to judge or condemn, but rather to enlighten and inspire deeper reflection! Let’s navigate the balance between sharing motherhood as an aspect of our brand and respecting our children’s identities and privacy… together.

How the Seed Was Planted

Ever since my first daughter was born, I have been questioning what is sacred and how much to share about her. It has been so hard to find the balance between sharing my family’s experiences, yet maintaining the privacy and sacredness of our family life. One person who planted the seed for not showing my kid’s faces online was Amber Fillerup.

Amber is a very successful entrepreneur and blogger who I’ve been following for years. Her content used to be mostly focused on motherhood, which involved showing her kid’s faces often. But a few years ago, she decided to make the transition to no longer show them. 

I reached out to Amber to ask what her experience has been like, and one thing that she said to me privately was: “I fear that down the line we could regret sharing our kids. I just had this hunch that I will never regret keeping their privacy sacred.” 

This really resonated with me, and it caused me to have such a deep respect for her as a mother. My children are the most important things in my life, and their protection is my top priority, especially with how scary the internet can be.

So, this topic had been on my mind ever since that conversation, and then shortly after Mother’s Day this year, I made the decision to try a 30-day experiment of not showing my kid’s faces.

Privacy > Content

As business owners and content creators, it can be difficult to determine what to share and what not to share, but in my 30 day experiment of not showing their faces, I realized how amazing it feels to prioritize protecting my children over creating content. 

In the past, I’ve always been careful to not share too much personal information about my kids, and any time I’ve monetized a post they were in, I put that money in savings accounts for them. But the sense of relief I’ve gotten from living life with them offline has been indescribably peaceful!

For me, the value of motherhood lies in the memories we create, rather than the need to prove to everyone on the internet that I’m a “good mom.” Plus, it feels good (for me) to shield them from the performance-like nature of online content, such as likes and comments on their appearances. For these reasons, I decided to continue this practice after the 30 day experiment. 

The Action Plan

Of course, it’s still an ongoing process of how to navigate this change. So far, some of the steps I’ve been taking are:

• Archiving posts with my children’s faces
• Replacing any images of them on my website 
• Only sharing photos of them without defining physical features (such as the back of their heads, hands, and feet).

All of these things will take time to get used to, but I truly believe that it’s never too late to start taking small steps toward protecting their privacy. I love my kids, and the decision to hide their identities is not a reflection of a lack of love or pride in them, but rather a conscious choice to prioritize their well-being.

If This Resonates, Experiment Yourself

I want to round out this conversation by saying that if this planted a seed for you, maybe this is your chance to do an experiment like I did! I did this experiment for 30 days without ‘announcing’ it to my audience, so that if I changed my mind, I could go back. And that 30 day test was perfect for me because it just solidified what I had been feeling internally and gave me the confidence that I CAN do it.

Maybe this is your call to try a 30 day experiment, even if it has nothing to do with your online presence… Maybe this is inspiring you to do a 30 day experiment of trying something new!

I love experimenting and I highly encourage you to do it, because an experiment is not a success or a failure. An experiment simply yields results that give you information to make informed decisions. For me, the experiment of not showing my kid’s faces is exactly what I needed… and maybe it will be for you too.

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