Gwyneth Paltrow is not a cool mom. The actress and founder of a company called Goop tried to share a moment with her daughter this week, but her 14-year-old got annoyed.
After Paltrow uploaded a selfie from a ski day together, Apple Martin commented, “Mom we have discussed this. You may not post anything without my consent.”
Paltrow quickly replied, “@applemartin You can’t even see your face!”
Martin’s ski goggles do cover everything above her ruddy cheeks, but they don’t undermine the question this mother-daughter exchange raises. What are the ethics of posting photos of your own children online without their consent?
More than a thousand people weighed in with comments beneath the Instagram post, some saying Martin had every right to ask for approval. Others called her comment disrespectful.
Among friends, it’s common courtesy to ask if they mind you putting photos of them online. Most of the time they don’t care, though sometimes they’d not like for their awkward camera smile to make it into the archives of the web.
But Paltrow and Martin’s exchange raises a different question. Should parents post photos of their children without asking? What about the babies who won’t know until years later that their lives have been documented for everyone to see on the Internet? Many of us love photos of a burbling infant in a bow tie, but fewer of us love it if the infant is ourselves and the child can’t consent.
Paltrow is 46 years old, and parents like her who didn’t grow up with social media may not understand the pressures that an extensive online presence can put on a minor. Paltrow never had to go back and delete her awkward Facebook statuses from middle school.
Kids like Martin, however, will worry about their digital footprint all their lives. Martin was born the same year Facebook was created, and now she and her fellow Generation Zers don’t have only their own photos to worry about. They also have their parents’ snaps, too. The stakes are higher, of course, when your mother has more than 5 million Instagram followers.
The comment exchange between Paltrow and Martin appears to have been taken down, though the photo is still up. Let’s hope they had an offline discussion about the picture and Martin decided she didn’t mind it. And next time, even if it feels like a formality, Paltrow could ask first.
A generation we’ve watched grow up on social media should be entitled to a little privacy.
