Is It Safe to Post Baby Photos on the Internet?

Paranoia, perverts, and TikTok

I miss out on most viral TikTok trends as they’re happening, which I suspect the algorithm does to me because it senses that I am old.

I usually don’t mind; playing a quick game of What Is This Viral TikTok About Another Viral TikTok Referring To? It makes me feel a little like a digital Nancy Drew and it’s allowed me to observe such puzzling moments of mass cultural participation as Couch Guy, the Womb Lands, West Elm Caleb, and the University of Alabama Sorority Rush.

This week, however, my For You Page took a sinister turn when it introduced me to something called The Wren Situation, which it turns out is not an ethics mind exercise about birds a la The Trolley Problem.

I’m not going to go too deeply into what The Wren Situation is (there’s a pretty thorough explainer here and the more I read about it the more urgently I felt like I needed to close my computer for the week and take a shower) but to summarize: there’s a three-year-old TikTok star named Wren who many users of the platform believe is being exploited by her mother. They believe this based on some of the content that the mother has posted of the girl and the comments from other users that appear with the videos that the little girl’s social media presence is made to appeal to a creep audience.

Many TikTok users, understandably, find this upsetting. One of the most-viewed videos on The Wren Situation is a mother who said that she did some digging into some of the commenters on Wren’s videos and found entire Pinterest boards devoted to photos of little kids’ feet with the rest of the kid cropped out. Which: ew.

That video spurred other TikTok moms (and people who were eager to cast aspersions on Wren’s mother) to make their own videos about the population of invisible creeps infecting all online spaces, perving on photos of toddlers and babies, deviants and groomers lying in wait. Some of the moms participating in The Wren Situation Discourse said that as a result of what they’d learned by reading through comments left on a digital child celebrity’s photos, they’d be taking down all photos of their children from public social media profiles.

Like most parents, I have thought long and hard about how much of an online footprint my kid should have before she’s old enough to make that decision for herself. She’s a part of my life, but she’s also got her own. I’ve wrestled with theoretical ethical dilemmas about what would constitute something that was my story to share and something that I should shut up about and leave to her. At the same time, I am a writer who writes personal essays about motherhood; leaving my daughter out entirely would feel like a lie of omission.

As I fell deeper into The Wren Situation rabbit hole, I started feeling real fear that even mentioning my kid could put her in danger and that I’d been a fool to share what limited amount of information and images I’ve shared about her publicly. I had not considered that I might have to avoid posting photos of her altogether in order to dodge perverts.

But then I took a breath.

I’ve been working in digital media long enough to learn to be skeptical of almost everything I read on the internet, and I have some questions. Are the comments under the videos of the three-year-old TikTok star really left by actual human users, or did her stage mom, like so many other influencers (including, evidently, people working for director Zack Snyder), employ the aid of a bot army to boost her numbers, comment, and like each other’s comments? Fake accounts are the dark matter that warps reality online. Why would this viral moment be any different than the others?

Many creators who used The Wren Situation to issue warnings about creepy men hunting for children online give off similar vibes to the women who made videos warning people to beware of human traffickers hanging out in Target parking lots because they’re pretty sure that they personally were almost human trafficked out of a Target parking lot.

Statistically, a middle class white mom whose disappearance would be immediately noticed by loved ones and law enforcement is unlikely to go missing in broad daylight. I found two stories of women who were kidnapped from Target parking lots under circumstances I’ve seen warnings issued about on social media; one happened in 2007 and the perpetrator was caught because there are security cameras all over in Target parking lots and a Target parking lot is actually a very stupid place to kidnap somebody from unless you want to get caught, and the other was in 1997 and it turned out that her husband and his mistress did it. But reality can’t interfere with a harrowing tale of a near-brush with true crime.

Target parking lot human trafficking: not an epidemic. Pervs trying to hit on babies: also not an epidemic. At least, probably not in the way the latest trend suggests it is.

However: I understand the desire to be safe rather than sorry. Even though I know that I’m probably fine to walk to my car at 2 pm on a Monday, I carry my keys between my index and middle fingers as though I have the faintest idea of how to use them as a weapon if I’m jumped out of nowhere. I lock my doors behind me like I’m seven years old and running up dark basement stairs. The chances of me being targeted are small. The chances of me being able to fend off an attacker using my car keys and automatic locks are smaller.

And so after I read that story of the alleged creeps who I believe are probably almost all fake, I went through my Instagram account and took down a bunch of photos that had my baby in them, anyway. Better safe than sorry, right? I don’t want my kid’s feet to end up on some weirdo’s Pinterest board.

Image via Shutterstock