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Worried US parents keep kids off Facebook

New York - Behold the cascade of baby photos, the flood of funny kid anecdotes and the steady stream of school milestones on Facebook.

It all makes Sonia Rao, a stay-at-home mother of a 1-year-old in California, "a little uncomfortable".

At a time when just about everyone and their mother - father, grandmother and aunt - is intent on publicising the newest generation's early years on social media sites, an increasing number of US parents like Rao are bucking the trend by consciously keeping their children's photos, names and entire identities off the internet.

"I just have a vague discomfort having her photograph out there for anyone to look at," said Rao. "When you meet a new person and go to their account, you can look them up, look at photos, videos; know that they are travelling."

Reasons for the baby blackout vary. Some parents have privacy and safety concerns. Others worry about what companies might do with their child's image and personal data. Some simply do it out of respect for their kids' autonomy before they are old enough to make decisions for themselves.

Privacy setting

"I have a no tolerance policy," said Scott Steinberg, a Missouri-based business and technology consultant. Steinberg said he shares no photos, videos or any information about his child.

As for Rao, she stays active on Facebook. She's happy posting photos of her dog, but not the many snapshots of her daughter and the pet together - no matter how cute they are. Rao does share baby pictures, via e-mail or text, but only with close friends and family.

Facebook, for its part, encourages parents to use the site's privacy setting if they want to limit who can see baby photos and other posts. It's possible, for example, to create a group of close friends and relatives to share kid updates with. But that's not enough for some users.

A big reason parents are wary, even if they use social media sites themselves, is that the companies "have not been very transparent about the way they collect data about users", said Caroline Knorr, parenting editor at the non-profit Common Sense Media, which studies children's use of technology. "Facebook's terms of service and privacy (policies) - no one reads it, it's too obscure."

Some parents look back to their own childhoods, when they were able to make mistakes without evidence of those blunders living on - forever - online.

"I had the choice of what I wanted to reveal publicly," said Wasim Ahmad, journalism professor at Stony Brook University and father of a newborn son.

After his son was born, Ahmad bought the website domain with his son's name.

"I'm going to make it a private website with a password so family can log in" to see updates, he said.

Control

Parents who enforce strict blackout rules are still in the minority. In a 2011 poll conducted at the University of Michigan, 66% of Generation X parents (people born in the 1960s and 1970s) said they post photos of their children online, while more than half said they have shared news about a child's accomplishment online.

Aisha Sultan, a fellow at the Michigan institute where the poll was conducted, thinks the results might be different if the same questions were posed to respondents today.

"Back [then] there wasn't a lot of conversation about this," said Sultan, who is a nationally syndicated parenting advice columnist. "When parents first started joining Facebook in large numbers it wasn't the primary concern. We felt like we were in control of information we were sharing with friends and family."

Facebook's privacy blunders over the years, not to mention frequent updates to its confusing privacy policies, changed all that. Now, Sultan said, parents are more aware of the little control they have over their personal data online.

Lawmakers have begun to pay attention to the issue, too. A new California law requires online services, websites or apps that collect personally identifiable information to remove content that minors have posted, if requested. The measure goes into effect in 2015.

"It's a good start, but I don't think it replaces a lot of parental conversation, regulation and oversight," Sultan said.

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