Privacy
How to keep your kids off social media without cutting off family
Sharenting, digital footprints and the grandparents who just want to see the photos. A practical middle path.
October 1, 2026 · 6 min read
Grandma wants to see the first day of school. Your cousin three states away wants to watch the kids grow up. And you’re increasingly uneasy about putting your children’s faces, names and schools on public platforms they never agreed to. You don’t have to choose between connection and privacy.
Why parents are rethinking “sharenting”
- It’s permanent. Once a photo is public, you can’t truly take it back. Screenshots, downloads and archives outlive deleted posts.
- It adds up. A full name, a birthday post, a school logo in the background and a hometown are enough to piece together a lot about a child. In 2018, the UK bank Barclays warned that oversharing by parents could become a major source of identity fraud against young people by 2030.
- Kids grow up and have opinions. Many teens say they wish their parents had asked before posting about them. The bath-time photo you found adorable may not age well.
- Feeds aren’t neutral. Public platforms are built to show content to more people, not fewer.
A practical middle path
- Share to people, not to audiences. Use a private space with a short list of named family members instead of a public profile or a giant group chat.
- Pick an audience per photo. Not every memory is for everyone. The potty-training victory might be for parents only.
- Strip location. Photos can carry GPS coordinates. Turn off location tagging in your camera when you don’t need it, and never post a photo that shows your house number or your child’s school name.
- Ask older kids. From around school age, a simple “Can I send this to Grandma?” teaches them their image belongs to them.
- Make public sharing a deliberate act. If something does go public, let it be because you chose to, not because it was the default.
How Jelly approaches it
Jelly keeps memories on your phone by default. Family Circle, which we’re building now, is a private space for up to ten grown-ups, and every memory has its own audience: everyone, only some people, or only you. When it launches, memories will be encrypted on your phone before they leave it, so even we can’t see them. And nothing ever becomes public unless you export it yourself.
We publish exactly what we can and can’t see on our transparency page, because a privacy promise you can’t check isn’t worth much.
