There in the hospital in 2016, when I held my first child for the first time, I had a feeling common among new parents. I was overwhelmed by the sense that I had been entrusted with something very special. Your kids are so vulnerable and defenseless, so innocent and new. You hold them for that first time and think, this is the most wonderful and special thing in the world. You think, this is my purpose now: to protect, to serve, to teach.
What I was not thinking was: I bet this will get a lot of likes on Instagram.
My wife felt the same as I did. So there and then we made a decision: we would not post pictures of our children online—and if we did, we would obscure their faces. We would also ask that their grandparents and our friends respect that choice and avoid doing so, too.
The reason I don’t post pictures of my sons, who are seven and four, on the internet is not because I am a private person. It’s not because, after writing a handful of best-selling books over the last decade, I have managed to achieve a fraction of the fame of the average beauty influencer and now worry about my family’s safety.