Mommy Blogs can be a Pedophile's Smorgasbord

OK, flame me now but I agree with Kathie Lee Gifford and her views on mommy blogging, specifically putting too much information on your kids on the site. As a 50-something mom I feel the need to come to KLG's defense. Many say she's a hypocrite because she talked about her kids all the time on TV during her stint with Regis Philbin. I disagree. She might come from a different time but she's not wrong to be concerned.

Flashback to the early 90s when she was on TV giving daily updates on her family life. The majority of people didn't have personal computers. Al Gore hadn't created the Internet yet.   Although there were plenty of pedophiles, creeps and stalkers among us they had to work a lot harder to find their prey. If you wanted to get someone's phone number you had to either look it up in a phone book or call the Operator. If you had someone's phone number but their address wasn't listed in the phone book you could get a "Criss Cross Directory" and get their address that way (that usually involved going to a Public Library and actually looking in a book). If you wanted a picture of someone you had to take it yourself (assuming they weren't a celebrity, in which case you could buy a book or magazine). How about a satellite picture of their home? You'd have to be in the FBI or something. Where could you find pictures of little kids for your perverse pleasure? I don't know, probably at family functions or church. Anyway, you get the point. You really had to go through a lot to obsess over someone.

Fast forward to the present. Everyone has access to a computer. In a few keystrokes you can find things like someone's address, their phone number, charities they support, things they have said, what they look like and how much they paid for their house. You can even zoom into a satellite street view photo of their home. There are million of blogs. There are thousands of mommy blogs.  Now I enjoy reading about the trials and tribulations of motherhood and funny things that happen along way as much as anyone. I like hearing about good things that happen. I fully realize the power of the mommy network as an on-line support system. Long live mommy bloggers.

But I believe one of a mother's most important jobs is protecting the safety of their children and for whatever reason -- ego, ignorance, their quest for their "15 Minutes of Fame" some mommy bloggers get carried away and in doing so put their child in harm's way. Revealing too much information like their real names, school, sports teams, performances, and PHOTOs -- can lead whack-jobs right to your front door or at the very least deliver those pictures of your child that you think are so cute directly to their desktop where they can easily share them with their secret network of fellow pedophiles. Wonder how many hits a mommy blog by JonBenet Ramsey's mom would have gotten?

Out of curiosity I Googled one of the more famous mommy bloggers little girl (I am purposely not linking to the sites for obvious reasons). She's pictured on lots of sites but the one that got my skin crawling was on Flickr. Ordinarily you can post pictures on sites like this to share with friends but this particular photo had many comments from people who knew who she was by name because of her mother's blog.

Think about that for a minute. That child was identified on the spot by total strangers. People will know her around her town and around the world. Doesn't that scare you? Call me old-fashioned but I just don't get it. Life can be dangerous enough. Sometimes kids aren't even safe in their own schools or churches or families but why in God's name would a mom do something that would put their kids at greater risk?

This is an original 50-Something Mom's post.

Comments

[the Farmer's Wife]

I totally agree with both you and Kathy Lee on this one. The other aspect is that perhaps Kathy Lee was talking from the perspective of experience, realizing that perhaps exposing her family to the public the way she did might have had negative effects.

I am not a fan of tell-all blogs. Just recently I read about bloggers who write under assumed names which, according to them allow them to be "authentic". Someone is going to have to define authentic to me because in my vocabulary that doesn't include some of the very personal or unkind things I've read. One case in particular was a woman who ranted about her Aspy-crazy kids (Asburger's Syndrome) and her bi-polar husband. Did she need an outlet to vent her frustrations and her anger? Yes. Not a blog, but a support group or therapy sessions.

The issues you have raised certainly need to be addressed as blogging goes forward.

Thanks for a thoughtful post.

- Suzanne, the Farmer's Wife

[SwitchedOnMom]

I recently blogged about this (http://themorechild.wordpress.com/2008/05/07/that-queasy-feeling-privacy-and-blogging/)
--and realize that by mentioning this/including my URL--I've just perpetuated the issue... :-0

It's a real dilemma. Although I'm trying to be careful, there will be those people who "figure it out." However it is the very details/specificity that IMHO make a blog worth reading. I enjoy blogging. I enjoy expressing myself. So, feeling my way carefully.

[Cindy La Ferle]

Great post -- thanks for keeping the discussion going. I blogged about this too, from the perspective of a weekly newspaper columnist:
http://www.laferle.com/?p=124
It is a very tough issue. And it will be interesting to see how blogging does impact our kids as they grow up.

[Laura]

Here Here! It is about time someone talked about this elephant in the room. Try as they may to justify photos and names and so much personal information on their kids, mommybloggers do so at their/their children's peril. There is so much that can be imparted on a blog without jeopardizing a child's safety or providing fodder for the child's future psychotherapy. Feel free to divulge as much as you want about you or any consenting adult but GIVE THESE KIDS A BREAK!

[Karen]

Thank you! Finally someone has addressed some serious blogging issues. I was wondering if all of these women had been living under a rock, putting all of their personal family info out their for all the world to see. I am so grateful for you speaking your mind. I often wonder if it's because we have become so closed off from each other that many of these women feel they can only communicate by blogging about every last detail of their life from wiping a drippy nose to coloring their hair. So sad if that is the case, and so dangerous.

[Mary Kate]

My issue with Kathy Lee wasn't her concern about the blogger child's privacy but how she raised the issue. She clearly wasn't prepared for the interview and didn't have any cohesive thoughts to share-- it was clear that she was just "yammering" away and hoping something coherent would come out. So instead of having a thoughtful conversation about an extremely important subject (which the mommy blogger attempted to do) she ended up derailing the whole conversation by screaming, "Gotcha!" before segueing into the next segment.

If you read that particular mommy blogger's blog, she has posted a few different times about the balance of private/public life. The mommy blogger also gave a 'behind the scenes' account of the interview and Kathie Lee's interaction with the blogger was completely different prior to the interview.

As for the "it used to be different" argument, I don't know that I completely buy that. I have a feeling that it wouldn't have been all that hard to locate Kathie Lee's house if someone had chosen to do so (John Lennon is an example of someone killed by a rabid fan-- Jodie Foster had a famous stalker) so I don't think things were anymore safer than they are now. It can just appear that way because we all managed to live through those dangerous times.