When we talk about social media with our kids, we tend to warn them against sharing too much information. 

Don’t put your name, don’t put your location. Lock your account. 

Stay safe. 

It’s ironic, isn’t it, that we tell our kids these things ... and then when back to school time rolls around, we as parents tend to do the very thing that we tell our kids not to do?

Those first day of school photos have become tradition, and it doesn’t seem real until we’ve loaded the photo to Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and, for some parents, turned it into a TikTok video. 

Each one features a kid – some smiling, others clearly just waiting for the photo session to be over – holding up a sign with a laundry list of private information. 

Julie is 8 years old, going into 3rd grade at Sesame Elementary, where her teacher will be Mrs. Johnson. She loves making friendship bracelets and wants to be a YouTube star when she grows up. 

The photo is worthy of being added to a family time capsule and pulled out for the graduation party slideshow when Julie is 18. 

It’s also a giant security risk for our kids, especially the youngest kids who are most likely to trust a random adult who walks up to them on a street corner and knows so much about their life. Surely this person really must be a friend of Mom or Dad. How ELSE would they know you love friendship bracelets and Mrs. Johnson is your teacher? 

I love seeing back-to-school photos posted on social media. They’re a window into my friends’ lives, and they allow me the chance to be a little part of their story. 

But perhaps this year you’d consider taking two photos – the one with the sign full of memories to look back on when they graduate, that you store away in the digital archives somewhere and the one of a smiling kid that you post to your social media platform of choice with no more than a simple “happy back to school” message for the rest of us. 

If nothing else, when your kid is old enough to sign up for their own social media accounts in a few years, your reminders about keeping private information private will sound less “do as I say, not as I do.”