According to Instagram, the only way to celebrate a child’s first birthday is with a “smash cake”. Simply place one of these meticulously decorated sugar mountains in front of the baby, roll the cameras and let the photogenic mess commence.
This isn’t how I’ll be marking my daughter’s first 12 months, though. Not because there won’t be cake; of course there’ll be cake. But because my wife and I have already gone a full year without posting any pictures of her on social media, and we hope to continue this for as long as possible.
It’s partly about her safety but mainly about consent. I’m more worried about tech companies stalking my daughter than I am people. After deleting all my old tweets a year ago, I don’t want to create a new data trail for her without her knowledge, let alone approval. (There are laws in most developed countries against gathering data on kids, but the internet is global and enforcement is uneven.)