I’ve been blogging in the parenting world for over 6 years now. That’s crazy to think about and even harder to believe. What started as a way for me to dump out my thoughts about pregnancy, motherhood, and postpartum depression also served as a record of Joshua’s, and later Emma’s, life.
Pictures and anecdotes spilled out onto the electronic pages of this blog not only so that I could remember them through the haze of postpartum depression and anxiety but also so that I could share them with others. Friends and family flung far and wide who wanted to see snippets of the kids came here to keep up with them. Slowly, other people started reading too. People we didn’t know personally.
What’s happened over the course of the past 6 years is that my son, the one for and about whom all of this began, hasn’t stayed a baby. Much to my dismay, time has marched on and he has grown up. We added Emma to the mix and life got more hectic and this blog took a back seat because all of the stories have suddenly become more about him than about me and my role in them.
I’ve watched as fellow bloggers have had their pictures and identities stolen and while I truly think those instances are fewer and farther between and the vast majority of us will never be targeted like that, it still gives me pause. Thinking about what Joshua and Emma’s tech-fueled futures will be like also make me wonder what the line is when it comes to what I share here.
I have hard and fast rules about what I will and won’t share here (no stories I wouldn’t tell them in the company of their friends one day, no nude-bootied pictures), but some days I wonder if those are enough. While they have s no idea what it is I do online (yet), I find I’m very careful to write his parts of their story in a way that they’ll hopefully be okay with.
I’m sure I’ve failed in some instances, and I’ll deal with that when the time comes, but for the most part, I think I’ve done okay.
Even though it’s impossible for me to know what their digital futures will look like or how a person’s online activity will factor into future equations, but it’s still something worth thinking about, you know?
(It’s part of the reason for things being so radio silent around here lately, to be honest. I’m trying to flesh out my identity outside of motherhood and figure out what it is I want to do here independent of always talking about them.)
But I’m so used to having an electronic record and there are still people with whom I want to share things, and truth be told, it’s just convenient to have everything in the palm of my hand. Pictures, records, appointment reminders and notes about said appointment all in one place? Yeah. That doesn’t sound terrible.
Now there’s an app for that.
KidsLink is the app for moms.
KidsLink is an invitation-only social network designed to allow only those you know personally to have access to the parts of your life you want to share with them. Facebook used to be that way (sort of) but their algorithm and model seems to inhibit privacy more than it protects it. (Just take the recent uptick in friend requests from Instagram for example.)
KidsLink is the anti-Facebook when it comes to privacy.
Because it’s invitation-only, you’re only being requested by or requesting people with whom you have exchanged phone numbers. If you’re like me, while there are a lot of phone numbers in your contacts, there aren’t nearly as many as the number of friends you have on Facebook, and chances are, you really, really know the person whose phone number you have instead of just squinting at a profile photo, looking at your mutual friends, and going “Sure. Let’s be friends.”
KidsLink is also completely free. No ads, no cost to download. Just free. You can activate the app and your account with my referral code: KLMIRANDA.
Give it a shot. Download the app, start storyboards for your kids, and feel confident and comfortable with the fact that you’re protecting your privacy and your children’s by making your life more organized and secure.
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I was not paid for this post. KidsLink is an app I believe in created by people I believe in and they asked me to share. I happily obliged because I like it when good people are doing good things for moms.
You can find the KidsLink app in the app store or download it here. Use the referral code KLMIRANDA to get started!