Facebook Friends Send Mom a Rude Anonymous Letter
Jade Ruthven received hate mail accusing her of sharing too many photos of her daughter, Addison, on Facebook. (Photo: Linda Wild/rg wild photography)
Sharing baby photos online has become the norm for modern parenting. First steps, monthly birthdays, adorable outfits — all are celebrated with Facebook photos or Instagram posts, usually inspiring a collection of likes and, maybe, an eye roll or two from uninterested friends.
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But one Australian mom’s posts of her 6-month-old daughter apparently upset some friends so much that she received anonymous hate mail, attacking her constant social media updates. Jade Ruthven, mom to baby Addison, shared the letter with comedian Em Rusciano, who wrote about it on Tuesday in a news.com.au column titled “This Facebook complaint letter is next-level mean.”
This letter was sent to new mom Jade Ruthven, attacking her social media updates. (Photo: Jade Ruthven)
The letter, which was unsigned, reads: “I have got together with a few of the girls and we are all SO OVER your running commentary of your life and every single thing Addy does. Look we all have kids that we are besotted with — guess what – every parent thinks their kid is the best ever. But we don’t ram it down everyone else’s neck!!! She wears a new outfit – well take a photo and send it PRIVATELY to the person who gave it to her – not to everyone!!!! She crawls off the mat – we DON’T care!!!!! She’s 6 months old – BIG DEAL!!! Stop and think – if every mother posted all that crap about their kid – I’m sure you’d get over it pretty quickly. We can’t wait for you to get back to work - maybe you won’t have time to be on Facebook quite so much. Addy is gorgeous and we all love her, but our kids are great too. I guess you are just pissing a lot of people off with all your ‘Addy this and Addy that’ – we all thought it might ease off after the first month, but it hasn’t. Not everyone is as interested as you are about what Addy does so give us all a break. We’re doing this to let you know what people really think.”
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Ruthven, a 33-year-old dental hygienist, told the Daily Mail Australia that she was initially horrified when she read the letter. “I was actually excited when I checked the mail and saw a hand-written envelope thinking it was an invite. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect what was in it,” the new mom said. “I was shaking with anger and shock to think a so-called friend of mine could be so heartless and gutless to not even sign their name.”
The identity of the letter-writer is still unknown, though Ruthven says she doesn’t think it’s a close friend. “If they were, they would know I would never take this lying down, start crying in the corner, and then take myself off Facebook,” she said, pointing out she has no intention of changing the way she shares online. “The support I have received from family, friends and even total strangers has blown me away.”
Ruthven did not reply to Yahoo Parenting’s request for comment.
Of course, Ruthven isn’t the only parent accused of overdoing it when it comes to sharing their kids on social media. According to a report released in March from the University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, three-quarters of parents say they know someone who is guilty of “oversharenting,” though that can mean anything from simply sharing too many photos or revealing inappropriate or potentially embarrassing information. “There isn’t an accepted norm,” Sarah J. Clark, associate research scientist in the Department of Pediatrics at University of Michigan and co-author of the report, tells Yahoo Parenting. “I think that is what the current generation of parents is going to do, create universal norms for privacy settings and the way we open or shut the flow of information.”
Besides its nasty tone, the biggest problem with the letter sent to Ruthven was that it was anonymous, Clark says. “The letter writers took no responsibility for what they can do to shut off the flow of information, and gave the woman no opportunity to get those people out of her flow,” she says. On Facebook, for example, Ruthven could have blocked the letter-writers from seeing her photos, or simply unfriended them. Or, the friends could have simply hid Ruthven’s posts from their newsfeed. “Oversharenting is defined differently from person to person.”
Ruthven says that there seems to be a growing recognition that social media users need to start putting parameters around their sharing, but for now, she suggests two rules to guide parents. “First, before you share a photo of your kid, stop and think: If this were me in the photo, would I be okay with it when I was a tween or in a particularly awkward time? Would I get teased about it? That takes care of the embarrassing part,” she says. “The second question is, am I ok with this being seen [by] my pastor, or the mayor, or the kindergarten teacher? Because you never know how far your photo will travel. If parents would ask themselves those two questions, they might create a little space for thoughtfulness that would allow them to tweak what they do a little bit.”
For now, Ruthven has no intention of posting photos online any differently. As she told the Daily Mail Australia, “It takes a lot more to keep me down than a nasty letter!”
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