RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

Content policy for my daughter.

The policy is: we’re not sharing her publicly — not her face, not her personality, not right now. While that feels like quite bold a way to open, it also feels like the clarity I need when navigating an otherwise nebulous frontier. The internet is changing at a million miles a minute — especially with AI scouring every crevice trying to emulate the human experience. Things aren’t what they used to be and nobody actually knows what’s ahead. There’s so much unknown about what a digital footprint even looks like for a kid who never agreed to have one. She can’t consent to that.

For the past decade, we have built a career with Maine the Way sharing our life — where we go, what we eat, etc. The relationship we have with our community has been amazing and we’ve found those who follow along with our adventures to be kind and supportive. When we meet folks from our audience in real life, we tend to have meaningful conversations and are more often than not in cool places — mountaintops, far out islands, chairlifts. But this relationship, both online and off, is one that we opted into. As sentient adults, we understood what comes with putting ourselves out there. A kid doesn’t get that same choice. And the thought of people knowing her without her ever knowing them doesn’t sit right with me.

Thinking about when Kiwi entered our life, folding her into our adventures and the content we shared felt natural. She’s sweet, cute, fun, and part of our family. Over the past two years, there have been a handful of times where she too has been recognized — and the thing about Kiwi is that intros are not her strength. She’s shy, doesn’t like being pet by strangers, and honestly just prefers to be ignored. We do our best to help her navigate and succeed in these interactions, but more than once, someone’s been surprised when they don’t get the same warmth and affection they’ve seen her exude on the internet. This has been a small but real revelation, as we think about this dynamic, a stranger’s parasocial idea of who she is, and would it look like with our daughter instead of our dog.

In anticipation of my daughter’s arrival, I ruthlessly purged my personal Instagram, removing almost a thousand followers — people I hadn’t talked to in years, people who followed back in college, a friend of a friend, someone from some phase where my account was just public. There’s no bad blood in any of it, I just wanted the digital circle around her to be made up of people who are actually in it. I wanted to share pictures of my daughter with the people who are actively in my life — my friends, my family — not people passively watching, forming their own opinions and their own version of a relationship with a kid they’ve never met.

I’m curious to hear your thoughts here — and welcome meaningful discussion on this topic as we navigate whatever comes next.