The World’s Happiest Dog® doesn’t know she’s popular with my Facebook friends. I share pictures of Lucy — and my cats — on Facebook, Instagram and on the web. They don’t have any concept of privacy, so they don’t care.
Things get more complicated with humans, though. And if you share your words or photos online — as I do — it requires a lot of thought to figure out where to draw the line between disclosure and privacy.
I’m thinking about that this afternoon because of a column that “mommy blogger” Christie Tate wrote for the Washington Post — explaining why her fourth-grade daughter is upset with her. The daughter got her first laptop and has been searching online for her mother’s name. She discovered lots of articles and photos in which she’s a subject — and she’s not happy about it.
The daughter wants her mother to remove any references to her, but Tate refused, saying “I’m not done exploring my motherhood in my writing.”

Stop using children as pawns to promote adult political agendas
How could a stranger at sunset possibly know what I had to say?
Getting better at all I do is only way to fight ‘imposter syndrome’
The free market: It’s not just for greedy, rich white capitalists
Schools’ one-size-fits-all rules are just excuse not to use judgement
What if I’ve fooled myself — and darkness is all that waits for me?
My Twitter suspension is reminder that free speech is under assault
Ruthless impersonal judgment is typical tool of cultural conformity
We can’t agree what intelligence is, but it defines some of us