Let’s just imagine for a second: you’re at your weekly social netball game. Your husband and toddler are cheering you on from the sidelines when suddenly a stranger comes up to your child and starts taking pictures of them.
What do you do? Do you brush it off or do you tell them to back off?
This was the reality for Sophie Cachia, the Adelaide-based mum who runs successful blog The Young Mummy and has an Instagram following of over 108,000 Instagram followers.
Taking to Snapchat to vent to her thousands of followers, Cachia said in a series of Snaps, “If you want to take photos of my son with me and my husband present just ask us. Simple. It’s polite, it’s manners.”
“Tonight a girl filmed my son in front of my eyes with her flash on. Didn’t ask or make eye contact with me and thought it was appropriate. It wasn’t. Especially because if that had been a man, it would have been classified as really creepy. But because she’s a woman she thought that would be okay.”
“I was actually on the netball court and my husband was on the sidelines,” Cachia told Mamamia. “Bobby had just jumped off the pram for a run around when a girl, who looked like she was in her mid-twenties started pointing her phone with a flash on at him.”
Another series of snaps showed the woman in question Facebook messaged Cachia to apologise, to which Cachia said ‘apology accepted’. The social media star then said she would be turning her Snapchat back to private.
“I’m a very confrontational person,” Cachia said. “The girl contacted me on Facebook after seeing my snaps and we talked it out. I’m glad we ended on a good note.”
Does having a large social media following and often sharing photos of your child on social media justify a stranger's decision to take an unsolicited photo?
According to Play By The Rules, there is no law in Australia restricting photography of people (including children) in public spaces. But does this make it right?
"I understand a lot of people will say I shouldn't be complaining becasue I post a lot of photos of Bobby on my Instagram," Cachia said. " But there's a difference. I'm able to control the photos I share through social media. When strangers on the street are coming up and taking photos of him I have no idea what they'll be using these for."
PR darling, Roxy Jacenko has faced similar issues in the past after her four-year-old daughter, Pixie Curtis, (who boasts a 110k Instagram following of her own) was caught up in a lewd photo scandal back in February.
You can watch Roxy Jacenko on The Project below. Post continues after video...
"I started shaking at my desk. I cried, and I'm not a crier," Jacenko told the Kyle and Jackie O show in February.
"Seeing your four-year-old child in a situation they had superimposed her into, it was sick. To superimpose a child into a sexual position, you have to be f*cked in the head."
Commenters argued the incident was Jacenko's fault for 'exploiting' her child on social media. Could the same be said for Cachia? Did she lose her rights to her child's privacy as soon as she began sharing photos of him on Instagram?
"People need to remember Bobby is just a little boy and I'm just a mum," Cachia said. "You wouldn't do that to any other child. It just doesn't sit well with me."
It all comes down to common sense and common courtesy. For, say, Cachia and Jacenko, sure you can take a photo of their kid, but do them the justice of asking first. As for the babies you walk past on the street, unless you want to look like a creep it may be a good idea just to keep walking.