Help Desk

:( Help!

My boyfriend's teenage daughter just asked to follow me on Instagram. He's 40, I'm 29, and she's 13. This is the first time I've seriously dated someone with a kid, and she's totally great! We've bonded a bit – he has her every other weekend – and I think she sees me as sort of a fun aunt.

Here's the problem: Several photos on my Instagram feature booze, sexual innuendos, penis jokes, etc. It's who I am, but it's not necessarily information I want to her to see right now, or maybe ever.

The whole situation has me freaking out on several levels. Do I ignore her like an ice queen? Accept the request and treat her like a friend and peer? Nuke all my incriminating photos and start self-presenting as a boring grownup? Who am I supposed to be?!

– New Offer of Friendship on Instagram Leads To Existential Rift

Welcome to the ambiguous world of parenting, NOFILTER. Everyone has his or her own style, and what works for one family may not work for another. Modern technology creates a new heap of challenges, but the same basic calculus remains: What's best for the kid? What's acceptable to you? Are you on the same page as the other people involved in parenting her?

We can appreciate the virtues of each of the three options you lay out above. To ignore her follow request might seem cold at first glance, but it allows you to keep up a vital boundary. That's important for you as well as for her. On the other hand, if you decide to accept her friend request without taking down any photos – hey, we can dig it. Too many Americans, especially women, are raised to be ashamed of their bodies and to discuss sex in hushed tones. If you decide to be a different kind of role model in that regard, more power to you. Finally, if you choose to sanitize your account for the girl's sake, that could be for the best. Maybe you can sense that it's time you grew up a little – not just for the sake of the kid, but also for professional and social reasons of your own.

Forced to choose one, we recommend ignoring the request. Both other options seem a bit radical – in the first case, letting a child dictate how you live your life, and, in the second, relating to a child as a peer when your role should be something more like an authority figure.

If you're a Facebook user too, consider building an online friendship there instead. Unlike Instagram, Facebook allows you to pick and choose which information you share with certain friends. Creating a filtered version of your Facebook account just for the kid may seem like a lot of work. But it could pay dividends later, allowing you to eventually accept friend requests from other teenagers (i.e., her classmates) and easily plug them into the same set of filters. Being a grownup means having some boundaries, NOFILTER. Embrace it. :) HD