Dear Amy: Sharing My Grandkids' Instagram Photos #SMEtiquette

This week's installment of Dear Amy: Social Media Etiquette for the Rest of Us, looks at a kind of tricky question: if someone posts publicly on Instagram, what's wrong with sharing it somewhere else? This is especially true of parents and grandparents who might want to share their darlings' doings with the rest of the family and their friends.But, as usual, it's not as simple as that.And don’t forget! Submit your questions!Dear Instagranny:It’s a little hard to answer this conclusively without knowing if your grandchildren have locked accounts on Instagram. If they do, the answer is very simple: They've selectively given permission to the people they want to be able to see their photos. What you're doing is violating that trust they've given you.Sure, you can argue that anything put online is really public and people shouldn’t get upset if it’s shared further, but you’re their grandmother and so should be extra-sensitive to their wishes on this.However, I’m going to assume that their accounts aren’t locked down and are easily viewed by anyone who wishes. Maybe they even use three, four, 10 or 12 hashtags on each photo, so they can be viewed by lots of people not even connected to them.If that’s the case, I can certainly see your confusion.Your grandchildren are posting photos publicly. Instagram is a social network. Facebook is a social network. Anyone can see their photos on Instagram anyway – in fact, they seem to want as many people as possible to see them.So why would your reposting of these photos on Facebook be wrong?Simple: They didn’t post them to Facebook, you did. Maybe there’s a reason they didn’t post them on Facebook. Maybe they want their friends and perfect strangers to see the photos, but didn’t want family to. Remember when you were younger? You didn’t want your entire family to see everything you were doing. You wanted some privacy.When I was in my teens, 20s, 30s, I didn’t want to share what I was doing with my whole family. We didn’t have Instagram and Facebook to share everything with everyone (well, Facebook came along in the latter half of my 30s, but no one in my family was on it). If my grandmother had taken photos from my apartment and photocopied them and sent them in a newsletter to her friends and extended family, I’d have been mortified.That’s kind of what this is like: You’re taking your grandchildren’s photos, without their permission, and sharing them with everyone you know.YES, they are posting them publicly. YES, anyone could do the same thing. But you’re their grandmother. You’re supposed to ask permission. You’re supposed to have more consideration for your grandchildren than some stranger on Instagram.Plus, that stranger on Instagram isn’t showing these photos to your friends and neighbors who are going to kvell over them next time they come visit you.Bottom line: Ask before you screenshot. Maybe they’ll even send you an original copy you can share. And if they say no, don’t do it. It’s the polite thing to (not) do.