It’s becoming increasingly common for parents to secure social media accounts for their children at an early age. As Michael Fertik recently advised in a special feature for Reuters, when done with the right intent, this is an important step for parents to protect their children’s future online reputations. However, one Texas couple may be taking things a bit too far.

CNN recently profiled the pair after they created a Facebook account for their daughter.  The thing is…she hasn’t been born yet. After creating the account, the pair have been playfully leaving messages pretending to be her in interactions with friends and family. So far, the unborn baby has over 260 Facebook friends, which is far more than the average number of friends most Facebook users have.

As much as the parents may be pleased with their clever account, there are risks to exposing one’s child to the Internet too much. As their daughter grows up, she may resent the baby photos and other content from her parents, especially if it interferes with her attempts to create a positive professional online presence. Likewise, sharing too much personal info online can lead to a greater risk of identity theft and other issues.

Even if you share videos or photos of your child privately, there is always a risk that you will lose control of the content. For instance, in a recent post at Offbeat Mama, one woman described how a video of her daughter ended up becoming a viral smash online, even leading to an offer to appear on the Today Show. The woman shared the video on Facebook privately, but it was reposted by one of her friends to another website where it picked up steam, eventually accumulating over 50,000 views.

Ultimately, clamor for the video died down, but the mom still learned a valuable lesson. As she writes in her post,

“The lesson I’ve learned from all this is how quickly we can lose control over what we put on the web — we were lucky. In general, the comments people made about the video were harmless. One person said Lucy looked fat and lazy. Delete! I can imagine that it could have been a lot worse and if it had been, I would have been extremely upset that all of this happened without my ‘consent.’”

All parents want to show off their kids, particularly with family and friends, and social media has made it easy. But, it’s also important for parents to remember that the pictures and videos they share online become a permanent part of their child’s online reputation. They’re your children, but they’re also people. Before posting anything online, consider how it might affect them later in their life.

If you’re still wondering whether or not your child should use social media, or what steps you should take to help your child with reputation management, check out these articles from the Reputation.com Resource Center: Should Your Child Have 500 “Friends” Before Starting Kindergarten?, Is it Safe to Post Photos of Your Child Online?.

[Image via Flickr User "Woodley Wonderworks" Used Under a Creative Commons Attribution License]