Why We Should Take Fewer Pictures of Our Children I want to look at pictures on daddy's phone! I can't recall when this entreaty started. I only know it has been repeated like a mantra nearly every day by my 3-year-old daughter for as long as I remember her being able to speak in sentences. For a while I assumed her interest was centered not on our family photographs and videos themselves but on the magic of the iPhone's touchscreen. Making images move simply by gliding your finger across a plate of glass is as close as we have come to having superpowers. It entrances adults, why not children too? But when "I want to look at pictures on the computer!" became an additional regular plea, I realized superpowers weren't what she was after. The dazzle of my high-tech phone was merely a red herring to my daughter's photo obsession. On the surface a child's preoccupation with personal photos seems quite benign, or even beneficial. Children need to develop an awareness of themselves and of their relation to others, and looking at photos of themselves with their friends and family very likely helps build this recognition. Indeed, several studies suggest that self-focusing stimuli (such as mirrors, or photos of oneself) increase self-consciousness. And yet I fear her photo obsession may hasten her self-consciousness to a degree that's no longer constructive. Early sexualization of young girls and grammar school kids being overly concerned with brands are just two of the innumerable specific elements of the much-bemoaned "Kids Getting Older Younger" trend that are widely written about. And yet a macro component of KGOY -- precocious self-awareness -- is not talked about enough, if at all. Alain Morin, a psychologist at Mount Royal University, in Canada, who studies self-awareness, told me: "There is no doubt that kids nowadays get far more exposed to self-focusing stimuli than we adults used to at their age, especially with digital cameras, cellphones, and the easiness of posting these images and videos online." Like most everything, self-awareness is healthy in moderation, and problematic in excess. For adults excessive self-awareness has links to a host of ills from anxiety to vanity. Though he was careful to mention that not all the effects are negative, Dr. Morin noted, "frequently being photographed and filmed likely induces self-awareness and thus self-evaluation, self-criticism, and may lead to other aversive consequences." Not only is the viewing of photos of oneself potentially problematic, but the act of getting those photos taken has an effect on us as well. Our children's lives are being documented to a degree never done before. My parents have one photo album for every year or two of our family's history, with four pictures on each page, carefully placed under the cellophane. By contrast, I often have over 100 new pictures per month added to iPhoto on my computer. Like adults, kids often act differently when they know the camera is on. There's a reason posed shots almost always seem so awkward and artificial compared with candid ones. The very act of documentation, ironically, affects the moment it is trying to document. The more we film -- and indisputably, we film a lot today -- the more time our kids are, to one degree or another, knowingly acting a scene for the camera rather than just being present. The other day, in a sweet moment, my daughter put her arm around her 1-year-old brother. Before my wife and I could finish our "aww"s, my daughter said, "Take a picture!" A 3-year-old shouldn't know which of her actions are worthy of being documented; she should simply be in the moment. So, both components of our photography obsession -- the experience of parents and others regularly clicking away, and the regular viewing of the results of this relentless documentation -- are making our children increasingly self-aware. And this is a shame because a lack of self-awareness is part of what makes youth so precious. We have a long hallway in our apartment that has become a runway for my daughter. I revel as she takes off, her little body listing and snaking like she's avoiding sniper fire, as her legs and arms pump furiously, joyously. The whole event, which occurs repeatedly throughout the day, every day, lasts two or three seconds. At some point she'll lack this unrestrained enthusiasm for simply getting from one room to the next, which in its essence is just a basic enthusiasm for life, perhaps. She'll be aware that running from room to room is not something adults (nor growing kids who emulate them) do. She'll be aware of herself. This awareness of course will be a normal and healthy development. But it will also be a loss of something extraordinary. No matter how many times I witness this hallway run, it always makes me glad to be alive. There's something to be said for being un-self-aware. Yet I suspect our collective obsession with photos is hastening its demise.