How Modern Parents Are Organizing Family Photos and Memories

Given how many photos parents take of their kids, you might assume their shelves would be overflowing with baby books. But that's not usually the case. “Honestly, I don't have time to do the baby book,” says Sarah Steward, a mom of two in Cambridge, MA. “It is just so much effort, and it feels really final because you can't edit it.”

Since we no longer need to physically print out photos just to see them, taking that extra step (and then organizing them inside a book alongside handwritten captions) often feels like one chore too many — especially at a time when so many parents are already so stressed out that the Surgeon General issued a warning about it.

But that doesn't mean today's parents aren't keeping memories of their kids. They're just leveraging newer technology that makes things easier.

“I'm a little obsessive about preserving the small memories that I can already tell are lost day-to-day,” says McKenzie Graham Willits, a mother of two in Cincinnati. She's one of many millennial and Gen Z parents PS spoke with who are turning to multiple avenues for memory-keeping — most of which weren't available to our parents' generation. Here are some of today's most popular options.

The New Ways Parents Are Memory-Keeping

Video Compilations

As fun as it is to look back at old camcorder footage from the '80s and '90s, those home videos can be a bit unwieldy (read: long and often boring). These days, parents are more likely to turn to apps like 1 Second Everyday, or 1SE, to create a highlight reel.

Graham Willits, for instance, says she uses a paid version of 1SE to string together slightly longer clips of a few seconds each. “I like to pick and choose which are the most indicative of their personalities in that moment,” she says. “And I do a video for each of our family vacations.” Other parents create a year-end compilation for every birthday, with daily memories packed into a video that ends up amounting to only six minutes.

Voice Memos

Photos and videos aren't the only things our phones can record. Some parents, like Samantha Stahl of Burlingame, CA, use voice memos to capture all those darn things their kids say. “Things like learning to count, the way they sounded as a little person or said things their own way (‘handgabur!'), funny conversations and songs, the way they sound gaming with friends, showing off at a school band/choir concert,” Stahl says of the kinds of clips she likes to record.

She came up with the idea when her older neighbors talked about wishing they could have “bottled up the noise” of their sons when they were still little. She finds it a major benefit that she can record surreptitiously to capture a realistic slice of life. “Because as soon as you get the camera out, they're at the stage where it's no longer spontaneous,” she says.

Time Capsule Emails

Some people rolled their eyes at Meghan Markle earlier this year when she admitted to sending her kids near-daily emails before they're even old enough to read, but it's something many of today's parents do (though maybe not with the same frequency). The idea is that by creating an email account now, parents can share memories that their kids will be able to access in the future.

Rebecca Santiago, a mom of three in Camden, ME, says she likes to write emails to her daughters on special occasions, like the night before their birthday, for instance, or whenever they're in a particularly cute phase. She'll include quotes of things they've said, a photo or two, and sometimes thoughts on what it's like parenting them.

“It's also fun because then I have it in my sent folder so I can look back through stuff if I care to, like a digital baby book,” she says, adding that she plans to give each child access when they're around 10 or 12 years old.

Photo-Keeping Apps

With cameras essentially attached to us 24/7, the cell phone photo libraries of today's parents can become majorly overwhelming. It's no surprise then that there are several apps available that make it easier to feature the best shots in a separate place.

MiniMemories, for instance, lets users text a daily photo and caption to a dedicated number. The number will then send back a text every morning with a photo from the past, in addition to letting users search the database. “[We] can see what was happening with him on this day five years ago, and that just sparks other memories,” says Steward, who uses the app regularly.

Other apps, like Qeepsake and The Short Years, allow users to turn favorites into, yes, a physical baby book if desired.

Social Media Profiles

Some parents set up separate social media accounts (often set to private) for their kids, sharing them with close friends and family members. “I used the accounts as a pregnancy journal,” Graham Willits says of the two profiles she created for each of her daughters. When they were born, she uploaded a post that recounted their birth story, then posted every month throughout the first year. “And now every year, I come back and post a year-end summary with a few pictures and videos,” she says.

Other parents simply upload favorite photos and videos throughout the year, using the child's account as a regularly-updated album that's easy to share with exactly who they want to see it on a platform that many are already checking daily.

Cloud-Based Photo Albums

Not every parent feels comfortable leaving their kids' memories in the hands of a social media company that technically owns the images and could, theoretically, disappear at any time. As a result, many choose to upload their images to a password-protected online photo album hosted by Google or Amazon, or a free app like FamilyAlbum or Tinybeans.

“It brings peace of mind that all of the photos are on the Cloud, so if a computer or phone dies, everything is already backed up,” says Santiago, who pays for space for three Google albums for her three girls. She and her husband both have Google Pixel phones, so their pictures and videos are automatically uploaded to Google Photos. She just takes time once a month to pick out her faves and caption them. (Pro tip: the Santiagos also upload pics of their kids' artwork so they don't need to keep physical copies.)

Santiago particularly likes that friends and family who have the link can add comments or even upload their own images when they visit, too. “It's a pretty easy way to keep the grandparents involved, especially when they live far away,” she says. Plus, she links the home TV's screensaver to the albums so that favorite memories are constantly popping up — no digging out a baby book required.

Jennifer Heimlich is a writer and editor with more than 15 years of experience in fitness and wellness journalism. She previously worked as the senior fitness editor for Well+Good and the editor in chief of Dance Magazine. A UESCA-certified running coach, she's written about running and fitness for publications like Shape, GQ, Runner's World, and The Atlantic.