Photo: @karpoozy/TikTok
“Rebecca’s personality is described as ‘saucy and feisty,’ boisterous, competitive, outgoing, and sometimes difficult and mean,” they wrote.
By Isaac Serna-Diez — Written on Jun 07, 2023
A woman named Kirsta (@karpoozy) on TikTok recently posted a video talking about something she saw on Instagram that was concerning — the rehoming of adopted children being advertised on the social media app.
This wouldn’t be entirely strange seeing as the account the post came from did come from an established adoption agency, but what concerned her more was the description with which they decided to describe the child.
The adoption agency called the 10-year-old girl ‘saucy and feisty’ in their adoption ad.
“Rehoming adopted children has made its way to Instagram,” she said in her video posted on April 22, 2023. “Came across this post from an adoption agency called Nightlight Christian Adoptions.”
“Could you be her forever family???” the non-profit adoption agency writes in their caption. The ad is for a 10-year-old girl they’ve named “Rebecca,” which according to a comment on Kirsta’s video is only a pseudonym for the girl.
Thankfully, the girl’s face has been blurred out by the adoption agency, but other children under their account weren’t lucky enough to receive the same treatment — and that’s not even the worst part about this whole situation.
They describe her as a “humorous, helpful, and smart preteen.” She likes to have fun, is great at coloring, and likes playing with dolls. When it comes to her personality, however, they say “Rebecca’s personality is described as ‘saucy and feisty,’ boisterous, competitive, outgoing, and sometimes difficult and mean.”
After they describe her personality, they point out her “areas of growth,” citing that she should be more aware of “assessing appropriate risks, learning coping skills and truth-telling, and being more aware of personal boundaries.”
Kirsta doesn’t think this is any way to describe a child and it shouldn’t be happening on Instagram.
“‘Saucy and feisty.’ I don’t feel like that’s a way you need to describe a child who’s in need of a home,” she says in her video. “I don’t care why a child might need a new home, it should not be happening over social media.”
According to Adopt US Kids, there are over 400,000 children in the foster care system, 117,000 of which are currently waiting to be adopted. However, due to the rigorous processes couples have to go through in order to adopt, the numbers have gone down year over year, with 2021 experiencing the lowest adoption numbers since 2015, per Adoption Council.
No matter how difficult it may be to get children adopted, posting these adoption advertisements on social media feels like an invasion of privacy and liability.
“We’ve seen this stuff happening on Facebook, Craigslist, and Yahoo for years now, and it’s starting to make its way to Instagram,” Krista notes in her TikTok.
Photo: Instagram
Kirsta says it’s “absolutely terrifying.” “homes for displaced and marginalized children should not be facilitated over social media like that,” she adds. “This shouldn’t be allowed and I don’t know why Instagram is allowing it to.
Some people pointed out that Instagram is owned by Facebook company, Meta, so that’s probably why adoption agencies like Nightlight Christian Adoptions have been able to move their operations onto the photo-sharing social media app.
Other comments shared their discomfort with the “saucy and feisty” descriptor as well as how it feels like the agency is treating the kids like “products.”
Thanks to the backlash from people like Kirsta, the post about “Rebecca” has been taken down, but it has not halted their operations completely.
Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics.