There was recently some extensive discussion about school classes using iNaturalist, which led to someone posting a link to the iNaturalist Teacher’s Guide. For children under 13, this outright recommends adding observations on other people’s behalf, when the other people are children:
Teachers working with younger kids need to keep in mind that the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 means we can’t allow people under the age of 13 in the United States to create accounts without parental approval. This restriction is also reflected in our Terms of Service.
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One common workaround is for a teacher to add observations on behalf of the students, without including any personally identifiable information.
Obviously neither you nor your mother are children, but I post this to show that iNaturalist doesn’t have a strict expectation that every account represents one person.
Some of my own observations (less than 1%) are people I went on bushwalks with who photographed something I did not (or maybe I did, but it came out blurry or I missed some details). They didn’t want to create their own profile for a few observations and gave me permission to post their pictures.
I don’t know other people’s standards here, but my own are these:
Can I answer questions about this observation?
If the photo is a close-up of a flower, and someone wants to know how tall the whole plant was, can I tell them?
If it’s an animal, and someone wants to know if it showed signs of movement and therefore being alive, do I know?
If it’s something really surprising and a professional naturalist asks for guidance to visit the location close enough to find the organism, can I give them?
If I can answer “yes” to these questions, I post the observation. If not, I don’t know enough about it, and I leave it out.