Happy Holidays! With Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, and the New Year quickly approaching, you may find yourself being a little more active on social media–especially if you have children. While we love to see the cute moments you have with your kids during the holidays, it is important to remember to protect your children's privacy online. It is entirely a personal choice to post or not post your children on social media–if you do choose to post your children on social media, then consider reading this article to understand the risks involved and how to mitigate them.
What are the risks?
With the increased use of social media, a new term has emerged: “sharenting” (sharing and parenting). This is used to describe the ways that parents are oversharing about their children on social media. While this may be happening with nothing but love and good intentions, it opens up your children to varying risks.
Depending on the age of your children, they may not be old enough to provide consent or even know that they are being posted on social media–maybe they aren’t even old enough to know what social media is! By now, we have all heard that everything on the internet is permanent. While this is definitely a larger discussion, the premise of this is correct. Once something is posted, it is open to being kept by any of its viewers. By posting pictures or videos of your children online before they are able to consent to it, it opens them up to the risk of discomfort, the feeling of a lack of privacy, bullying, etc.
Another concern is the risk of exploitation: as upsetting and disturbing as it is, there are child predators in this world. If you are posting your children on social media, either on a public or a private platform, there is a risk of exploitation and misuse. If you ever add a geotag (an electronic tag that assigns a geographical location to a photo/video/social media post) to your posts involving your children, this can assist child predators in understanding where your children have been or where they commonly go. By adding enough personal information (your child's name, their interests, etc.) it can lead child predators to create a false sense of familiarity with your child if they have in-person contact, leading to the risk of abductions.
By oversharing on social media, there is also a heightened risk of identity theft. With the right amount of personal information, such as your child's name, school, birthday, or interests, cybercriminals can use this to commit identity theft or fraud.
So how can I mitigate these risks?
The great thing about social media is that you have full control over what is posted, and what is accessible. This means that you have full control over mitigating the risks discussed above:
- Think about what you are posting - is there any personally identifiable information involved such as your child's full name, birthday, their school, interests, where you all live, or where you may frequently visit? All of this information can and should be limited on your social media.
- Limit who can see these posts - if you have a public social media account, consider making it private and reviewing who can access the content you post. Do you trust the people who can view your posts?
- Ask your child how they feel about being posted, if they are old enough - do they feel comfortable with having pictures, or stories about them being posted? If this is something your child doesn’t feel comfortable with, respect the boundaries they are setting.
- If your child isn’t old enough to provide consent, consider how they would feel when they are old enough to verbalize their preferences - maybe your kid won’t want that picture of them in the bathtub available to strangers.
- Stay aware of the risks of posting your children on social media - awareness is the first step to protecting your children. If you know what the risks are, then you can determine how to mitigate them.
As you capture and share special holiday memories, it’s important to balance the joy of connection with the responsibility of protecting your children’s privacy. Every post, picture, or video tells a story. Parents have the power to decide which parts of that story stay private. By being thoughtful about what you share, who you share it with, and how it might affect your children in the future, you can ensure that our digital memories remain both meaningful and safe. This season, let’s focus on creating moments worth remembering, not just sharing.