It’s Julie’s first day of grade 5 and her parents are excited and decide to tell everyone they know by taking a photo and sharing it with friends and family on facebook. There she is in her school uniform and her parents leave the comment “First day of grade 6 for our princess at Whatchamacallit School”
It’s what we all do, right? Tell our friends and family what our kids are up to and share their lives. For people like me, living in Singapore, with family in Australia, Indonesia, and Canada, it makes sense sharing online.
But how safe is it? One of the first things kids are told about safety online, and we’ve got handouts from Jay’s school, is “Don’t post any personally identifying images”.
So what’s the problem? Little Julie up there doesn’t have a facebook, twitter or other social media account, and she’s not posting anything online. The problem is, her parents have broken that first rule. With one photo they’ve told anyone who can access that photo, how old she is and what school she goes to. There may even be a comment, from her parents or friends, about how they worry about her walking home alone after school.
And what would we find if we looked through her parents previous posts? Maybe they’ve posted about her dancing school or sports activities. How much information have we unwittingly posted about our kids, assuming that we control the information and haven’t given unwanted eyes access?
It would probably be fine if we set up our accounts properly and really limited who could see that information. But realistically speaking, how many of us really have? How many of us have given access to friends of friends without considering who those people might be? And when your friends have somewhere between 100 and 200 friends each, do you really know most of them?
Perhaps the better option is just to not post these photos and information. Can we have different ways of sharing with friends and family these milestones.
I’m not saying I have any answers, or that what we do is any better, but we tend to use our phones and use an app called whatsapp (there are others you can use as well) where we have a private chat where we can share photos and updates on our lives, and only those in the chat can see them. For me this seems a better and more private way of keeping friends and family up to date on what’s happening and reduces the chance that the wrong people will see it.
