Imagine a small child having photos of him being innocently posted to Facebook by his mother. What she doesn’t know is that a seemingly meaningless post meant for friends and family spirals into anything from a stranger being able to track her child’s location to her becoming entrenched in the power grab that is social media.
Many young lives are harmed when they’re posted, dooming them to exist in the endless space that is the internet. The internet could negatively impact their future by introducing them to toxic aspects of internet culture early on, exposing them to potential predators, and removing their right to privacy. These many dangers make it clear that photos of children should not be posted on social media in the first place.
Many parents overlook the fact that these posts are public. This is mainly attributed to unawareness of privacy settings, which could be used to private the page, or because they do not think about how this content could be used for malicious purposes.
Many adults on social media use it to share photos of their young children, but these photos can easily reveal a child’s name, location, and other sensitive information. The rise of AI-generated deepfakes, otherwise known as artificially generated photos, videos, or audio, allows the image of children to be used to create false information as leverage or blackmail. If parents give away a child’s name and date of birth, malicious scammers can discover their social security number or credit card information without the original poster knowing.
Similar to being posted by their parents, children themselves often do not understand the consequences of their information being leaked to social media. This leads to them often not having problems with posting themselves on sites like TikTok or Instagram. It is imperative that parents discuss the consequences of online behavior with their children, so they do not reveal precious information.
Even if posting one’s child online does not have illegal or dangerous consequences, it can still lead to unwanted outcomes. For example, Nora McInerny wrote an article for TIME magazine about how she used to post her young son on Instagram. The page was initially created by her and her husband, who later died after a long struggle with stage IV brain cancer. A mere three months after his passing, McInerny found a BuzzFeed listicle titled “10 Pranks All Dads Need to Try Once” with a photo of her son attached. Still grieving her husband’s passing, McInerny tried to get the photo taken down, only to find out that they legally did not need her consent to use the image. When her sister took the photo, it was automatically uploaded to Flickr– a website created for storing and sharing images. Many years ago, when creating the account, her sister had unknowingly agreed to list all photos under “creative commons,” meaning that anyone can reuse and build upon the original work with or without permission.
Those who think it’s fine for parents to post their young children online and say there isn’t any harm in it commonly argue that interacting with others through social media fosters connections and enriches parents’ lives. While social media is beneficial in some way, it ignores the risk of exposing information about one’s family to the world, which greatly outweighs the reward of feeling temporary gratification.
Parents and guardians need to be much more careful with how they present their kids online. In order to safeguard the next generation, they must stop posting pinpointable faces and locations or they will inevitably be exploited and their privacy violated.
