Did you know?
Every 60 seconds 136,000 images are uploaded to Facebook.
95 million photos and videos are uploaded to Instagram per day.
300 million photos are uploaded to Facebook per day.
What can you do?
Talking to children about the risks posed by sharing images online can empower them to make better decisions for themselves and others.
When something happens and it’s in the news, use the opportunity to raise the subject and invite young people to consider how they might feel if the incident had happened to one of their friends.
Get them to consider what advice they could have given or what they could have done and who they could have advised their friend to turn to for help.
Top Tip: Set a homework based on an incident in the news and have parents and carers work with their children to list what to do and to whom to turn for help.
Some points to raise with children and young people:
- Never share your personal information online. This includes your address, usernames and e-mail addresses as well as information that might allow people to access your social media or other online accounts including (banking) by stealing your identity.
- Don’t share your current location, or where you will be in the future on social media. (See the 'Social Media' section for more information).
- Get consent for any photos you post online. If your friend doesn’t like an image you have shared of them, respect their wishes if asked to remove it.
- Use review tags when available to ensure you cannot be linked to an image in your timeline without your knowledge.
If an image of a child has been posted without their permission, or the permission of their parents, here are some ways you can approach the issue:
- Simply ask the person who posted it to delete it, or crop it so the child isn't in the picture.
- Ask the photographer not to tag users in the image, not to use the child’s surname and not to include the location of where it was taken.
- Ask the poster what his or her privacy settings are. If their profile is private and not public, only their friends can view their images which limits the audience for the child's photo.