For teens and young adolescents, social media has become a way of life. So, it’s more important than ever to make sure your children have a strong understanding of the dangers associated with uploading, sharing and posting on social media. In a recent Choosi survey only 12.3% of respondents admitted they were sometimes careful about posting personal information on social media. You can’t always be there to protect your children so it’s up to you to equip them with the knowledge, skills and tools to stay safe online.
We spoke to Ruth Dearing, Peaceful Digital Parenting expert, and mother of two herself, who wrote the #1 international best-seller, ‘How to Keep Your Children Safe Online’. She tells us the top 5 kinds of posts you should teach your child to avoid uploading.
Checking In To Their Current Location
What comes across as the least invasive social media post – checking in at school, work or out with friends – can be the most dangerous. Sharing a location on social media can allow thieves and/or predators to work out where your children are, what school they go to, and where they live. Checking in routinely can allow those same bad people to figure out where your children go throughout a standard day.
To minimise these risks, encourage your kids to disable their location services on their iPhone and in their social media apps. All forms of social media and internet browsers have strict privacy settings that allow you to deactivate your location services if you choose. This means their posts will not include a reference or geo-location to where they are. Talking to your kids about the dangers posed by constantly checking in will help them stay social media smart, and will prevent the broadcasting of sensitive personal information to potential threats.
Posting Photos Of Their Valuables
When teenagers get their first car or a new motorbike, the first thing they’ll want to do is post a photo to social media to let all their friends know. Not only is it tempting for your children but it’s more tempting for a thief to pay a visit. This becomes especially dangerous if your child has been checking in and making their whereabouts public knowledge. It’s only natural to want to show off the results of hard work, especially if your kids have saved up their own hard earned money to splurge. But uploading pictures of their phones and laptops, their latest birthday presents, and even something as major as a new car, is like window shopping for roaming eyes on social media.
There’s a quick and easy fix to stop your kids risking their valuables: don’t post pictures of them! Let your kids enjoy what they own in real life and leave those items out of their social media lives. If they really can’t resist the urge they can privately message their best friends a photo.
Sharing Photos Of Personal Documents
There are so many exciting milestones for your kids as they grow up. First credit card, first passport, first driver’s license. It’s only natural they’d want to share these moments. But posting photos of personal documents online is one of the quickest routes to identity theft. Any document with a unique serial number or barcode is at risk of being stolen.
Finding a compromise, like blurring sensitive personal information while still letting them post photos to celebrate, will ensure your child is practising safe online behaviour.
Updating Their Status On Holiday
It may seem innocent, but when your kids post details about holidays such as a photo of the booking confirmation, checking in at the airport and even updating a status about travel plans, it can give scammers and thieves the perfect opportunity to steal their personal information. Even worse, it’s almost like an open invitation to target them physically while you’re not around.
Encourage your kids to enjoy the holiday while it lasts and hold off from posting all the photos they’ve taken until they arrive home. You won’t feel so helpless when they’re updating their holiday status while they’re home safe and sound.
Sending Inappropriate Photos
Image sharing on social media is the new way of communicating in the digital age. Your kids will have their own language using pictures to chat with their friends. But when those images become abusive, offensive to others or sexualised there are extreme risks involved. Talk to your kids about what is and is not acceptable to post.
If this content involves nudity or sexually suggestive content it may be legally wrong as well as morally wrong, and it has the potential to stay with them throughout school and beyond. Remind them that posting photos online is not secure and that once they are out there, they can never get them back.
