4 reasons why children should not be in social media
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Answer:
- Posting on Social Media Can Invade Your Child's Privacy
While young children might not give any thought to what their parents share about them on social media, that may not stay true as they grow older. at around 5 years old children start to develop a sense of themselves as individuals and how the rest of the world perceives them. Their privacy becomes more of a concern. They may start to feel embarrassed about the content their parents post about them on social media, especially when it comes to early childhood anecdotes, funny photos, and updates on developmental and behavioral challenges.
Sharing the wrong type of content on social media can also make children feel like they don’t have ownership over their own bodies or own values. Children don’t really have the opportunity to disagree with their parents posting bath-time and other sensitive photos on social media. They also have no say in whatever political or social messages their parents press on them. For example, how will some children feel about the 2016 presidential election signs they’re carrying or slogan t-shirts they’re wearing when they look back on those photos as adults? How will they feel about being used as political statements on their parents’ Facebook pages?
2.Your Social Media Posts Might Be Used for Bullying
You should also be concerned about how others may react to the stuff you share about your child on social media. Whether your child cares about old photos and stories about them on social media, others may be able to use that information to make fun of, insult, and even bully your child as he or she grows older. What’s to stop a peer from sharing a photo that your child finds embarrassing with his or her own networks? What if that share catches on? It doesn’t take much for a photo to go from an inside family joke to gossip fodder for an entire high school.
The potential for bullying doesn’t stop with the people you know. To get a feel for the ruthless personalities of anonymous people on the Internet, just take a peek at the comment feeds of kids videos on YouTube. What will your child think and feel if they see your social media audience doesn’t react well to your update?
3.Social Media Messaging Could Impact Your Child's Future
It’s difficult, if not impossible, to control information once it’s posted online. You can’t prevent anyone from taking a screenshot of your post and disseminating it beyond your reach. Your deleted posts, while apparently gone from your social media profile, may still live on in Internet archive websites and on the social media servers themselves. With that in mind, you should consider how your photos and stories may impact your child when he’s much older, even an adult.
The reality is that the data shared by parents could be revealed by Google search algorithms for years to come. And we don’t know what our children’s goals might be when they get older.
- Stacey Steinberg, an associate director for the Center on Children and Families at University of Florida Levin College of Law.
Parents need to think about how potential employers may react to finding certain sensitive childhood moments on social media. They should also wonder how their posts may impact their child if he or she ever decides to run for public office or live a more public life.
4.Sharing Puts Your Child at Risk for Digital Kidnapping
Digital kidnapping is a type of identity theft. It occurs when someone takes photos of a child from social media and repurposes them with new names and identities, often claiming the child as their own. There have been numerous examples of this in recent years, including a 2015 incident in which a stranger took photo of an 18-month-old boy from a mommy blogger’s Facebook page and posted it on her own Facebook profile, acting like he was her son.