With so many parents posting photos of their children on websites and social media sites – from our newborn in the hospital right up to our 18yearold at their birthday party – internet safety is an issue that all parents need to be aware of.
MummyPages decided to investigate how our mums are handling social media when it comes to posting about their family, to see just how conscious you are of the risks.
A normal part of daily life
Our survey threw up a number of interesting findings, the first being just how normal it now is to post photos of your children on the internet, with 70% of respondents admitting to posting images of their little ones online.
For the remaining 30%, their decision not to post photos of their children came down to matters of safety and privacy, with:
- 63% admitting that they prefer to keep their family life private
- 30% saying they refrain from posting out of concern for their children’s safety
Is it fair on our children?
An issue that has been raised time and time again is just how fair this is to our children – will they thank us later in life for sharing images of them as young children online?
This is an issue that one parent raised when taking part in our research, saying: “Images of my child are her property and she can decide when she is old enough if she wants total strangers looking at pictures of her.”
Another observed: “Children can’t give permission so it’s wholly inappropriate to publicly post photos when they have no say in the matter.”
Optimising our children’s safety
With sites like Facebook proving extremely popular as a place to share photos of your little ones, concerns over who is looking at and posting on your comments plays a big factor in what you actually post.
Indeed, even among those who admitted to posting photos of their children online, privacy and safety still play key roles in their posting rituals.
A common trend was parents’ awareness and concerns over the dangers posed to their children, from the posting of nasty comments to the threat of online predators. From creating private albums to adjusting who can view certain photos, many of our mums admitted to feeling safe about posting only because they have the optimum security settings in place.
“Although I post images of my son on Facebook, my profile is locked down so that only friends can see. Not even friends of friends can see. I would never post an image where it could be viewed by the public,” wrote one user.
