A Child’s Right to Privacy in The Digital Age; Growing Up on Social Media.
Maybe it’s my age, but it seems as though a lot of my social media feed is everyone either having babies or in the early years of parenthood, the information itself nearly always accompanied by an onslaught of photos of the child’s progress. This often leads me to wondering what the future looks like for these new ‘Digital Natives’ and how our social media presence now could drastically shape our children’s lives in the future. As someone struggling to reconcile their own choices when it comes to social media, it becomes ever more apparent how important our digital footprint is going to become in the future.
We live in a society of ‘click and play’ which in turn causes the majority of people to scroll hastily straight past the terms and conditions straight to the shiny ‘ACCEPT’ button without ever stopping to see what permissions we are agreeing to. This attitude has led to the huge data-fuelled, corporate digital bombardment we are facing every day - from the TV and News to our social media feeds.
As consenting adults, nearly everyone, inadvertently or not, is sharing their valuable personal data that could be used against them in countless ways and, to be fair, people are quite happy to do so.
This cultural phenomenon of ‘Sharenting’ has replaced the classic family photo album and become the new way parents choose to document their child’s wonder years. The question lots of parents need to ask themselves is will their children agree to this online archive of their existence to be so readily available, especially if it can be used against them.
Before we worry about the future problems the images themselves may cause, along with the countless legal and moral arguments we are likely to endure, we must explore the dangers that are already here and now.
When images are shared to social media, often with captions and seemingly meaningless information, these posts create vast amount of metadata. This metadata allows for lots of information to be gathered about you and, in turn, your children. Many of the ways this data is mined and used may never affect you or child further than personalised ads but there are also much more sinister scenarios that could play out.
As we speak pictures supplied by unsuspecting parents all over the world are at risk of being corrupted and used maliciously. A UK Children’s Commissioner estimates that on average parents with children between 0 and 13, share 71 photos and 29 videos per year. These images may seem benign but many find their way to being edited and sexualised and then shared around the dark world of the online paedophilia community. According to the Australian children’s eSafety commissioner, huge swaths of the indecent child pornography images online originate from social media.
By oversharing on the internet, without the correct privacy controls in place, you leave yourself and the people you are tagging in your images at risk of personal danger as well as just online. There have been enough cases of people being attacked or robbed after highlighting personal information on social media - how sure are you that you haven’t inadvertently told the internet which school your child attends, their teachers name, or how they travel home? The internet, despite all of its technological fanfare, does unfortunately allow for the most deviant of people to commit deviant acts.
The new emergence of online grooming and bullying led to Internet Safety being added to the school curriculum back in 2014 and there are clear signs that children are taking a more cautious and pragmatic approach to their social media presence. Ironically, many parents of children allowed to use social media often police their child’s posts and screen time yet, during the child’s infant years, did not share the same pragmatic approach to information sharing.
Now, imagine turning up to the first day of school or college - maybe even the first day at your new job at a prestigious company in the city, only to find out someone has stalked your social media and discovered all of the pictures your parents posted from the day you were born until now, everything.
Future generations are going to be much more versed in data privacy and the value their digital footprint holds. In places like China we are already seeing the intent to utilise a person’s digital information and history to decide how they will fit in to the age of a digital society. On the voyage to this futuristic digital society privacy is going to come at a premium. In fact, Mark Zuckerberg himself recently remarked “the future is privacy” and that’s coming from the godfather of the social media age.
There are currently no laws protecting the child’s privacy before their ability to form their own choice. This means the decision becomes the sole responsibility of the parent and, at some points, could even create friction between child and parents. In the future could we see a flurry of legal cases between children and their parents with the plaintiff seeking damages for damaging posts.
In an age where our digital footprint is having ever more bearing on our lives, and with the future threatening to digitalise our reality even more so, is it fair to create a digital footprint for our children before they are old enough to be taught what it may mean? Particularly when possess no certainty around what its impact might be.
That said, with the millions of social media users the world over, the chances of you being affected may feel remote and you may see what you’ve just read as scaremongering or an overreaction. Of course, it’s easy to say ‘this is the world we live in’ or ‘everyone’s doing it; so why not just carry on as we are?’
Our instinctive want to record and share our favourite memories and moments with friends and family predates the internet significantly, but never before have we had to think about terms and conditions before or confusing privacy settings, never had to worry about tech giants mining us for all of our data and information.
This is not to say we should be ditching our social media accounts tomorrow and ceasing all uploads. However, if we are to continue this ‘sharenting’ trend we need to utilise the technology available to take a second thought and ensure we are taking the best precautions necessary to protect our society’s future.
For further, much more comprehensive information on the subject of keeping your children safe online and please visit: https://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/cco-who-knows-what-about-me.pdf
Written by Robert Leyshon