When I first started using Twitter my daughter had one of those falling asleep in her pasta moments so I quickly took a photo and sent my first Twitpic.
I really didn’t think anything about it until one of my colleagues sent me an email asking if I felt comfortable putting photos of my gorgeous blonde daughter on the net. Admittedly, she had just been involved in delivering some Internet Safety Courses for schools and had heard stories that made her toes curl. My first reaction was why not?
So, me being me, I set off trolling the internet looking for more information. I found two interesting sites, with two very different ideas, but for the life of me I can’t lay my hands on them again.
The first was a woman who had worked with paedophiles for over 15 years and she was saying that this is not how they work. According to her they’re opportunists and don’t tend to find children on the net, then set about tracking them down. They’re more likely to snatch a child from a park. This put me at ease a bit but I’ve seen numerous stories on the news that contradict this with older men grooming teenagers and then skipping the country with them.
The second put chills up my spine. I’m not a user of Flickr so may get the terminology wrong. Apparently, there’ve been incidences of people (using the term loosely) favouriting and tagging photos of people’s children for their own enjoyment and making it easier for other Sickos to find them. After my initial disgust, the first question that sprang to mind was ‘why on earth would people put half-naked pictures of their children on the internet in the first place?’
But, I’ve seen this time and time again on Facebook, holiday shots of friends’ kids in their birthday suits. Yes, the photos are adorable but I don’t think they realise that the rest of the world can see them. I do upload photos of my daughter to FB but I’m very careful in the ones that I choose. I have a gorgeous arty photo of Madame picking tomatoes in her Grandma’s garden but I’d never post it. I’ve also been through the privacy settings with a fine tooth comb and have locked my account down as best as I can. Click here to see 10 Privacy Setting Every Facebook User Should Know
The conclusion that I have come to after my research, is that I’ll continue to share photos and videos of my daughter but will apply some common sense. This may be a naïve (some may think stupid) view but I’m a very trusting person and I don’t want my daughter growing up in fear. Obviously, we’ll do our best to teach her about stranger danger, but I really don’t think the world is anymore dangerous than when I grew up in the 70s, even though the media makes us think otherwise. Does anyone have any more information/statistics that supports or negates this?
I would love to hear your thoughts and if you have further information or links I would be most grateful.
Do you post images/videos of your kids? Am I being naïve?
Are children like cocker spaniels? You lavish them with affection, yes, but when you give a simple command — one of the basic and important ones, like “sit” or “stay” or “no” or “don’t run into the street” or “don’t play with matches” — they must be trained to obey without question. This is an interesting article I found via @freerangekids. Read the whole article here. Thoughts???
