As social media has become a large part of many people’s lives, education on how to protect others’ information including children has not kept up.
Social Media use has grown exponentially in the past 20 years with Pew research showing that when they started tracking social media use in 2005 only 5% of adult Americans were a part of the phenomenon, in their last data in 2021, that number is now 72%.
One of the primary uses of Social Media is to share information and pictures with the people in your social circle, but there is not a lot of awareness as to how easy it is for people outside that circle to access that information. The only real way to keep that information private is to keep it wholly off social media as Mr. X does. He and his wife do not have any social media accounts other than private Reddit accounts and they have made a concerted effort to make sure that no one else in their children’s lives post any information about their whole family.
An underlying issue that people are not educated on is the dangers of other people posting your kids. Children have the same right to privacy that Adults do, but no more protections. This means that there is nothing legally preventing someone from posting a picture of your child as long as they are in a public setting. Now the right to privacy was established by the Supreme Court in Griswald V. Connecticut and has been cited in numerous lesser courts to create the precedent that every citizen regardless of age cannot be photographed or recorded without consent when they have a reasonable expectation of privacy. When speaking with Jeremy White, a parent to multiple young children, about this issue in response to a question about whether different laws should be enacted to protect children’s privacy, Jeremy said “It sounds like you are trying to legislate common sense.”
When asking Jeremy why he doesn’t post his children’s names or faces much on the internet he said “It’s just a risk minimization that we’re realistic about the world we live in,” when asked what risk he is referring to Jeremy said, “the risk that we’re minimizing is that well, the worst risk is that they become targeted by someone who is wanting to track information about them.” But he acknowledged that his children’s names and faces have been put on the internet by family and organizations which means that even though he has minimized the risks that he is taking, he is unable to eliminate them.
In contrast to the other parents interviewed for this article, Shawna Guzman has decided to take on the risks associated with posting her children online. Shawna told us in her interview that she has been posting pictures of her children all their lives including starting at birth with her youngest but she mitigates some of the risks by making sure not to post her address or her children’s birthdates.
This is a constantly evolving topic that will continue to change but it is clear that people need to be aware of the risks that come with posting information publicly as we reach a point where the majority of Americans have chosen to share their lives and their children’s lives in this format.
Here is our interivew with Shawna Guzman on the topic.
Here is our interview with Mr. X.