How to keep your kids safe on social media

If you do choose to post pictures and videos of your child on a public platform then please make sure you think of the following safety precautions as you never know what bad cyber people could be paying extra attention to your posts. There’s been many a cases of identity thefts or worse.

Location. Make sure that you don’t ever tag locations of places that you visit often and regularly on your posts. Of course a big one is to never post ‘home’, even if it doesn’t locate exactly to your door number, it can be pretty easy to figure out where you and your kids live. Make sure not to tag a location that you visit quite often, such as your child’s school, club or local park.

Private information that goes unnoticed. For example, a simple picture of your child in their school uniform with their logo on it. This makes it easy for someone to figure out what school your child attends! I would make sure to blur out the school logo before posting. Unfortunately there was an incident where a child got abducted from school as the predator had gathered information about the child’s school from the parent’s social media. Utterly heartbreaking.

Statuses/ updates that share too much information. You should probably refrain from ‘advertising’ when the house will be empty or when the babysitter is filling in. You don’t ever want strangers to have access to such information.

Posting about all the new expensive stuff you just bought. I recently heard about a burglary that took place at someone’s house because they had posted about all their shiny new stuff on social media, combined with updates of when the house would be empty (e.g. “We’re off on a vacation for two weeks!”). 

Posting naked pics of the little ones! I can’t believe that there are still a lot of parents who choose to post nude pictures of their children onto their public social media pages. It’s very simple to cover up your child with emojis and stickers these days. The pics of your little one in the tub butt naked might be cute to the majority of the people but unfortunately there are some bad cyber people who will steal those pictures for other sickening reasons!

Names. Try not to post your child’s full name because unfortunately combine that with D.O.B. it can be a prime opportunity for bad cyber people. Some parents choose to protect their children by using a nickname or a term of endearment, e.g. ‘Little One’ or ‘Mini-Me’, instead of exposing the child’s name on a public social media platform.

These are just some of the precautions to take if you choose to post about your children and private life on a public platform. Do you have any other important points to consider before posting? Comment and let me know!

Amina xx