Provincial police are urging parents to think before they post first-day-of-school photos and details of their kids on social media, sounding the alarm about a trend that could put children at risk.
Provincial police are urging parents to think before they post first-day-of-school photos and details of their kids on social media, sounding the alarm about a trend that could put children at risk.
OPP are calling out to a common social media practice where, on their first day of school, kids pose with posters that include their name, age, grade, their teacher’s name and the name of their school, personal details that are fodder for predators or fraudsters , font say.
“It’s one of those things parents probably don’t realize is something that could be used in a negative way. It seems like a fun thing for people to do, year after year seeing the growth of the kids,” said Const. Jillian Johnson, a school resource officer with the Perth County OPP.
“A lot of people put stuff out there not really realizing what it can mean and how it can be used.”
While sharing, a term used to describe parents who share personal details about their kids’ lives online, is a general concern from a privacy standpoint, the specific details in these first-day-of-school posts are even more alarming, Johnson said.
“Fraudsters are very smart and they’re professionals. They can use any sort of information against people,” Johnson said, adding she worries about the rare worst-case scenario.
“If somebody knows all your child’s details, where they’re going to be on school days, with a picture and the grade they’re in and their teacher’s name, they could easily go up to the child and say they’re here to pick them up.”
A lot of parents don’t maintain a tight friends’ list on their social media accounts, Johnson said. Many have acquaintances or people they haven’t talked to since high school who are able to see their posts.
Parents also can be lulled into a false sense of security in their social media activity, assuming because they have locked down their public profiles and tightened their security settings, anything they share is safe, Johnson said.
“Once something is posted, it’s never private, even if it’s in a one-to-one message or private group. Someone can screenshot it and share it any way they want,” she said.
Documenting milestone moments with photos isn’t an issue in itself, said Jennifer Whitson, an associate professor in sociology and legal studies at the University of Waterloo who specializes in online surveillance and culture.
The concern arises when these personal moments are put on the internet and subject to the actions of social media corporations, she said.
“Ten years on, those images may still exist. When we think about password security questions, quite commonly they’re like ‘What was the name of your second grade teacher?’ or ‘What was your grade school?’” Whitson said.
“Ten or 20 years down the road when those images are still searchable, that could perhaps create an identity-theft risk.”
While police are concerned with the potential for fraud or child predators, there are other issues that can crop up from disclosing personal information on social media, Whitson said.
“They do make it easier for targeted bullying and harassment to move from online spaces to physical spaces,” she said.
“When we post, we’re documenting all aspects of our kids’ lives and holding them out for public approval. It can create an anxiety in our kids of being watched and judged or, because of the way the platforms are structured, being really cognizant from a young age of how much they’re liked.”
Johnson said parents should think critically about what they post on social media and consider sharing first-day-of-school posts in private chat groups with close family members only. Parents might want to forgo the back-to-school posters and altogether just post a photo of their kids instead, she said.
Parents also could use first-day-of-school social media posts as a teachable moment for children, Whitson said.
“Involving them in picking out a photo to share, and what kind of post or caption you might want to put on the photo, can help walk them through this new online literacy so they can navigate these choices when they’re teenagers with their own social media accounts,” Whitson said.