Each day we share on the web a huge amount of data about us and our behaviours. This is a concern for the privacy and security of adult users but it becomes a huge problem where underage children are involved. According to the last report of the english Children Commissioner “Who knows what about me?” by Anne Longfield in the last year parents of children up to 13 years old posted on average 100 media of their child on social networks. This means that parents have posted 1300 media by the age of 13, when the child can sign up to social networks and starts posting their own contents. Risks about this behaviour are well understood by parents: 47% of the parents are worried that somebody could steal these media and use them without permission, 42% are concerned that people they don’t know could see the photos, 24% think their child would be unhappy about their images being shared and 12% think these posted media could undermine their child’s future applications.
Nevertheless there is little knowledge about how a good use of privacy settings could help to minimize those risks. According to the last research of Share with Care about 22% of the parent have a public Facebook profile or a profile where the posts can be seen by ‘friends of friends’. This means that their posts can be seen by potential strangers. Even if the privacy settings are well set, some bad behaviours on social networks can be harmful: about 61% of the parents admits that less than the half of their Facebook friends are people that they know in real life and they would say hello to if met.
In the end one positive note: as already said in 2017 a parent of a child under 13 posted on average 100 media on social networks. This is a significant reduction since 2016, when 299 media were posted on average. This may be a result of parents becoming more aware of the risks of sharing too much information about their child on the web and started to filter what to publish and what not.
3rdPlace
