Parents share plenty of pictures of babies and children
No less than 30% of all parents post a photo of their child on one of the various social media accounts of which 12% even 4 or more times a day. This is evident from a large survey by cybersecurity specialist McAfee.
Parents are aware of the potential risks of sharing online images of their child, such as pedophilia (49%), stalking (48%), kidnapping (45%) and online bullying (31%), but do not consider (58%) or their child agrees to share the photos. 22% of parents are of the opinion that their child is too young to be able to decide for themselves whether the photos may be shared online, and another 19% think that parents should always be able to make that decision themselves.
Aware of the risks
Parents are certainly aware of the risks of sharing images of children, but do not put this awareness into their actions. For example, many of the interviewed parents admit that personal information and privacy-sensitive details about the child are often shared with a photo. Consider, for example, pictures of the child on the first day of school, clearly stating to which school the child is going.
The bright spot is that the majority of parents (70%) share this kind of photos only through a private account. That is of course a good first step, but much more can be done to ensure that parents protect the identity of their children more consciously.