This is a urgent message out to all parents – Instagram is a serious problem.
Instagram is a popular photos sharing application that runs on both Android and iOS. It is so popular that Facebook has bought it and according to Mark Zuckerberg Facebook CEO, Instagram has passed the 100 million user mark.
Instagram is loved because of its simplicity. Snap a photo with our cell phone camera, choose a photos effect from the many options (known as Filters), add a caption and share your creation with many social networks right from within the app.
But most parents don’t know is that Instagram is just like Facebook and whilst parents are pedantic about kids using Facebook, parents are caught off guard when it comes to Instagram.
In Instagram, you can Like photos, add comment on images and follow your friends to see what they are up to. You also have a “profile” so you enter your personal information such as first and last name, birthday, gender and a bio. It even allows for email address and phone number to be shared.
Sadly these features have allowed Instagram to become the new frontier for bullying and abuse.
I recently read of a case where girls as young as 12 were posting photos of themselves to enter a beauty contest and kids were commenting on each girl’s photo with comment like “UGLY” and the anonymous “judge” would eliminate girls by putting a large red X across their photo.
Kids know that their parents are their “friends” on Facebook and therefore they keep Facebook neat and tidy. Kids also know that parents think that Instagram is just to post photos and therefore is a social-parents-free-zone so kids feel they can push the limit without Mom and Dad knowing about it.
5 steps that parents take to protect kids on Instagram
1. By default ANYONE can view ANYONE’s photos. So the first step is to change the setting to Photos are private. This means that only your friends can see your images. If someone wants to see your photos they will need to send a request to become friends first.
2. When it comes to Friends – your kids should only accept friends that are really their friends and not “randoms”. Same rule applies to using cell phone and BBM and Whatsapp. (read my 10 Non-Negotiable Cell Phone Rules for Kids every parent should know)
3. Cell phone allows for “geotagging” to be added to each photos which are the GPS coordinates of where the photo was taken. This must be turned off as anyone can download images and pull those GPS coordinates off the images and know exactly where your kids are. (read more about Revealing Images)
4. Make sure you Follow your kids on Instagram. Add yourself to their friends list which mean you can see exactly what their friends can see.
5. Teach your kids about the same bullying that occurs on Facebook does occur on Instagram too. Your child must be able to come to you with any images that they are not comfortable with so you can deal with them. Instagram allows you to report inappropriate images and abuse.
Peter Andrada from Online Safety for Kids coined the terms “Wave of regret” where in the near future content shared by today’s kids on social media applications will come to life and change their future permanently. When we were kids we all did stupid things which we wish we could erase from our memory – but that is where they are – in our memory. Today’s kids do stupid things and are online. These can not be deleted. Ever.
This article has been modified by and reposted from Liron Segev’s The Techie Guy blog.