Digital Parenting: The Dark Side of Instagram

The photo-sharing social media site, Instagram, has been treading more on the innocent side since its launch and rise in popularity. Recently though, a new disturbing trend has risen on Instagram that should have all parents concerned.

Instagram and Teen Body Image

More and more young girls are making their profiles and pictures public and posting a picture for others to assess their attractiveness. Many of these young girls are in provocative poses and are dressed in revealing clothing. The young girls post their pictures using hash tags such as #amipretty or #beautycontest, looking for the most positive comments to boost their self-esteem.

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How Instagram's Recently Added Features Affect Your Teen's Safety

Instagram, one of the fastest growing social media platforms is a lot of fun for kids. It allows them to share photos of things they find interesting, and add filters and captions to those photos. Like a micro-blogging site, with pictures, Instagram's popularity with teens has exploded in the last three years. With that being said, Instagram is also constantly evolving, and while it can be 'good clean fun', there are some dangers that lurk on the social media app.

Throughout the past few years, Instagram has experienced some major changes that you might not be aware of. We've collected a few of these more recent changes and feature additions, and have assessed how they may affect your child's Instagram safety.

Picture Map

In 2012, Instagram rolled out their “photo map” feature. The photo map, which is now being used by millions of Instagram users, tracks were pictures have been taken, and, in some cases uploaded. This location sharing feature, which is meant to help individuals keep track of their travels, can be dangerous especially for young children.

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Location Sharing in Facebook's Messenger App: The Basics

The launch of Facebook's Messenger App came with a whole lot of concern. Everyone seemed immediately worried about its safety as it has the ability to send your location along with every new message.

Questions and concerns about Facebook's location sharing feature and the safety of the feature have made waves across the media. The social media powerhouse even required that its mobile users either install the Messenger App, or give up using the Facebook private messaging feature altogether. The result: (even with clear evidence that it did indeed include your location in messenger by default) over 500 MILLION people downloaded it. Million.  

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Should You Use Facebook's New Privacy Checkup Tool?

In September 2014, Facebook began rolling out a privacy checkup tool for users. It's an attempt to by the network to encourage privacy among its millions of users. 

It's a bit of a strange move coming from Facebook for a number of reasons. First of all, in regards to online privacy, Facebook is practically the antithesis of that. While other social media sites like Twitter allow members to create a username and never display their full names if they prefer, Facebook requires such personal information as a full name (of course, inputting your true name is optional), city and town of residence, and encourages users to include even their school and workplace. It's become a quick way to look up old friends, lost family members, and anyone you've just met.

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Facebook Terms of Service: What Are We All "Agreeing" To?

My husband Matt and I traveled to Orange County, California during this year’s terrible East coast “Snowmageddon” season.  It was sunny, warm and wonderful. When we returned to the threat of another potential snow storm (in April!), we had a text message conversation, discussing how great it would be to move to Orange County. Later that day, Matt logged into his professional social media app on his phone and noticed he had gotten job postings for Orange County. Strangely enough, when I logged into my own personal social media app, I was surprised to discover that I had received ads for real estate in Orange County.

Social media and mobile apps are moving toward predictive advertising and behavior to make our lives more convenient by alerting you about traffic congestion or items that you might want to purchase. The amount of personal data required to power these types of applications is staggering.  Companies go to great lengths and expense to create and employ the technology that powers the analytics necessary to perform this complex predictive modeling based on your data.

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What is Geotagging and Is It Safe for My Teens To Be Doing It?

You would never post your home address online or tell the world that your kids were home alone at that address, would you? Yet many of us are innocently and unknowingly doing just that, by geotagging.

Geotagging is a relatively new phenomenon in that age of smartphones and many teens and parents are unaware of exactly what it is and why it's dangerous. True privacy and safety are becoming ever more elusive and complex in the information age. Here's what you need to know about geotagging to protect your teen's privacy and safety online. 

What is Geotagging?

Geotagging is a way of embedding location information into photos or posts made through social media sites, providing the exact coordinates of where a photo was snapped or a post was made (within 10 to 15 feet depending on the accuracy of your GPS chip). Ultimately, geotagging is not a safe practice for anyone for a myriad of reasons.

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Digital Parenting: Recent Changes to Facebook's Privacy Policy

This is from one of our favorite Internet safety blogs, The Sue Scheff Blog, and is written by Erin Steiner.

Should you be worried? As a digital parent, the short answer is yes.

For those who haven’t heard, Facebook recently updated its privacy policy for teenage users of the system. Now there is no such thing as “too young to learn about online reputation management.”

Until last week, Facebook automatically made the profiles of users aged 13-17 private and only viewable to friends and friends of friends. Now their profiles are automatically public. That’s right. You’re newly-minted 13-year-old can broadcast his thoughts to the whole world with just the push of a button.

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Mom’s Confession: Yes, I Overshare Online

Check out this take on why one mom admits to oversharing online from HLN's Generation Overshare, a great site focused on the blurred lines between what we share online and what we keep private. The original post is written by Leslie Marinelli, award-winning humorist, writer, wife and mother of three.

Hi, my name is Leslie and I overshare on the Internet.

But before you lump me into the narcissistic duck-faced-selfies category, there is something I think you should know: I overshare because I care.

You see, I’m not out there Instagramming my atypical moles or tweeting blow-by-blow (pun intended) accounts of my children’s Bristol Stool Scale results.

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Why Facebook Keeps Violating Your Privacy: Facebook Safety Alert

FACEBOOK SAFETY ALERT

Shared via Yahoo! News: The latest controversy over who can use your Instagram photos is far from an isolated event.

Facebook's photosharing site Instagram backtracked Tuesday on its new user privacy policy that would have allowed the site to sell users' photos to advertising agencies.

After a huge outcry from Instagram users on both Facebook and Twitter, co-founder Kevin Systrom wrote on the company's blog:

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Facebook for Kids: 9 Features That Impact Your Child's Safety

If your child has a Facebook account, you've got to understand the privacy settings and parental helps Facebook already has in place. Knowing Facebook safety features means that you can teach your kids to manage their private information and stay safe online. Here are 9 things you need to know about Facebook for kids. 

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Account as Facebook Spy Tool Used On High Schoolers: Kids Safety

Apparently, parents aren’t the only ones addicted to spying on their kids. Worried about cyberbullying and facebook bullying Clayton High School principal Louise Losos came up with what she thought was a clever idea for keeping an eye on the students at her Missouri school. She allegedly created a Facebook account for a “Suzy Harriston” with a generic profile photo of a group of penguins. “Suzy” friended about 300 people before someone outed her:

"No one seemed to question who Harriston was. That is, until the night of April 5, when a 2011 grad and former Clayton quarterback posted a public accusation. “Whoever is friends with Suzy Harriston on Facebook needs to drop them. It is the Clayton Principal,” wrote Chase Haslett. And then, Suzy Harriston disappeared, say those who saw the profile." via Clayton High’s principal resigns amid Facebook mystery.

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Facebook as a Crime Prevention Tool

FacebookBy now, all parents should be well aware of the potential dangers of cyberbullying and Internet predators on social networking sites. But social networking can also keep our kids safe in ways previously unavailable. Law enforcement is discovering how to use Facebook and MySpace as a way to identify, prevent, and protect kids from crimes.

Many police departments now have a presence on Facebook or MySpace. By using social networking to establish a relationship with the community, police can reach out to at-risk youth and provide a teen-friendly avenue for reporting dangerous or illegal activity. Teens who know about a local gang fight that is about to happen, for example, probably wouldn't call the local police department but might find it more comfortable to tip off police through the familiar medium of Facebook or MySpace.

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Social Networking Privacy

Facebook imageYou don’t need an expert to tell you that you lived a different childhood than your kids do. You remember when you had to get up and turn the dial on the TV to change channels; your teen can’t understand how a world without Facebook or MySpace would even function.

You perceive everything differently than your child, and that includes the very nature of social networking.

As adults and non-Facebook natives, we naturally approach social networking with more caution and more discretion. We are well aware that it is a public activity. We parents are more likely to view Facebook as more of a billboard-type communication than a conversation with a friend. But do our kids?

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We are pleased to announce that Bark will be taking over where we leave off. The uKnowKids mission to protect digital kids will live on with Bark. Our team will be working closely with Bark’s team in the future, so that we can continue making the digital world a safer, better place for kids and their families. While we are disappointed we could not complete this mission independently, we are also pleased to hand the uKnowKids baton to Bark.
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