Friday, March 29 2024

When talking about minors and respecting their privacy, “caution” should be
the keyword. But is it always like this? Are we careful enough when dealing
with images and sensitive data of children?

With this article we intend to offer you practical advice
to respect your children’s right to privacy.

Social Networks are full of photos of minors: this is a
phenomenon that everyone can see. In fact, daily more and more adults
choose to share images of their children on their profiles
, often not being well aware of the risks of such behavior.

Recently, in the article

Our childr
en are not social media trophies. Here is how to
protect their privacy,

we talked about how parents’ desire to show their children on the web can
become obsessive. We have also dealt with the dangers
related to the proliferation of photos of children online, first of all
child

pornography, an even more real and looming problem than we might think.

Now we will try to give you suggestions, to prevent unpleasant situations
in a few steps.

1. You can leave your children
off the web

To avoid any sort of inconvenience, the first thing that could be done is not to share images of minors on the net. The desire to
show to relatives and close friends photographs or videos that immortalize
important moments of your children is understandable and healthy; this does
not mean that this sharing can take place without the use of a Social
Network. You can

show videos or photos directly in person to whomever you want

, on your phone, a camera, or paper albums (yes, they still exist!)

If you want to rely on a

private and “secure” social network for your privacy conditions

, we would suggest “Signal,” an easy to install app that is similar to
Whatsapp.


2. If you need a vehicle on the net, choose private channels

It may also happen that some of the people we want to show pictures of our
children are not physically close to us, for they live in another city or
even in another country.

In this case (besides noting again that the photos can be printed and sent
in the mail), to share images quickly and inexpensively it

may be useful to use the Internet. Our advice, however, is to use
private, non-public

channels
to send photos and videos. For example, better an email or Whatsapp message
than an Instagram or Facebook post.


3. Avoid taking close-ups; instead obscure children’s faces

If, after all that has been said, you still want to publicly share family
photos (for example images of your holidays in which your children are also
present), a way to protect them is

not to post pictures in which the children are in the foreground or to
draw a picture

, an emoticon, or something else to cover their faces and make them
unrecognizable.

4. Never post photos in which children are naked

It is best to avoid in the most absolute way publicizing images in which
children, even if only a few months old, are naked. For example, it’s best
not to share pictures of them taking a bath or playing on the beach.

As reported in an article published in The Huffpost,

about half of the photos of children circulating on the Internet end up
in the wrong hands…

a percentage too high not to ask ourselves how we are experiencing this
aspect of our online life and not to decide to change course if we were
endangering our children.

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