Childline: Take care when sharing family photos on social media accounts

Many parents and carers will want to share these photos through social media accounts, but thought should be given to the risk of these images being accessed and manipulated.

Our Childline counsellors have heard from children who have discovered photos they have posted online have been taken and altered to make them explicit. In some cases, innocent photos have been taken from social media with children’s faces transposed onto a naked body.

One girl, aged 14, who contacted Childline, said: “These boys made fake porn of the girls, including me, and sent them to loads of group chats. They were excluded for a bit, and we had a big assembly about why it was wrong, but after that school told us to forget what happened. I can’t forget though, people think that they saw me naked, and I have to see these boys every day.”

If you are posting photos online the NSPCC recommends that you should check and use privacy settings on your accounts. It is a good idea to make your account set to private so then only your followers can see any images you post. However, be aware that followers could still reshare images with others.

Check your privacy settings, regularly check who your friends and followers are, and be sure to remove anyone you don’t recognise or who you don’t want following you.

Talk to your children about the risks of posting their own images online and make sure that they know it’s OK to say no if they are not comfortable with their photos being taken or shared by others.

Importantly if you want to take photos or videos of your children with their friends or other children, check with their parents and carers before taking the photos and also that they are happy for them to be posted online, if that is your plan.

More advice on using social media safely can be found on the NSPCC website https://www.nspcc.org.uk/keeping-children-safe/online-safety/social-media/