Abstract:

In today’s digital world, it is vital that parents and guardians consider the potential danger they expose their children to whenever they upload pictures and videos of them onto Facebook. In this conference paper, I explore the risks and potential consequences that children could face in the wake of their parent’s or guardian’s social media ignorance. The evidence presented in this paper shows firstly, how easy it is for predators to attain a child’s location through geotagged images—a process that combines smartphone information technology and built-in GPS—and how easily they can extract the metadata that is automatically embedded into photos. Secondly, the issue surrounding images of children falling into the hands of unintended and unwanted audiences such as child pornographers, who—with readily available online software—can use photo manipulation to take a once innocent picture and turn it into an inappropriate and perverted one with the intent of distributing it. And finally, how parents and guardians have an obligation to protect their children from online harm and that it is imperative they give critical thought to the appropriateness of the images they are posting i.e., nude/semi-nude images of children. Facebook’s user-friendly features allow people to connect on a global scale and form online communities and groups, such as ‘Mums Groups’. While they are moderated, it is easy to join them, not only that, anyone can create a profile and pretend to be a parent. The evidence shows that although Facebook affords parents the opportunity to connect and share parenting experiences and share pictures, it is the responsibility of the parents and guardians to screen the images and information they share and make sure the protection of the child’s safety and privacy is considered first and foremost before uploading to such a public platform like Facebook.

Keywords:

Geotagging, metadata, Facebook, parents & guardians, children, safety & privacy, photo manipulation, predators.

Every day millions of pictures are uploaded, liked, commented on, and shared globally on Facebook. For the most part, they are harmless pictures of cats, dogs, nature, celebrities, world events, natural disasters, and of course, children. Facebook’s user-friendly interface affords its users the ease of communicating on a global scale and allows for the creation of online groups and communities where parents can talk, share pictures, and experiences, discuss parenting tips or hacks and ask for advice. Unlike other social platforms such as Twitter or Instagram, Facebook is not restricted to word counts, video lengths and other platform-specific content restrictions. Because of this, parents are free to share whatever content they like with whoever they like, whether it be family, friends or amongst the plethora of groups available on Facebook. Not a day passes without a fetal scan image, milestone birthday, school award, or a child doing something deemed cute/funny/silly/messy by their parents or guardians. All of which are done with innocence, good intention, and a large amount of ignorance. We live in an era where a substantially large part of our lives, whether it be personal or business, involves the daily use of the World Wide Web. And yet, a vast majority of its users have little—if any—understanding of how it works and how data is sent, received, or stored. Nor do they realise how much private information they share with a single image. Society is in an age where any person with access to the internet can use geotagging data, Google Maps, photo editing software, and a plethora of other software avenues to precisely locate where a child lives, goes to school, plays sport, or attends music lessons. The frightful reality is such information can be—and is— used for malicious means.  This paper will argue that regardless of an individual’s best intentions when uploading pictures or videos of children to Facebook, without taking serious consideration of the child’s safety and privacy into account, their social media ignorance is not only violating the privacy of the child but can also put the child in danger of becoming targeted by predators.

Sharenting is defined as “the overuse of social media by parents posting images and information relating to their children” (Macquarie Dictionary, 2020). It has been established that good intentions are at the heart of every parent or guardian’s decision to share a picture of their children on Facebook. Parents and guardians do not post this type of content with malicious intent, nor for it to be used in inappropriate ways or to be redistributed amongst unwanted audiences. Unfortunately, without parents or guardians intentionally seeking and researching information regarding online privacy, how processes like geotagging work, and how content is distributed to unintended and unwanted audiences via online avenues like Facebook, they will continue to post content about their children in blind ignorance. Not only of the potential consequences but ignorance of the fact they are violating their children’s privacy. In addition to that, a vast majority of the time the children are not asked permission by the parent/guardian if they can post their pictures on Facebook. Steinberg (2017), states “While many parents make these online disclosures with good intention, the children—the standard subject of the online disclosures—rarely participate in the decision-making process or in framing the way the story is told.” In addition to this Brosch (2018), argues “What is more, when parents share information about their children online, they do so without their children’s consent.” It can be argued that there are positive outcomes from parents/guardians sharing the content of their children on Facebook, such as being able to share milestones, special occasions, or other daily aspects of family life that friends and family would otherwise not get to see due to distance and the like. However, such outcomes must be considered carefully against the potential risks of posting such private information about children on a public platform like Facebook (Steinberg, 2017). One of the many examples of well-intended photo sharing ending up in the hands of an unknown and unwanted audience comes from Steinberg (2017):

After posting a picture of her two daughters, Ashley found it was shared by another Facebook page that seemed to share many pictures of little girls. As Ashley looked closer at the link of her children provided on the page, she realized that any of the thousands of followers could not only see the image of her children, but could also follow the link back to her own Facebook page and track down more information about her daughters, including where they lived.

Considerable thought and ensuing precautions need to be made by the parents and guardians of children before they upload the content of their children to Facebook They are, after all, the protector of the child’s identity and they are responsible for advocating for their children when the child can not. “Information shared on the internet has the potential to remain long after posting it without the senders’ control” (Brosch, 2018) and for parents and guardians, it is their responsibility to protect their children from online harm, for they are the custodians of their children’s personal information (COPPA, 2012).

One of the serious risks that can occur from sharing any content online comes from the hidden information embedded inside the content that is shared. Geotagging, as defined by Luo, et al., (2010) is when geographical metadata is automatically or manually added to any form of media, such as an image, that is then uploaded to any of the internet’s various sites or services. A task that was once done manually by writing the date and place on the back of a photograph is now done with the click of a button (Luo, et al., 2010). Today, devices like smartphones are all equipped with a built-in Global Positioning System (GPS). This system combined with its information technology allows the device to geotag the image by capturing the data as latitude and longitude, which is then embedded into the picture’s metadata and then stored in the image as a digital file (Ramirez, et al., 2010). The problem lies in that many people are completely oblivious, not only to geotagging, but to how it works, how easily that information can be accessed, and how not knowing about this—even on a basic level—is putting children in danger. An example of what can be accomplished by accessing geotagged metadata and capturing too much visible personal information in pictures and videos is the Netflix documentary, Don’t F**k with cats: Hunting an Internet Killer (Doganis et al., 2019), which is centred on an angry group of individuals who banded together on Facebook (from various parts of the world) and using their combined efforts of parsing over and over the content uploaded by the cat killer, eventually tracked him down in Russia and he was arrested, unfortunately not before he escalated to murder. With a user base of approximately 2.9 billion, it is easy to deduce that millions of photos and videos are uploaded to Facebook daily, and, that a significant portion of them are of children. Newsfeeds are frequently populated with pictures of children, ranging from ultrasound images, first birthday parties, bath time, crying, covered in food, giggling, nude/semi-nude, holiday snaps, school pictures…the list goes on. These pictures are shared with good intent, after all, Facebook’s primary purpose is to connect people globally and share content, special moments, or events for the intended audience to like and comment on as they would not otherwise get to see it. The issue with this, however, as stated by Pesce, et al., (2012) is that “comments, links and tags can flow through the news feed of a reasonable amount of unknown or unwanted users.” In other terms, Abidin (2021, as cited in boyd, 2010) states “not all audiences are visible when a person is contributing online, nor are they necessarily co-present” (p.48). Furthermore, Brosch (2016) argues that “Consequently, the child might be at great risk if these photos fall into the wrong hands, such as those of child pornographers.” Parallel to the images being shared, there is the other type of personal information that is often shared on Facebook about children and that is information such as their full names and date of birth (Brosch, 2016). In view of the above, what this evidence shows is that regardless of good intentions, uploading images of children, —particularly nude/semi-nude ones thereby exposing them to public viewing—is something that should be given considerable thought to by whoever is uploading. Any person who can access the image can extract the embedded geotagged information. That knowledge alone is scary enough, but, when coupled with the amount of private information a picture of a child can show, the level of danger to the child’s safety significantly increases, which therefore shows that parents and guardians unintentionally make their children possible targets of predators (Bosch, 2016).

Whilst the thought of predators finding children through the geotagged metadata embedded into photos is not worrying enough, there is another equally disturbing and sinister consequence that parents/guardians need to consider when uploading pictures of their children, and that is child pornographers. A topic that no parent ever wants to think about, but the blunt reality is we live in an age where it is significantly easier for pedophiles and child pornographers to access pictures of children and use the plethora of photo manipulation software that is available to anyone and change an innocent picture into a sexually provocative one for distribution among the pedophilia rings and the darkest corners of cyberspace. Krone (2004) states:

The definition of child pornography may include morphed pictures. Taylor (1999) refers to such images as pseudo-photographs, and they are classified according to three types:  

• digitally altered and sexualized images of bodies, such as photograph of a child in a swimming costume where the costume has been electronically removed;
• separate images in one picture, such as a child’s hand superimposed onto an adult penis; and
• a montage of pictures, some of which are sexual.

Krone further elaborates by referring to a convicted double murderer and serial rapist in Australia, whose cell was searched after he was transferred and a collection of videotapes that included images from Sesame Street that had been spliced together with other program material to create scenes of perversion (Krone, 2004). When the above can be accomplished from a prison cell without digitally manipulating content, it makes the thought of what can be done to your child’s image with photo manipulation software drastically more frightening. A predatory individual does not even need professional photo manipulation software like Adobe Photoshop, with a quick Google you can find a multitude of free editing software such as Photopea, Pixlr, and Fotor to name a few. Although Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Non-governmental Organisations (NGOs) are constantly upgrading their services to mitigate the distribution of child pornography and actively work with law enforcement to track offenders and bring them to justice (Jones, et al, 2005), the issue arises from the creation of child pornography, which is something that can be created easily and from innocent images. For parents and guardians, it is their responsibility to be the protectors and champions of their children’s safety, especially online. Furthermore, parents and guardians should give critical thought to the type of content they are choosing to post online about their children. If the shoe were on the other foot, and it was the parent/guardian who had a picture taken of them while they were in the bath which was then uploaded onto Facebook with only a smiling emoji vaguely covering their genitalia, they would be demanding it is taken down as they would deem it a violation of their privacy and an inappropriate picture to be shared on a public application. Therefore, the standards should be equal. If it is not appropriate for nude/semi-nude pictures of the parents/guardians to be posted on Facebook, then it should not be appropriate for nude/semi-nude pictures of their children to be posted on Facebook. A child’s privacy is equally as important as an adult’s and a significant more amount of value needs to be placed on it because “predatory individuals with a variety of motives can take advantage of the information shared by parents online” (Williams-Ceci, et al., 2021).  

There is no shortage of evidence to support the argument that parents and guardians uploading and sharing pictures of their children on Facebook is fraught with danger. We have established that regardless of good intentions, there is a significant onus on the parents and guardians of children to strongly consider and weigh up the potential risks that could arise from posting such content on a public platform. In a recent news article at the start of the year, Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation (ACCCE) commander Hilda Sirec said, “some offenders went to great lengths to gain access to children and in some cases, online grooming began with information shared by parents and carers” (Cosenza, 2022, para. 6). This shows it is vital that parents/guardians assess the image first and check for simple things like addresses, school logos, nudity and so forth. There is a plethora of research and studies—this paper included—that shows there is a significant and real danger to children and their privacy in the forms of photo manipulation, being potentially targeted by predators via geotagged metadata, having their images accessed by child pornographers, and the many other inappropriate ways in which their images can be distributed online and into the hands of unintended and unwanted audiences. Evidence in this paper has shown that parent and guardian ignorance –  through their lack of knowledge and understanding about digital information technology – is inadvertently endangering their children and violating their privacy when they upload pictures and videos of their children to Facebook.

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