Jun 7, 2016

Should parents post photos of their children on social media? CTSP fellow Morgan Ames says no.

From MarketWatch

Should parents post photos of their children on social media?

By Lauren Apfel and Morgan G. Ames

Those in favor say it’s a great way to help build a community. Others say sharing violates children’s privacy and may have long-term consequences.

It’s a question any social-media user faces after snapping a great photo: Should I post this? Or it going to come back to haunt me?...

NO: they violate privacy, and without a child giving consent
By Morgan G. Ames

Facebook seems to be full of friends’ adorable babies and precocious children. But a healthy proportion of parents — myself included — have decided that sharing photos carries too many risks for their children....

My own reasons center on privacy and consent. In the early days of the Web, those few with an online presence often felt that they were protected by security through obscurity. But in today’s world, data mining is big business. Much of our content is hosted on sites where we may not only lack control over what happens to it, but where it is aggressively used in aggregation and profiling....

Read more...

This story also appeared in The Wall Street Journal.

Morgan Ames is a fellow of the School of Information’s Center for Technology, Society & Policy and an alumna of the I School’s MIMS program.

Last updated: October 4, 2016