It was 2013 and I was 24, working in my first marketing job, when my phone buzzed with a sickening text from an old school friend that shocked me to my core.
Our former classmate had pleaded guilty to possessing and distributing indecent images of children. Children.
I went into a dizzying state of shock. I couldn’t believe what I was reading.
This wasn’t just someone I vaguely knew: this was a man who, not that long ago, was in my social circle, part of a larger group who used to hang out at school breaktimes.
The news swept through our friendship group like wildfire, and everyone was in disbelief. This was someone we knew. This was real life.
That’s when it hit me – people freely shared photos of their children, and he had access to them. Over ten years on, I now keep my daughter’s face firmly offline.
I didn’t have kids at the time, but I had friends who did. They, like me, felt sickened, removed him from their friends lists immediately – wondering if he’d saved any photos of their kids online.
These people had shared multiple photos of their children online with their faces fully visible. Everyone did back then. I realised then that we had to be more careful about what we share online, because we don’t ever know what someone is capable of.
I deleted this man from my account, disgusted and ashamed for having ever associated myself with him.
I felt a kind of sick repulsion that I hadn’t experienced since 2008, when I discovered through a work colleague that my upper school form tutor had been convicted of killing his own mother.
Me and my friends from school couldn’t believe that someone we’d spent time alone with on many occasions –– someone we’d trusted –– was capable of something so horrendous.
It was then that I first learned that anyone could be capable of committing horrific crimes; even people I thought I knew. I did my first Facebook friends list cull after hearing that news, trimming it down to people I genuinely cared about.
I believe it’s no less dangerous online than it is in the real world. However, you would have to be living under a rock to have no understanding of how far AI has come in recent years. It can do so much more than you can imagine.
Worryingly, it only takes a few images of a child’s face to enable someone with malicious intentions to create a deepfake image, putting that child in a compromising position.
Throw in some samples of the child’s voice from an innocent video on Instagram, and we’ve handed over all the tools required to manipulate a very believable video, ready to be uploaded to the darkest corners of the internet.
The shocking truth is that half of the photos shared by child sexual abusers were first posted on social media by parents. Child abuse investigators have also discovered hundreds of thousands of innocent photos of children shared on social media have reappeared on pornographic platforms.
Paedophiles – unfortunately – have always existed, and anyone with a child in their life knows the danger of people with harmful intentions. There’s nothing scarier for a parent than knowing a predator could be accessing their children.
I really understood this when I became a mother in 2022. My now three-year-old daughter is beautiful, hilarious and possibly already smarter than me, and I feel compelled about a hundred times a day to share stories, anecdotes and photos of her gorgeous face with everyone I know.
But I don’t.
We might think the people in our lives aren’t capable of doing awful things like this or that a private profile may seem like the perfect solution – after all, it’s just our family, friends and colleagues.
That’s what I thought back in 2013 before I received that text.
Should parents share pictures of their children on social media?
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Yes, as long as they are careful.
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No, it is too risky.
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It depends on the context.
However, after I fell pregnant, when I considered posting an image of the scan online, I paused and asked myself if I really wanted to share an image of my daughter before she was even born.
Did I want to share her image at all?
I already used social media to share photos and highlights from my life, but it didn’t feel right sharing hers.
I discussed it with my wife, explaining what happened with my former classmate. She was horrified and it only served to cement our decision. It became just one of the reasons we decided against sharing our daughter’s photos – even if we locked down our profiles to just friends and family.
It didn’t feel worth the risk just to get a dopamine buzz. Any photos I do share, don’t feature her face.
When people who are important to us ask about her, we’ll send photos via WhatsApp, or printed ones in the post. It’s easy enough to do, and I think our loved ones appreciate it more.
Friends and family have been supportive of our decision, which we stood firm by from day one. In fact, we found out that a handful of our friends share the same opinion.
The only photos of her online don’t show her face (it’s amazing how creative you can get with photography when you need to). Sometimes, she’ll pop up in a group shot of kids, with an emoji stuck over her face.
We wouldn’t change a thing about how she appears on social media, and we hope one day she’ll thank us for it.
Even without the issue of paedophiles hiding in plain sight, there’s still the question of permission – we personally believe in the right to choose whether your face appears online, and a child simply cannot make an informed decision.
I’m not a robot – I understand the compulsion to share our children’s photos. Even with my shocking experience I still get the urge to share, especially during birthdays, seasonal events, or when the annual nursery photos come through.
I sometimes feel left out when photos from an event are shared online and there’s no trace of her.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Ross.Mccafferty@metro.co.uk.
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