AVG_Anti-Virus
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Today’s generation of newborns born face a vastly different world to those of born before 1973, the year the internet was conceived. No child born in October 2010 will have to go searching in scrap books and family photo albums to find out about their early years.
They will probably be celebrated into this world with their baby portraits shared on Facebook and other social networks. By the time they can use a computer it will be easy to find a digital dossier of themselves.
This “digital dossier” will probably consist of photos and videos of childhood memories shared by our parents, family and friends. In many cases this will actually happen within days of their birth, by the time they are two they will almost certainly have images and other information posted online. That online history will be built upon and will follow them around for their whole life.
This is confirmed by a study we've just carried out where we polled mothers with Internet access who have children under two in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. We asked them when they uploaded pictures of their children and what motivated them to do so.
Here is what we've found:
1. The average age at which a child acquires an online presence courtesy of their parents is at six months, and by the time they are two 81% of children have some kind of ‘digital footprint’.
2. A third (33%) of children have had images posted online from birth
3. A quarter (23%) of children have even had their pre-birth scans uploaded to the Internet by their parents
4. Seven per cent (7%) of babies have even had an email address created for them by their parents
5. More than 70% of mothers said they posted baby and toddler images online to share with friends and family
We're in the age where online social tools are a standard form of communicating and sharing with friends and family online, especially among women in their 20s and 30s, it’s a common practice.
However, what's a sobering thought is the fact that many parents are creating online profiles and email addresses (7% according to our research) for their babies and toddlers. Indeed, there is even a toy that has been developed allowing your toddler to access Twitter!
While it's natural to share this proud moment with people who are close to you, this does emphasize the need to review your social network privacy settings.
Regrettably it only takes a few minutes to find unprotected baby albums and even pictures of antenatal scans on Facebook that are open to the wider online world, so here are a few tips to limit your child’s digital footprint:
1. Update Your Privacy Settings on Social Networks: Anything posted on social networks may be searched, found and is often difficult to remove. It’s critical to share only with those who you know. Social networks such as Facebook are constantly changing their privacy controls so be sure to update these settings regularly.
2. Protect your Tweets: Approve who has access to your Twitter tweets. Regularly update your Twitter settings so that only those who you have approved to follow you can see the information you are tweeting.
3. Make Sure it is YouTube not EveryoneTube: Online videos of your loved ones are great ways to show off your new bundle of joy! However, if you do not keep your YouTube channel private, everyone will have access to its content. Set your channel to private or use the new ‘unlisted’ option where so your videos will not be tagged for public viewing and can only be found using a specific URL.
4. Make your social networking activity safer by using our newest versions of security software which include AVG Social Networking Protection. This feature, which you’ll only find with AVG products, employs a special set of rules that check if links in your social network messages are safe to visit. It will also mark links that you share with your friends telling them that they are safe to visit as well. Best of all, it’s automatic and you don’t have to change your social network account settings to make it work. You can find AVG products online at futureshop.com or in any of Future Shops retail locations.
It’s important for parents today to realize they are creating an online dossier for a human being that will be with them for years to come. It's worth considering what kind of digital footprint or online history you want to leave for your child. And when your child is a teenager or adult, what will they make of the information you are currently uploading now?
Photo credit: atad_org
