Relating to our youngsters’s digital lives, prohibition hardly ever works. It’s our accountability to assist them construct a wholesome relationship with tech.
17 Feb 2026
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4 min. learn
The lives our youngsters lead in the present day are very completely different to our personal, 20, 30 and even 40-plus years in the past. And the primary cause for that distinction is know-how. For good and unhealthy, the appearance of smartphones and social media has essentially modified the best way our youngsters work together with one another and the world round them. There’s no placing the genie again within the bottle. So the query for folks is, how can we handle the potential dangers whereas enabling our youngsters to guide pleased digital lives?
Relating to posting selfies, there are some particular harms to think about. However speaking issues by means of is all the time the perfect first port of name.
The professionals and cons of social media
Though some would have you ever imagine in any other case, social media shouldn’t be inherently evil. In some methods, it might even profit children, offering a protected area for self-expression, and/or a neighborhood of likeminded individuals to share tales and friendship. Some children could even attain out to seek out assist and assist from official sources through their social media accounts, once they’re too scared to ask their dad and mom.
Nevertheless, context is all the pieces. One vital clarification is whether or not your youngsters use social media primarily as a comms channel, to touch upon photographs and movies, or to repost content material. Or whether or not they steadily publish movies and selfies of themselves. Until their profile is locked down and steadily vetted, the latter might current some points.
How selfies can invite danger
As quickly as a selfie is posted onto a social media website, your baby loses a certain quantity of management over it. Even when they delete it, your baby could discover that the picture has been reposted and shared by their pals and followers.
This concept of “digital permanence” won’t happen to a teen once they’re publish on-line. Nevertheless it issues now greater than ever, in an age when AI bots are scraping social media content material to coach massive language fashions (LLMs). This amplifies the potential danger of personal content material leaking into the general public area.
Extra regarding nonetheless for folks are the dangers {that a} selfie may:
- Entice predators on the lookout for victims to groom.
- Entice predators and extortionists on the lookout for photographs they will feed into AI “nudifier” instruments, to make indecent content material. This could possibly be shared on-line and/or used to blackmail the sufferer.
- Characteristic private info like start dates, or the identify of their faculty, which could possibly be utilized in mixture with different info to commit identification theft.
- Be utilized by cyberbullies and trolls to victimize your baby on-line.
- Include embarrassing or inappropriate particulars that are seen by employers or additional schooling establishments in years to return.
Do selfies affect psychological well being?
There’s additionally a rising physique of proof to recommend that social media use, together with the posting of selfies, might end in psychological hurt. A 2017 research of eighth to 12th graders discovered a 33% improve in depressive signs between 2010-2015. The suicide fee for ladies on this age group elevated by 65% over the identical interval.
There’s no direct causal hyperlink right here. However the correlation is evident, as this is similar interval that smartphone and social media penetration surged within the West. Consultants have additionally claimed that social media can affect younger individuals’s vanity, bodily well being, and high quality of sleep. Using AI filters together with selfies might theoretically foment an unhealthy obsession with look at a time in life once we’re emotionally and psychologically susceptible. It’s a part of the explanation why the US surgeon basic in 2023 launched an advisory on Social Media and Younger Psychological Well being.
Time for parental steering
As dad and mom, we have now a singular and vital position to play in setting boundaries, instructing finest observe and offering emotional and psychological assist for our youngsters. That is true of many facets of life, however particularly the digital world.
Begin by opening the communication channels. Set clear guidelines about what sort of selfies must be off limits, equivalent to provocative photographs or something together with figuring out info like your handle. However steadiness this by instructing your children about privateness settings, together with how one can limit their profile, change off geolocation and require handbook approvals for others to tag them in photographs. Educate them additionally why they need to be selective about who they permit to observe them (i.e., solely individuals they’re pals with in actual life). And why it may be helpful to do a “digital spring clear” each few months to take away sure followers and different contacts.
It is vital to create a non-judgmental, respectful atmosphere with a purpose to encourage honesty, particularly in case your baby desires to speak to you about one thing they discover uncomfortable or embarrassing like cyberbullying or sextortion. However in the event you really feel like that belief has been damaged, parental monitoring instruments are an possibility, for limiting display screen time and entry to particular content material and apps.
Constructing a greater relationship with know-how
In the end, it’s not about banning your baby from posting selfies. It’s about giving them the data to make rational, risk-based choices about what to publish on-line. That features warning them about predators, bullies and fraudsters. But in addition the potential psychological well being implications of extreme social media use.
So by all means attempt issues like minimizing display screen time at dwelling, banning telephones on the desk, and setting apart an hour or two on the weekend for household actions. However you additionally want to guide by instance. A 2024 research finds that 75% of fogeys share photographs, movies and different content material on their youngsters. Earlier than you begin a dialog in regards to the execs and cons of your children sharing selfies on-line, think about first reining in your “sharenting” conduct.
