With regards to our youngsters’s digital lives, prohibition hardly ever works. It’s our duty to assist them construct a wholesome relationship with tech.
17 Feb 2026
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4 min. learn
The lives our youngsters lead at this time are very totally different to our personal, 20, 30 and even 40-plus years in the past. And the primary cause for that distinction is expertise. For good and unhealthy, the arrival of smartphones and social media has basically modified the best way our children 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 will we handle the potential dangers whereas enabling our youngsters to steer joyful digital lives?
With regards to posting selfies, there are some particular harms to contemplate. However speaking issues by is at all times the very best first port of name.
The professionals and cons of social media
Though some would have you ever imagine in any other case, social media will not be inherently evil. In some methods, it might probably even profit kids, offering a secure area for self-expression, and/or a group of likeminded individuals to share tales and friendship. Some youngsters might even attain out to seek out assist and assist from official sources by way of their social media accounts, after they’re too scared to ask their dad and mom.
Nonetheless, context is all the things. One vital clarification is whether or not your kids use social media primarily as a comms channel, to touch upon images and movies, or to repost content material. Or whether or not they often publish movies and selfies of themselves. Except their profile is locked down and often vetted, the latter may current some points.
How selfies can invite danger
As quickly as a selfie is posted onto a social media web site, your baby loses a certain quantity of management over it. Even when they delete it, your baby might discover that the picture has been reposted and shared by their associates and followers.
This concept of “digital permanence” won’t happen to a youngster after 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 giant 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:
- Appeal to predators on the lookout for victims to groom.
- Appeal to predators and extortionists on the lookout for photographs they’ll feed into AI “nudifier” instruments, to make indecent content material. This might be shared on-line and/or used to blackmail the sufferer.
- Function private data like beginning dates, or the title of their college, which might be utilized in mixture with different data to commit identification theft.
- Be utilized by cyberbullies and trolls to victimize your baby on-line.
- Comprise embarrassing or inappropriate particulars that are seen by employers or additional training establishments in years to return.
Do selfies affect psychological well being?
There’s additionally a rising physique of proof to counsel that social media use, together with the posting of selfies, may end in psychological hurt. A 2017 examine of eighth to 12th graders discovered a 33% improve in depressive signs between 2010-2015. The suicide charge 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. Specialists have additionally claimed that social media can affect younger individuals’s shallowness, bodily well being, and high quality of sleep. Using AI filters together with selfies may 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 common in 2023 launched an advisory on Social Media and Younger Psychological Well being.
Time for parental steering
As dad and mom, now we have a singular and vital position to play in setting boundaries, instructing finest apply and offering emotional and psychological assist for our children. That is true of many points 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, comparable to provocative photographs or something together with figuring out data like your deal with. However steadiness this by instructing your youngsters about privateness settings, together with methods to prohibit their profile, change off geolocation and require guide approvals for others to tag them in images. Educate them additionally why they need to be selective about who they permit to comply with them (i.e., solely individuals they’re associates 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 surroundings 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 for those who really feel like that belief has been damaged, parental monitoring instruments are an choice, for limiting display screen time and entry to particular content material and apps.
Constructing a greater relationship with expertise
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 selections 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 steer by instance. A 2024 examine finds that 75% of oldsters share images, movies and different content material on their kids. Earlier than you begin a dialog concerning the execs and cons of your youngsters sharing selfies on-line, take into account first reining in your “sharenting” habits.
