Lately I’ve been noticing a trend in picture tagging on the Facebook accounts of my kids. Granted my kids are technically “adults” at the ripe age of 18 but many of their friends are not.
The other day I was talking to my kids when a very unsavory picture appeared on the wall of one of my boys. A teen girl had been tagged in a photo that was extremely sexually explicit.
I can’t believe how stupid kids are today! Sure, I know our world has become so desensitized to such images – but somehow we have to make these kids realize that anything and everything they do online is going in a permanent archive that can be viewed by future employers, colleges, potential girlfriends/boyfriends, spouses and their families.
It all seems fun and cool right now, but what these kids aren’t realizing is passing on, tagging, sharing these kinds of photos could pose an even bigger problem.
Have they stopped to think the images could be illegal? Are the participants in the photos underage?
I would encourage ALL parents to check your kids Facebook account – set their image tagging options to require authorization before those images EVER make it to their wall.
This can easily be done using the following steps:
- Click Privacy Settings
- Check the CUSTOM Setting
- EDIT SETTINGS under the “How tags work” option
- There are FIVE options – Mine are set as — On, Off, Friends, Off and Off
Facebook provides a fun and FREE service. I could easily see this sort of behavior forcing the hands of Facebook to take their service to a paid service – an age restricted service that’s actually enforced and more.
As with anything – a few stupid kids making extremely poor choices is putting everyone else at risk of losing out on something enjoyable.
There’s got to be some way, some movement that people can join together in to help eliminate or at the very least, minimize this sort of activity. But what?
Any ideas?
