On the subject of our kids’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 kids lead at this time 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 expertise. For good and dangerous, the arrival 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 will we handle the potential dangers whereas enabling our kids to guide completely satisfied digital lives?
On the subject of posting selfies, there are some particular harms to contemplate. 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 could possibly even profit children, offering a secure house for self-expression, and/or a neighborhood of likeminded folks to share tales and friendship. Some youngsters 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 mother and father.
Nonetheless, context is every thing. One vital clarification is whether or not your kids use social media primarily as a comms channel, to touch upon photographs and movies, or to repost content material. Or whether or not they regularly submit movies and selfies of themselves. Until their profile is locked down and regularly 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 little one loses a specific amount of management over it. Even when they delete it, your little one could discover that the picture has been reposted and shared by their mates and followers.
This concept of “digital permanence” won’t happen to a teen once they’re submit on-line. But it surely 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:
- Entice predators on the lookout for victims to groom.
- Entice predators and extortionists on the lookout for pictures 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.
- Function private data like start dates, or the title of their college, which could possibly be utilized in mixture with different data to commit identification theft.
- Be utilized by cyberbullies and trolls to victimize your little one on-line.
- Comprise embarrassing or inappropriate particulars that are seen by employers or additional training establishments in years to come back.
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, might end in psychological hurt. A 2017 examine of eighth to 12th graders discovered a 33% enhance in depressive signs between 2010-2015. The suicide fee for women 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 identical interval that smartphone and social media penetration surged within the West. Specialists have additionally claimed that social media can affect younger folks’s shallowness, bodily well being, and high quality of sleep. The usage of AI filters together with selfies might theoretically foment an unhealthy obsession with look at a time in life once we’re emotionally and psychologically weak. 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 steerage
As mother and father, now we have a singular and vital position to play in setting boundaries, instructing greatest apply and offering emotional and psychological assist for our youngsters. That is true of many features of life, however particularly the digital world.
Begin by opening the communication channels. Set clear guidelines about what sort of selfies ought to be off limits, equivalent to provocative pictures or something together with figuring out data like your deal with. However steadiness this by instructing your youngsters about privateness settings, together with the right way to limit their profile, swap off geolocation and require guide 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 folks they’re mates with in actual life). And why it could 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 the intention to encourage honesty, particularly in case your little one needs 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 possibility, for limiting display screen time and entry to particular content material and apps.
Constructing a greater relationship with expertise
Finally, it’s not about banning your little one from posting selfies. It’s about giving them the data to make rational, risk-based choices about what to submit on-line. That features warning them about predators, bullies and fraudsters. But additionally the potential psychological well being implications of extreme social media use.
So by all means attempt issues like minimizing display screen time at residence, 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 examine finds that 75% of fogeys share photographs, movies and different content material on their kids. Earlier than you begin a dialog concerning the professionals and cons of your youngsters sharing selfies on-line, contemplate first reining in your “sharenting” habits.
