First day at school pics. Yes or No?

February 2025

Most of us have been guilty of it! A proud parent posting a photo of their childs' first day at primary or high school on social media for relatives and family to see. I believe such an exciting moment should be captured and shared, but so often we are forgetting how far our images can go online and exactly how easy it is to identify kids through such images.

Social networking is designed to spread information and the networks almost discourage us from taking efforts to minimise that exposure. They want us to post as many photo's as possible, with as much information as we can. They want to use, distribute and market that information for advertising revenue. In 2024 alone, Meta made $164 billion in revenue across their platforms. That is an increase of 22% from $134 billion in 2023.

A simple photo of a child in school uniform at their school, can tell users so much; name, age, gender, location, suburb, school, year group, siblings or parents (also in pic), relatives (liking, sharing), peers (tagging), house, car, street (background). The list goes on and on. All that information being lapped up by the networks.

But why can't we take pics of our kids? Well we can! It's just that we need to take some steps to minimise that exposure. But I can say quite clearly it is almost impossoble to remain truly private online in 2025!

I am presenting to over 600 schools across the country. At many of my high schools I will select a specific year group to which I am going to present to and see how many of them I can find online. On a first visit, by doing simple searches on social media, it is rare I will find any less than 50% of those students who are in my audience. As I continue to see those kids over time and build trust and rapport with them, quite often they challenge me to try and find them.

This is a great challenge for those kids to discuss, because it starts them thinking about who can actually see their content and gets conversations happening within the home about online footprint and digital citizenship. This is why I throw such challenges at them! When I show students how I do it and more importantly whom I found, the message is clear. We need to take a step back and assess what we are posting!

Here are some tips to help minimise how far our images can go and minimise how much data can be collected from them.

1. Try to avoid posting an image of a child in school uniform where the school crest is visible:
Even if you do not mention the school, most of the networks will identify the crest using software. Simple searches of that school on that network could identify that child or the account holder who has displayed the image. Blur the crest or edit the image to remove it. HERE is a great instruction video to show you how to do that.

2. Make sure accounts are 'Private' and locked down peers only:
Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat do have privacy lock down settings and also settings to help minimise exposure to randoms or content visibility. Get into the settings and get to know what we are sharing and how we can minimise our spread. On average, only 42% of kids aged 12 to 17 will have a truly private account. But please do not get caught up in that word 'private'! In reality, when it comes to social networking, there is no such thing.

3. Minimise 'Sharing', 'Liking' or 'Tagging':
This is where it starts to get difficult, especially with our kids online peers. If you post the pic, turn off sharing, liking and tagging, as this massively decreases the spread of the image and can greatly decrease the chances of identification. If the photo is 'liked' by 70 kids and 50 of those kids go to a certain high school, it is pretty easy to assume that's where your kid will go.

4. Do not allow the social networking App to share the location of your device:
You can edit a photo and remove the crest, but this will be to no avail if you are taking the photo at the school and sharing your devices location with the network. Searching on the network can reveal location. Many apps have viewable 'maps' that will display the location of users. Snapchat = SnapMap. Instagram = FriendMap. If the app does not have a user map, then location can still be revealed in location tagging.

5. Avoid using real full names on social networking:
Now I am not talking about using fake names. What I am discussing here is a way to minimise footprint. If I have been able to identify Sarah Phillips goes to Jubilee High School because I have read her name in a newsletter. Then we need to make it harder to find her online. 'Sara Pipps' will be harder to find. Her online peers and those who know her in the real world will know who she is under that pseudonym, but strangers will find it harder to identify the link.

I am pushing for the networks to take more responsibility in regard to the ease of searching across their networks. It is way to easy to find users and to identify their locations, peers and movements in even the most basic of searches. As usual they push the onus of privacy back onto us, the users.

Therefore the onus has pushed to us to look after ourselves. Taking the time to minimise our own exposure will go a long way in lowering footprint and connectability. Locking down to as minimal a peer group as possible will assist in helping dragging back how far our stuff can go online.