Looking around, there are so many people connected within today’s fast paced environment through their various social media platforms. According to a Pew Research Center study in 2016, “nearly eight-in-ten online Americans (79%) now use Facebook, more than double the share that uses Twitter (24%), Pinterest (31%), Instagram (32%) or LinkedIn (29%) (Greenwood, Perrin & Duggan, 2016). People are not only digitally connected and posting their information such as what they ate, where they ate it, and who they ate it with, but they’re also providing information about their children as well.
Parents typically post birth announcements about a new addition to the family on social media for their friends to like and comment upon. Even before birth, children have their ultrasounds, gender reveals, and name announcements posted that could identify them for the world to see. This only continues during the child’s lifetime as well, from the moment of delivery and all throughout, they are subject to their parents posting various life events that could put their digital image at risk for more than just an embarrassing Facebook post or Instagram selfie.
All the information provided by parents, whether it be grades, health and weight struggles, disciplinary issues, or random quirks are all added up to a general image of the child and can add to their digital identity in the future. All of this information can only add to the risk of media invasions like being hacked, stalked, or even having one’s identity stolen. Often it’s seen as “sharenting, or online sharing about parenting” but the cute moments and jokes could be more of a legal issue soon enough (Steinberg, 2017).
“It’s very rare that parents are sharing maliciously, but they haven’t considered the potential reach or longevity of what is happening with the information they’re posting” (Steinberg, 2017), but a 2010 study found that over 90% of 2-year-olds and 80% of babies had an online presence already (Business Wire, 2010).
The FBI themselves are already encouraging the general public to be wary of the information provided about students and children from Kindergarten to 12th grade. Within EdTech alone, in late 2017, there was an incident involving cyber actors who had utilized school information technology to hack into various school district servers to access information that allowed them to extort, threaten, and contact students and their families (FBI, 2018). A separate but related occurrence within a data breach ended in student information being posted for sale on the Dark Web (FBI, 2018).
Even in a non-education technology related instance, a mother who had posted a photo of her twins while potty training ended up learning that “strangers accessed the photos, downloaded them, altered them, and shared them on a website commonly used by pedophiles” (Steinberg, 2017). It even impacts their possible financial futures as well. “Through social media, it has never been easier for fraudsters to gather the key pieces of information required to steal someone’s identity,” said Jodie Gilbert, head of digital safety for Barclays (Coughlan, 2018). Because of sharenting, Barclays estimates about 7.4 million more incidents per year of identity fraud by 2030 (Coughlan, 2018).
This is an issue because it brings up two major questions:
What kind of digital profile do parents actually want to start for their children and what will the children think about the information that has been uploaded? Also, are parents aware of their own privacy settings on their own social media profiles and how it may be able to spread among friends, but the whole online world?
From a legal standpoint, there aren’t exactly too many rules or regulations that ban parents from posting a baby picture or a funny anecdote. From a more ethics related standpoint, it increases harm to those children who are having their information be taken from the web and being stored for more malicious purposes, and most instances are without the child’s own knowledge or consent.
Now, there are regulations put into place with children in higher education. One of the major items is the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) which prevents disclosure of non-directory information for students at SNHU to anyone who does not have permission to know about them or their accounts. For instance, within any student account, their admissions counselors, advisors, or finance counselors need to verify security information prior to disclosing anything within the account.
These security questions protect the account from being compromised and leaking personal information to other parties, even if it is just the parents of students who ask to know more about their child’s account.
Within social media, even if a student is recognized for their achievements, such as honors like President’s List or Dean’s List, they will not have their grade point average or their student identification number provided for people to see.
“Sharenting” often goes against policies and rights like this provided to children and students as their parents may tend to overshare their information through digital means like social media.
Researchers at New York University were able to see how much ‘personally identifiable’ information can pose risks to children that include stranger danger, unwanted surveillance, and data brokers (Steinberg, n.d.). Some parents are unaware and think of their information as sharing for advocacy of their child’s specific needs while it may be just oversharing. For instance, a mother wrote an essay titled I am Adam Lanza’s Mother where she shared information about her own struggles with raising her son. It was a helpful article that provided insight over childhood mental health, but it also disclosed a lot of private information about her child to the world as well (Steinberg, n.d.).
Another example of how sharing information about a child could be a huge safety risk includes “digital kidnapping” where strangers may be able to take pictures from the web and pretend that children are their own. Basic pictures like first day of school photos in front of a school bus stop could release information such as the child’s name, grade, age, appearance, and even their address based off the location (Steinberg, n.d.).
In one case, Sidis v. F-R Publishing, Sidis was a child prodigy but then wanted to become a private individual later on in his life. He went forward to live more secluded, until the New Yorker ran a story about his life and his whereabouts. Sidis then sued the New Yorker but the Court disagreed as he was a public figure as a child. This was upheld and set a precedent for any child who may have held public attention within their youth (Steinberg, n.d.).
At SNHU, if there is a reason for a student to be protected, whether it be lack of consent for publishing a photo onto their vast social media pages or with specific identification protection needs, their wishes will be carried out.
Especially since SNHU is international, it is important for staff to remember what can be posted for marketing purposes versus what cannot be. All students, before taking part in a commercial or photo shoots for the advertisements to attend SNHU, the students must provide authorization for disclosure of their image or information.
Not only is FERPA in place for students, but there is also the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) of 1998 which protects the gathering and disclosure of online data for children under the age of thirteen. While this does not protect older students, this is still important for any website who attempts to obtain children’s information or disclosing any additional information (Steinberg, n.d.).
Within higher education and marketing, is it important to remember privacy information for non-directory information. Our students at SNHU, whether potential, alumni, or current, should all be offered the same privacy protections for their online images.
Com 530 Law and Ethics 