Mar 28, 2019
Can you stop your parents sharing photos of you online?
Konrad Iturbe, a 19-year-old software developer in Spain, says he had a "Big awakening at 14" when he realised his parents had been posting photos of him online. "My mother had Instagram before I even had a phone - so I wasn't aware that photos of me had been published," he told the BBC. "I really don't like photos of me online anyway - I don't even post photos of myself on my Instagram account - so when I followed my mother and saw them on her profile, I told her to 'take this down, I've not given you permission'." "When I was 21, my mum tagged me on Facebook, and I saw that she'd posted a bunch of photos of me - from when I was a baby to me in my 20s," she told the BBC. "Her settings were public, so I just found it very unsafe. I didn't want my baby photos leaked to everyone, and I knew that with Google, you can search for someone's name using their photos. And by her contributing more photos of me online, technology companies have more data on how I look." In one study involving Estonian children aged nine to 13, she found that children liked "Parents sharing positive things about them", but that "There were big discrepancies between what children and parents considered to be nice photos". Prof Siibak says many parents feel that, as the adult, they are responsible for their child's wellbeing, and don't need their child's permission as long as they believe the photos are not doing any harm.
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