Parental Awareness: What You Should Worry About Your Teen's Selfies

Nowadays, selfies are trending, and kids are just trying to follow the trend. Most kids post selfies because their friend's and group members are doing the same.

When teenagers post their selfies on any social media account, the stranger gives them a compliment on their teen selfies and kids like this thing. They keep posting selfies on different social sites without thinking about the cons of posting selfies.

In this article, we will explain what you should worry about your teen's selfies, not just this, we will tell you how you can save your kid from the risks of selfies.

• Part 1. Things Parents Should Know about Teen selfies
• Part 2. What Parents Need to Know to Keep Kids Safe
• Part 3. Why You Should Talk to Your Teen About Selfies
• Part 4. Final Thoughts

Things Parents Should Know about Teen selfies

We all know kids of 21st century is addicted to taking and posting selfies, but parents should be aware of the positive and negative impact of selfies on kids.

The upside of selfies

Here are few benefits of selfies of teens:

Best Way to express a feeling

Selfies are also considered a way of expressing your hidden feelings, which are inconvenient to express in words. For example, if you post a selfie, you can provide a lot of information like where you are and your mood and state of mind.

Identification

Selfies aid in Identity formation. This self-portrait has been famous for years now and allows all of us to answer many old school questions. “How do I want people to look at me? And “How do people see me?".

Teenagers, girls and boys spend a lot of their time in front of mirrors. Selfies help them explore their different personality traits and looks. Selfies allow them to take their self-portraits which represent their inner selves and help them in recognizing various hidden aspects of their personalities.

Selfies Help in Capturing beautiful Memories

Selfies help us remember various experiences, showcase our travels, and record precious moments with our family members. People like to take selfies during their solo traveling.

They sometimes feel very comfortable and Happy in trying different funny faces on them instead of when someone else is taking their picture. Group pictures are not as posed as selfies are.

Selfies are emotionally Engaging and Personal

Humans crave human interactions and socializing. Social media usage is at its peak nowadays, and now selfies can be used in a different light where we can add our photos with engaging captions either on Facebook or Instagram.

It doesn't matter if we are documenting a recovery journey, writing a documentary or being confident enough to own our body; young selfies allow us to express what we are feeling from inside.

Risks of posting selfies online

Here are some risks of posting selfies online:

Risk to personal data

Tech-savvy cybercriminals can obtain enough information from a photo that your children or their friends don't need to make any revealing comments after the photo goes public.

You must know if your kid's photo has geo-location; it can be dangerous as the current location can be saved and shared along with the picture.

Social media predators can misuse all this information. Nowadays, even if geolocation is not enabled, still some information like street names or landmarks can give some clues and information about kids or the whole family. This can be dangerous for all of you.

Cyberbullying

There are many dangerous things like cyberbullying. Many kids are suffering from online bullying.

The kids who appear in pictures in awkward or inappropriate poses can be bullied at Schools by their mates. This can make them depressed and shatter their confidence.

Future risk

Even many years after such accidents, these pictures can still affect the mental health of targeted people. This can cause problems in one's admission to college, application for any scholarship etc.

What Parents Need to Know to Keep Kids Safe

How can I monitor my kids’ social media activity? - KidsGuard Pro for Android

As you know kids post their selfies on different social media platforms, you need to keep an eye on their social media account activity. KidsGuard Pro monitoring helps you check all your kids' online activities. It has a great number of monitoring features such as it gives you access to kids' social media accounts like WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, tinder, QQ etc.

It allows you to check all the activities of these social media accounts like shared photos or selfies, videos, and other files. You can even check their posts and stories on these accounts. The real-time screen capturing feature of KidsGuard Pro provides a screenshot of all taken selfies.

How to set up KidsGuard Pro for Android monitoring app?

Step 1. Click Monitor Now button below and skip to KidsGuard Pro's website, use a valid email address to sign up an account.

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Step 2. After registration, go to My Products page and click on Setup Guide button, follow the instruction to download KidsGuard Pro for Android onto target phone. This step only needs to take 5 minutes.

Step 3. After finish setting, the icon of this app will disappear from the home screen of target phone, it is 100% undetectable. You can track your child's phone secretly.

How to explain privacy risks to your kids?

Posting pictures on public accounts is a privacy risk because strangers, sex predators or your enemies can know more about you. They can locate you by your shared selfie and other information like location, date, time etc.

Additionally, you should tell your kids it can affect their personal life because anyone copies or download their pictures from social sites and paste them in any wrong site which affects their personal life.

One main thing is cyberbullying because teenage kids face too much cyberbullying just because of posting their weird selfies on social media accounts. People troll them for their weird selfies, which lower their confidence. So as a parent, you must tell all these points to your kid if they post selfies.

Tell them about future risk

Teenagers take some pictures and post at the age of 13 or 14 that is not good for them in future. Because they do weird things at this age and take selfies in weird poses, when they share these pictures, they are now available on site for a long time.

But these photos can cause a problem in getting admission to well-known colleges. Even after ten years, the weird shared pictures cause issues in getting a job in a good company because, in interviews, they do research about the person before hiring them.

Make a phone contract

If your kid has a phone, make a phone contract. After making him aware about the risk of social media, set an age limit for posting selfies on social media accounts. If your kid is below 15, don't allow him to post personal photos on social media accounts.

Tell him he can post pictures when he comes at the age of 18. If he wants to use a personal phone, he has to follow this rule; otherwise, you will end mobile contract and don’t allow the personal phone.

Keep the kid's account private

If you allow children to post selfies but want to save them from internet dangers, keep all their social media accounts in private mode.

Because in this way his picture will be shared with family and friends. Strangers can’t access the selfies of kids on private accounts. In this way, you somehow save him.

Why You Should Talk to Your Teen about Selfies

You should talk to a teen about selfies because selfies, random photos or videos are not safe on the internet. People download these selfies and use them in the wrong way, so parents should talk to them.

Things about social media before your child uses it

Social media life is like a fantasy for kids who think everything is real on social media, but the reality is the opposite. When kids see models, actors or bloggers share photos and get appreciation from people from the whole world.

They try to do the same; they take selfies in different poses like a pout, doing weird signs to get fame. So, tell your kids it's true no one can be famous by sharing selfies.

Set a strong password

Before you let your kid create social media accounts, tell them to use a strong password for their account to make the accounts more secure to use. Additionally, tell them don’t give access to any friends or strangers accounts.

Don’t add strangers

Social media platforms are not harmful if your kid just added family and friends to accounts. Because strangers create problems like cyberbullying etc. So, make sure your kid does not add any stranger to the social media accounts.

Final Thoughts

Taking selfies is not bad, but posting on the public social media account is not recommended at all for teenagers. If you provide a phone to kids and are afraid of selfie sharing or video sharing of kids. First of all, talk to kids about these social media problems like sharing selfies could be a great risk for you.

You can control their phone with the KidsGuard Pro and access all their social media accounts because only KidsGuard Pro monitoring app helps you to safe kids from social media risks.

KidsGuard Pro for Android Features

• Track cell phone location in real time and view location history
• Check all incoming and outgoing calls & SMS
• Spy on social media apps like WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Viber, WeChat and more
• Remotely access the files on the target phone, like contacts, photos, call logs, etc.

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