To not let my kids appear on school social media?

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Since DC started school, I've never consented to their pictures appearing on social media.

I thought a lot of parents would do the same, but the majority of parents do seem to have consented as the social feeds are full of lovely pictures of everyone else's kids.

Last week for example, there were lots of great pictures of sports day, and the week before, pictures of a school trip.

I'm now beginning to think I'm just making myself miss out on nice pictures of DC at school events, and actually there's no a real downside to letting them be in the pictures.

What does everyone else think? AIBU to not consent, or is there a real risk to having pictures of children on open public social media?

I'm a teacher in charge of social media and online safety.
As others have said people have made videos of children using faces they've found off school's socials.
My school (and many others) are moving towards not posting full faces and using profiles or over shoulder shots or faces partially blocked by something.
As a parent I've given permission for my child to be on socials because her school have already taken this step. Had they not, I wouldn't allow it.

It really isn't. I'm a teacher and most schools already use apps such as dojo that would allow them to share images with just parents rather than online.

We switched our permission from no to yes because it got to the point where DD was being excluded from a lot of school activities. Asked to sit on the side during whole lessons as they'd be photographing it for some reason or other. She would also miss out on awards because they wanted people to go into the newsletter. But this isn't for public social media just the content shared on the parenting news space in the school app.

Whilst fully understanding safeguarding concerns I do find this a party to a dystopian world where taking a photograph of a child is a social taboo. The royal family routinely produce photographs of Geroge and Charlotte and this shows maybe a necessity to have children sometimes on digital media Would we go to the extremes of banning children from ever appearing on television due to the footage maybe being copied?

You can't get rid of abhorrent paedophilia but is the blanket ban of child presence on the internet in a way giving in with children possibly being made more anxious with less secure relations with adults for fear of a very small minority of deviants?

Are our responses proportional to threat?

Path above

They should though, the safety advice to schools is not to post images of children online. It should be basic that they prioritise parents of the children in their school over an online presence. Newsletters and closed apps were already there before they started posting to SM.
I guarantee in 5 years time no school, particularly primary, will be posting children online and we will be questioning why some people were still so adamant to allow it even after we were more aware of the risks.

We have made it illegal for an under 16 to have their own SM profile so why should schools be allowed to post their face online?

So we had a 15 year old play in premier league team fairly recently. Should there be a ban on any photographs of that particular team? If course not.

we have to be proportionate about the repose to this and accept children will become young adults and as a society we share images of each other often in a sporting or other performance context.

there was a parent recently who filmed their daughter in their last under 16 football game and there was an outcry that this had been done. How horrifying for a parent who for the best of reasons has taken a nostalgic video to be pilloried like that.

I think we risk the omission of a lot of media that reflects childhood experience and that would be a very sad thing. We also have to face the fact children are part of society and that includes a digital society and we do have such things as child you tube performers etc. confidentially want that career in the spot lighr. So we denied them opportunities.

the bigger problem is children themselves with spa chat and Ti k too groups where there is a lot more danger of inappropriate image leakage.....

In your haste to leap down my throat you didn't bother reading:

In our case, we have managed to find activities that don't require by kid being filmed and then the footage being in the hands of people with no requirement to keep it private/safe. Stuff like swimming, dance class, music lessons etc

Made a right t*t of yourself there didn't you :)