Instagram - is it safe - advice

[Popo40]

My DD who is nearly 13 wants to get Instagram on her ipad. She wants to share photos with her friends. I have looked into it and she can set her profile to private so only people she wants can look at them.

What I am concerned about is her seeing photos that are not appropriate ie sexually explicit Does anyone have any experience on this? Would she need to search for these kind of photos or can they just pop up?

Just marking place if you don't mind as I was just about to search for a similar thread.

No problem - I have been looking online but can't seem to find the answers I need

Instagram actually have a whole FAQ section for parents here - I didn't know it was there, just went to have a look at my own newsfeed (or whatever the Instagrammy term for it is). Needless to say mine consists of pictures of knitting and my friends' children, I can't even see how you would search for other photos!

Instagram's ts and cs require her to be 13, by the way.

Thanks tribpot - that is great. I will have a read and perhaps she can have it when she is 13 which is only a few week away

Just be a little careful. If private they can decide who sees their pictures but the trouble comes when they search the site. My younger daughter put "Peppa pig" into the search on my Instagram and some horrible person had put a horror picture on the site. Really upset her.

That is what I am worried about loveleopardprint.

My 12 year old has just been allowed to have instagram. I know she's too young but it seems she is really the only child in her group without any social media ( they are all under 13!) and Instagram seems the safest of them all as it doesn't allow nudity or mature content. If you think something on there is inappropriate , you can report it.
She has a private account and isn't allowed to be followed by anyone she doesn't know. I follow her and have pulled her up on a couple of things. I also have access to her account details so can check what she is seeing as well.

All in all though we feel it is safer than Facebook and we follow her older sister who has her own account. She knows if anything inappropriate pops up she must not follow that person anymore. She is 14 and is quite sensible. MY younger dd just looks at mine which apart from the peppa pig incident seems to work ok.

Do be very careful. My 12yo was using instagram in an unhealthy way to get positive strokes and it can fuel damaging behaviour such as self harm. When we cottoned on and started to monitor she just set up a secret parallel account.

Any image search on google can bring up inappropriate and upsetting pictures. I got a two headed kitten once, horrible, but off a repeatable vets site so it wouldn't have triggered any filter.

In that respect I doubt instargram is any better or any worse.

Just one word of warning, do not register in your real full name. The stupid fuckers display it as well as your username in some modes. DD1 was furious as it linked to a username she uses anonymously elsewhere.

Thanks everyone for the advice. We have set up an account and set her profile to private so at least she knows her followers.

I will keep a close eye though