Tuesday

DIGITAL KIDKNAPPING!




By Mindy Raye Friedman

Many parents love to share pictures of their little ones online so that family and friends can see how they are growing up. But unfortunately grandmas and your best friends aren't the only people on the Internet. There are some scary people out there who want to use those cute snapshots of your children for their own purposes. Here are just some of the ways your children's photos are being used online and why you should think twice before posting your child's photos for the whole world to see.

Read: Why you are the most powerful person on the Internet
BABY-ROLE PLAYING

A new trend on social media, baby-role playing involves users posting a photo of a baby or child they find online and pretending the photo is of their child. This has especially become popular on Instagram, but it crops up on other social media sites as well. Some of these users are creating entire fictional families as they pretend to be the parent of a child or children who aren't really theirs. They post about things the baby is doing or how cute they are, and then their followers play along by commenting on the photos. There are even Instagram accounts that will post a photo of a child with his or her made-up information, pretending the child is available for adoption. Do a search for hashtags like #babyrp, #kidrp, #openrp, or #adoptionrp and you will see thousands of these posts. And while there is no actual physical danger to your child if someone uses one of your photos for role-playing, it's still disturbing to think someone might be digitally kidnapping your child.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

are you not doing exactly as the wrong as the people you describe? using a picture to gain?

Leigh Raymer said...

we researched the pic, the child in the pic is an actress and the pic is for the purpose of child activism