Do Your Part: Growing Digital Footprints & Child Protection Efforts
By Crispin Ketelhut
Consultant to the VIRTUS® Programs
We are well aware that we're called to be protectors of children by the very nature of being adults.
This thought should carry through when reflecting on our ever-growing digital world of social media. Each day a child's digital footprint becomes larger and wider, and it's up to us as caring adults to ensure proper boundaries are in place. Keep in mind that once something is posted onto the Internet, it will be available forever.
Have you thought about the consequences of some of the posts from young people you know that may haunt them one day in the future? Not only that, but how much information do they unknowingly (or knowingly) share about who they are, their struggles and where they live? These are safety risks benefiting people who seek to exploit the children in our midst.
One way that caring adults can help protect children is by learning these programs and creating our own accounts. Doing so enables us to have more effective, robust conversations with your young people on better protecting themselves, which is challenging when we don't know our subject matter. Below are links to 'help guides' for three extremely popular sites for tweens and teens:
- Instagram: https://help.instagram.com/ addresses the basics of the app, FAQs and privacy / safety
- Snapchat: https://support.snapchat.com/en-US/ informs on app basics, along with "How to's and tutorials"
- KiK: https://kikinteractive.zendesk.com/hc/en-us provides tips and tricks, answers common questions and gives safety tips
As caring adults, please do your part to learn about these social media platforms to better converse about them with the youth in our care. You may never know if your commitment and actions to protect them will truly be the key that contributes to saving a life one day.
This article is not part of your continuing training. To access your required bulletins you must log in using the form in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. Then go to the TRAINING tab.
