Parents! Please check with us before you post photos on social media | Grace Lagan

Public platforms should be something for all of us to enjoy. That can only happen when everyone is happy about being thereOn the day of the climate strike last year, my mother proudly shared a photo of my sister and me holding our picket sign on her public Instagram account with a couple of hundred followers. We didn’t think much else of it, until my Facebook feed began to blow up with notifications: SBS News had picked up the photo and posted it to its Facebook, with more than a million followers. It was soon inundated with comments labelling my sister and me everything from “uneducated” to “virtue signalling little turds”.It was a social media blow-up that we had never asked for, and could never have imagined. But mum had asked for our OK to post the photo, so while it was far from pleasant, we were able to withstand the abuse because we both felt confident in the way we were portrayed. I couldn’t imagine how the same situation would have gone if I hadn’t given permission for mum to post that photo, and watch it subsequently be plastered across the internet. Continue reading…
Via: Parents! Please check with us before you post photos on social media | Grace Lagan