Although the invention of popular social media such as Instagram, Tik Tok, and YouTube opened up new opportunities to connect with other people through social media, it also created the issue of parents posting their underaged children for clout and views on their social media accounts.
Parents should not be using their kids for clout on social media platforms because they are not old enough to understand the consequences and repercussions of being posted on social media.
Additionally, the children are not old enough to consent to their pictures being posted on the various social media platforms.
This may impact the kid in the future because whatever parents post online will be there forever and their kids may want their early life to be private.
Their peers or future employers may find the pictures posted of them when they were young on these accounts.
The popularity of having a family channel first started in 2008 and has further expanded over the years as YouTube gained popularity.
Now, there are over 100 different family channels on the platform including a channel called 8 Passengers.
The mom from the channel 8 Passengers named Ruby Franke has recently been arrested and charged with six counts of child abuse.
Franke would physically abuse her six kids and would leave them malnourished for multiple days. She would post frequently on her and her family’s life while the internet remained oblivious to what was happening off camera.
Other examples of child abuse on the internet are some of the trends on popular social medias.
One of the more recent trends was called the egg crack challenge on Tik Tok. This trend involved a parent cracking a raw egg on their young child’s head while cooking and posting the video.
Many of the kids used in this trend were young kids and toddlers and it often resulted in the child being stunned and upset or crying.
Recently, doctors have bashed the trend because of the medical side effects this could have on the child.
Dr Meghan Martin, a pediatric emergency medical consultant at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in Florida said “We are literally smacking salmonella on their foreheads.”
An easy solution to these problems is taking accounts with kids that are not yet old enough to consent to being online off the internet.
This would ensure that family channels like 8 Passengers would not be posted online as well as prevent harmful trends like the egg crack challenge.
It would additionally improve the safety, well being, and privacy