Signs Your Child Is Oversharing On Social Media!

Social media has become a medium for communicating and sharing our daily life and views  with our near and dear ones. But there’s a thin line between keeping everyone updated about your plans and oversharing. We, as adults, too, struggle to differentiate between them both. But, most of the time, we can salvage the damage we might have done. However, this is different with children.

Children, mainly teenagers, often tend to overshare on social media platforms. They might do this to get the attention of their peers or want to become more noticeable online.

According to ExpressVPN’s report, children from the ages of 4 to 13 are more prone to experience online threats and bullying. Many children, which mainly include 4 to 6-year-olds, spend an average of 21 minutes of their time on social media daily. If we look at the percentage of negative experiences on social media, there is a risk of harmful interactions.

What To Do If Your Child Is Oversharing On Social Media?

Almost everyone we know loves sharing their daily life and achievements on social media. Unknowingly, we share many details from our personal lives on the internet, which could be a privacy hazard.

For instance, let’s say you went out to coffee with your friends and posted a picture of the beautiful latte art on your social media profile; not harmful, right? Well, what happens if the picture contains some information from your credit card on the internet? A hacker could easily hack into your bank accounts, and you won’t have a clue about it. And, since anything once posted on the internet stays there forever, saying that you will be safe from any future data breaches is a long shot.

You might feel that your child is being secretive or suddenly too famous among his peers. This could potentially be the first of many signs of your child oversharing his personal and confidential information on social media. Other signs that you should keep in check are as follows:

• If your child is sharing their live location on the internet with friends and strangers, it’s high time that you talk to them and ensure they understand how harmful that could be.
• If your child shares too much information about his personal relationships with friends, family, and other people.
• If he has posted identification documents and information, like address, phone number, and other personal records.
• If they think that social media is a way to letting go of all their emotions and problems, which turns into oversharing personal problems without a second thought.

As parents, you are the one and the only person responsible for the safety of your child. So, you must take strict and thoughtful measures to ensure your child is not oversharing on the internet.

One of the first and foremost things you should talk to your child about is how they should only post the content they are comfortable with. They should post appropriate images and use appropriate words, which are not offensive to anyone, be it their friends, family, or even teachers.

Talk to them about limiting posting about their current location and personal information to avoid any problems in the future. Also, talk to them about how much of their life they want to share online. Make sure your children are careful when sporting and texting in groups or forums. Let them know that anything they do could be used against them in many harmful ways on the internet.

Final Words

We have summed up many ways in which you can find out that your child is oversharing on the internet. However, you need to be careful while dealing with them about the same because they could easily take this as an invasion of privacy. But, you have to make them understand how important it is. To make sure that they are not prone to any online threats, scams, or viruses, you can try to install parental control and good antivirus software on all devices.