If your kids haven't
already started talking about Instagram, you'll probably be hearing about it
soon.
The popular photo-sharing
app has more than 27 million users nationwide, and many of them are kids.
It's become the latest social
networking craze for many Arkansas elementary and middle school students. But just
like anything in the online world, parents and kids need to beware.
Being able to take a
picture, share it online, and comment on it with your friends seems like a
fairly innocent thing to do, until your child's identity falls into the hands
of a cyber-bully or an online predator.
Nicole Kaemmerling keeps
her family's computer in the main part of the house with the idea that she and
her husband can keep an eye on what their children are doing online.
In the fall, they allowed
their 12-year-old daughter, a straight-A student, to set up an account on Instagram.
They thought it was safe until their daughter woke up one morning last month
and discovered someone had hijacked her account.
"Apparently somebody created a fake Instagram
account and it had her picture on it. And it had ‘I hate Alexa Kam.' And they
had posted her picture, and they had made little devil horns on her head. And
she didn't know who posted it," said Nicole Kaemmerling.
After much research, Alexa's
parents were able to shut down the fake account, but they weren't able to track
down the kids who bullied their daughter.
"I just wanted to take that
child and say, ‘Why would you do this?
Why would you hurt someone so badly?
What was your intent? Were you
trying to be funny? Were you
jealous? Did you like a boy who liked
her? Why would you be so mean to somebody like this?" said Nicole Kaemmerling.
Nicole may not be able to
answer that question, but she did find out, just like Facebook and Twitter,
it's against the social networking sites' policy for children under the age of
13 to have an Instagram account.
Joshua Carroll, an IT
security specialist, says the draw for kids to Instagram is it's accessibility.
Kids only have to have an
email address and an iPhone or an iTouch, and they're free to set up an account
and interact with millions of potential followers.
"If your page is private
and you shared something with others who are not private and they re-shared
what you posted, then it's potentially left out there to the public internet,"
said Joshua Carroll.
Being able to experiment
in that public forum is just one of many problems Sharon Long, Education
Coordinator for Centers of Youth and Family has with kids using Instagram.
"It's a public forum. We're
talking children between the ages of 6 and 12 who quite honestly are not ready
for publicly sharing images or information or access to information at that
age," said Sharon Long.
If you're looking for ways to help keep your
child safe from the dangers of cyber-bullying, Pulaski Academy is holding a
panel discussion on cyber-bullying. It is open to the public on Tuesday, April
17th.
