Stop 'sharenting'; talk to your kids: Advice for families as suspected child abuse content spikes on social media

According to the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, top social media sites reported significant increases in suspected child abuse material detected in 2022 compared to the year before.

In the United States and Canada, social media companies are legally required to report and remove suspected child abuse content on their platforms to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children annually.

Google, for example, saw a 151 per cent jump in its numbers, while TikTok reported an 86 per cent increase, and Pinterest saw its incidents climb by 1400 per cent.

“There was a massive increase across the board, this is consistent year over year,” says Signy Aranason, of the Canadian Centre for Child Protection.

She says the numbers could be due to greater awareness, an uptick in activity, or both.

Regardless, she says,  it’s cause for concern.

“It points to a significant problem that these platforms are used for significant harm in relation to children,” she says.

One Maritime parent was shocked to read the latest figures.

“How scary that there's so much of this going on,” says Nova Scotia parent Shaun Whynacht. Whynacht is parent to a 7-year-old, and also runs his own social media marketing company.

While his son doesn’t have his own social media accounts yet, Whynacht says he does use YouTube, apps, and online games.

“I periodically check his tablet, to see his viewing history and his search history, so aside from the fear of him communicating with people it’s also what content is he even being exposed to,” Whynacht says.

He knows the pressure to join social media platforms will increase as his son gets older, and says his approach is to keep the lines of communication open.

“(To say), ‘hey, you know what? We’re here and we’re going to work through this,’” he says, “you just need to be a present parent in these days of technology.”

“Their lives online and offline are often blurred or connected,” says Laura Swain of the YWCA in Halifax, which offers a school-based cybersafety program  - called Open New Tab - for kids in grades 7 to 9.

The program gives 600 students a year the knowledge and tools to spot potential dangers online.

“It is a holistic, wraparound program that really focuses on the overarching, broader aspects of how you experience and get to cyber violence and cyberbullying,” says Swain.

So thinking about healthy relationships, consent, trust, healthy masculinities, femininity and just community based interactions,” she says.

For Leah Plunkett, an associate professor at Harvard University, cyber safety begins with what parents post online long before their kids pick up their own smart devices.

Plunkett is also the author of “Sharenthood: Why We Should Think Before We Talk About Our Kids Online.”

“Parent behavior and parent expectation does play a role,” she says, “when we are modelling for our kids where we bring digital devices, and what we record on them, from the very beginning, parents should keep digital devices that take pictures, that takes videos, out of bathrooms and bedrooms out of intimate spaces,” she says.

“Do not post pictures of your children online in any state that is less than fully dressed, and do not post pictures of your children online in any public facing way,” Plunkett explains, “setting a very strong and clear norm, and behavioral expectation from our kids from the beginning that we do not record these kinds of intimate experiences, period, full stop.”

Meanwhile, Aranson believes too much responsibility is being placed on families when it comes to preventing child abuse and predation online.

“This really can’t continue, there is no requirement for (social media companies) to be preventative around this material first getting on their services,” she says, “and that’s really where we need governments to step in and do to protect children.”