Let's help make the internet a safer place having a conversation with our kids about image-based abuse.

Did you know that 11% of the adult population in Australia have been the victim of image-based abuse? Most at risk are women aged between 18 to 24.

Image based abuse should be the most concerning issue for parents in 2020 right up alongside bullying. Why? Because image-based abuse is boundless for our kids. So much of their lives is lived through that screen in their hand, it is inescapable. And from little things, big things grow. A hysterically unflattering photo of your BFF posted by you that gets heaps of likes and comments can organically grow into something much more sinister.

And while so much of the advice we receive as parents is aimed at teaching our children to protect themselves often, we can forget to teach them how to not be the wrongdoer.

This lesson is just as important. This type of conversation with your kids should never be an accusation and it isn’t necessarily helpful after the fact. This is why is so vitally important to be having all of these difficult conversations along the way. None of us want to realise we are the parents of a perpetrator and haven’t corrected behaviour along the way.

So we need to be specific with our kids when having a conversation about kindness and make examples relevant to our children. Just this weekend after a social gathering at our place we noticed our teens and their friends had tremendous fun taking unflattering photos of each other and threatening to post them to Snapchat. This made us, as parents, realise how ingrained this type of behaviour is. They were all good kids hanging out in my lounge room. But there was an underlying meanness in their behaviour that they all thought was fun. We do all of the safety and self-protection talks but don’t have as many “but are you ever mean?” talks. We also usually talk about consent as a topic in terms of sex education not as a kindness and never as a “not being mean” context.

As I sit off to the side of the Insta culture, dabbling but not immersed, like our kids are, it is easy to see how we have got ourselves into his predicament! Life looks so amazingly carefree and easy on Insta.

If your children are on Instagram, Snapchat or TikTok or any social media really, I urge you to use safer internet day to take stock of the tools you are using to raise your caring and kind digital operator.

Do you audit their accounts together? Do you chat about the content they are posting and reading? Do you have rules around where devices can be used?  Do you role model kind digital citizenship?  Ask your kids if they think they are kind online.

Today, Safer Internet day is a great day to have a discussion with your kids about all the components that make up digital citizenship. I have been listening to the discussion on consent stimulated from the e-safety commissioner today. I urge you to think deeper on this topic. Because the question isn’t really “At what age should we ask our kids for permission to post a photo online?” The question is really “At what age should we start teaching our children about consent?” and "At what age should we start listening to our children when they exercise their right to consent and start to use it?"

If we all want a safer internet we all have to look at not just how not to be a victim, we have to teach ourselves and our kids, who are learning the ropes in all aspects of  life, how to use their judgement and to always be aware and to consider others.

If you need support in parenting a young person, who is much more savvy online than you, so much advice, support and information is available from www.esafety.gov.au/sid #eSafetySID. They even have a series of parent webinars this week - details below.

Jenni Rickard, APC President.