Hands up if you’ve read the Terms & Conditions when you signed up for a social media account (or anything else online for that matter!)?

The Children’s Commissioner tested social media platforms’ terms & conditions out on children and none of the kids they asked understood them. Did you know that:

“Snapchat can publically display or sell any content young person puts on Live or Local Snapchat, meaning they can use a young person’s face and voice in any way, how Instagram can read a user’s Direct Messages and how all companies collect a range of person information including how long you spend on certain pages, where you are and who is in your phone book. They remind children that YouTube is owned by Google, so if you create a YouTube account, your data will be collected by Google and linked to other information Google has about you.” (childrenscommissioner.gov.uk)

Thankfully, the Children’s Commissioner has published handy versions for us so we can better understand what we’re all signing up to. If you’re a parent, you could use these to discuss them with your children.

We don’t think parents should ban kids from using social media. We do think children (and everyone else) should properly understand what they’re signing up to.