Ireland’s “Pause Before You Post” Awareness Campaign designed to show to dangers of sharing too much information online.

by evane123

27 comments

  1. People need to get off their phones and stop the social media shit

  2. But people will just continue on!
    Instagramers will just keep posting their kids because it gets them the views and interactions needed to continue with their “influencer lifestyle”

    One Irish one uses her kid with a disability to do a paid promotion, it’s unconscionable.
    Another one, her kids only get clothes if they are free from the likes of Penneys #ad or get to go to the cinema or a day out if it’s free. If not, they go no where or get nothing.

    The weeks before their kids birthday “anyone got any recommendations for a kids 9th birthday cake and decorations” “anyone know any good dance classes or baby sensory”.
    Tag where they get their hair cut, what sweets they like, what toys they like.

    Any the will still come on a justify it and claim “be kind” and people are trolling.

  3. Is this targeted at influencers? 

    I have a private instagram for my friends and family living away and am genuinely starting to get worried because of all the talk about social media. I’d never post their schedule but a birthday pic most definitely. Feel like a dinosaur saying this but Genuinely asking if that’s putting my kids at risk? 

  4. It’s mad the amount of people who willingly post photos of their new born and their children. So glad I grew up when none of that was possible. Your entire childhood online for all to see

  5. I see it on instagram all the time, parents posting pictures and videos of their new born child. You don’t know who’s watching

  6. It’s so easy to pick apart someone’s life with social media. I remember years ago when I played some Facebook games, some guy in the UK posted he was going on a weeks holiday. Two weeks before that he has put up a GPS point at his house. Would have been so easy to rob him

  7. If it’s on the Internet then anyone can access it.

    “I have my Facebook settings locked down!”

    No, you don’t. Do you know every single one of your friends/followers? Even if you know them, even if they can’t share your post of your kid’s birthday, they can download it, or screenshot it, and do what they want with it, like your man in the advert here.

    Did you untick the boxes that appeared a couple of months ago on Facebook and Instagram? The ones saying Meta can use your content to train their AI? (LinkedIn did the same.) If not, then you’ve “consented” to your uploaded photos and videos being used.

    I’m sure Meta and Facebook and Insta and LinkedIn and all the others will be responsible with what they use those for, and it’s not like they’ve ever had a data breach. Oh. Wait now…

  8. This is great. I’ve always kept my kids off social media. When I insisted on it 11 or 12 years ago, people looked at me like I had 10 heads.

    I’m glad now that neither of them have a presence online. Family pictures are for family only.

  9. I love reading all the posts here from absolutely perfect people, mist of whom dont have kids. This is a very timely and hopefully effective campaign. Its not aimed at “influencers” its aimed at the ordinary Joe and Joan Soap, asking then to stop and think.

  10. Dun Laoghaire shopping centre looking well. Continuity is poor, though.

    Worthwhile PSA. For all people think parents (especially young parents) are tech aware/literate, they’re not always as clued in as you’d think. Similarly, how many stories are there of kids spending hundreds, even thousands in online games, and the parents are oblivious to the simple controls and features to prevent it? Same thing applies here.

  11. This campaign is about 15 years too late. The attention seeking fuckwits who post this type of thing will carry on regardless anyway.

  12. There was a Fianna Fáil TD in an Oireachtas Committee yesterday giving yards to the departments and media regulator about how his 10 year old daughter is on TikTok and showed him the Charlie Kirk assassination. Barely considered the fact he did nothing as the person actually responsible for her duty of care…

  13. This is a pretty effective ad for the point they’re getting across. Adding that creepiness factor really cements it, hopefully they keep going with this campaign.

  14. Number of homes where kids are unfortunately the bread earners due to this influencer crap is astonishing.

  15. Obviously how scary you can find information on social media, particularly relating to children, but I can share a horror story or two on social media posts from people i know but the 2 things I’d advise anyone on social media to stop doing alongside posting their children is to STOP:

    1. sharing their ‘passed my driving test’ with their certificate of competency in full view.

    2. posting photos in work or with their work ID in full view.

    Honest to god, if you search tags on Instagram or just google the above two you’d be so surprised how many people post both without censoring them!

  17. Every September you’ll see so many parents posting photos of their children in their school uniforms on their public accounts. I just can’t understand it.

  18. There’s a few accounts online that take videos people have shared (with their consent) and finds exactly where in the world they were. It’s scary how easy it is to get this information.

  19. A while ago I unfollowed any instagrammers who share their kids online. It makes me very uncomfortable. And it’s not just photos. Some parents share information about their kids mental health struggles, diagnosis etc  creating a digital footprint for their child which will follow them throughout life. 

  20. All the mommies with their TikTok shop pretending it’s not aimed at them now. Very good ad

  21. The amount of parents I see who reshare those stupid stupid chainmail posts about their children. I’ve seen some where the post literally had the childs name, place of birth, time of birth, weight etc and not once did the parents think maybe this was bad to post.

  22. It’s a great ad. And shows what an Orwellian fucked up episode of Black Mirror we have all selfie grinned our way into.

  23. It’s a good point about children but it’s also a good point for everyone else around you. You can make every effort yourself to not post online but unless you keep to yourself, other people can post about you in shared situations and you them. It’s so normal that I don’t think people think about it at all. If I go out with my friends and they take pictures, I have no idea if that’s a memento or if it is going onto social media. If they all take pictures and there’s 5 of us, everyone has to not post. If 1 person posts then there’s no privacy. All I can make sure is that I don’t post anything unless everyone consents to it but culturally, there’s implied consent.

    Using children as the example in the advert is a good strategy. Using vulnerable moments would also be a good way to get the point across to adults about adults. For example, “I just dropped off Dave to his cancer treatment. He’s so brave.” and then it cuts to Dave’s phone getting hundreds of notifications with him looking betrayed that that’s how people found out. It might be too morbid but these ads might be the slap in the face people need.

  25. I do think there’s an issue with a subset of social media users who are just far too open about sharing absolutely everything. It’s very often the ones who are obsessively on Facebook in particular, which has become a concentration of very naive users. Instagram etc takes more effort so tends to be dominated by more complicated content.

    There’s also a lot of stuff that is out there from a more easy going era of early social media – including a lot of information that is used by scammers – birthdays, dates of birth, personal information about addresses, locations etc – stuff you shouldn’t be posting into social media ever. It’s worth curating long standing accounts, especially anything with open public access.

    Also help less technically savvy relatives to lock things down properly and delete content they shared. A lot of them don’t even seem to realise that it’s often sitting in the public domain.

  26. A very powerful ad. I know a few parents on Facebook that might think twice about what they posted if they saw that ad.

  27. It is absolutely terrifying how many influencers, family vloggers and insta mothers post about their children. Literally know the child’s room in the house , what pyjamas they wear, what story they like , what they eat , medical conditions, even how they were potty trained! It’s so scary and that’s even before they “work” for ads and go on working holidays. Which is illegal at such a young age but yet they get away with it on social media. I believe it should be illegal to have any image of a child on social media. It would soon see these so called content creators making no money as it’s the child making the money!
    Also the parents often show where they go for fun and even down to timestamps a routine of a day. Scary to think what could happen!

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