Share with Care - a cautionary tale about sharing unsolicited material on Facebook

Facebook; love it or loathe it? Come on, be honest, when you turn on your computer, laptop, tablet or phone in a morning, what’s the first thing you log on to? I bet its Facebook.  I’m no different - how we love to see the red alerts, which indicate that people have “liked” what we have had to say, or better still, they made a comment about it, or shared it with others. Best of all is the personal message – we all like to get those and so much easier than email.

For most of us, Facebook is a way to keep in touch with friends and family, and when used appropriately, it’s a great social medium. For others like me, it’s a fantastic platform to promote business or, in my case, my books. For me, Facebook was an absolutely invaluable place to promote and share what was going on in the process of getting published, and I am eternally grateful to all my friends, family and followers who “re-shared” my posts and supported me in making my books successful. 

My debut novel, the bestselling Known to Social Services

My recently released 2nd book

Like everything however, there is a downside to Facebook; take the dozens and dozens of posts that we plough through on a daily basis, often of no interest or particular value to us, but which sidetrack us with their demands on our time and attention as we trawl through. I don't really need to know what the weather is doing on the other side of the world. Neither is it really necessary for me to watch the hundredth video of the day about an amusing cat, dog, horse, hamster, parrot, elephant, piglet (Hands held up - I’m as guilty as anyone for putting those on from time to time) Despite this, we all find ourselves spending what can amount to hours, staring at the screen and then wondering where our day disappeared to!

Funny yes, but a bit to close to the truth for many of us!

I am not a fan of the games available via Facebook, but I have friends who love them. I don’t think though, that everyone realises that when you play a game via Facebook, it redirects you to an unsecure site, which can make you susceptible to being hacked. It can also become highly addictive. I have several friends who closed down their Facebook account for this reason – they became addicted to the games! 

Look familiar?

Yes, Facebook is here to stay, or so it would seem, and most of us, myself included, will continue to enjoy what it has to offer. There is one trend however, which I have noticed creeping in which disturbs me, and I say this with my social worker’s head on.  I have seen a few posts lately, in which the person posting is asking people to re-post and share.  Often I have no idea who these people are, but they get onto my page via friends re-posting. So why am I disturbed? Let me explain.

The last post of this nature concerned a little boy who looked approximately around four years of age. There was a cute picture of said child and a suitably heart rending story to go with it. It went something like this.

“Please help - this little boy is missing and we need your help to locate him. If you have seen this child, please send a me a pm and help reunite him with his family who are missing him”

Yep, that was it – so why the worry? Surely we should all rush to re-post that one, right?

Sad stories tug at our heartstrings, but wait ..... what's the REAL story?

Well, as I said, I had my social work head on, when I read it, which raised my suspicions about the post. Why was the child not named? Why were we not told where he had gone missing from or what he was wearing at the time? Why were the circumstances of his so called “disappearance” not shared? Why was there nothing on the news about him?

Having worked as a child protection social worker, I am sadly all too familiar with the necessity of removing children from their families for reasons of safety.  I am also all too aware of the (understandable) lengths parents will go to, to try and track down their children, and using social media is a favourite. My concern is, that the child in the photograph may well have been a child who was removed from his family for good reason. The child may well be in a foster placement, many miles from his original home. By using Facebook and telling a story similar to the one above, is a perfect way to glean information about the child’s potential whereabouts.

I have had to move children more than once, due to exactly this scenario. Parents have managed to track down their child through Facebook, and believe me, it does not end well for anyone, least of all the child.

I have known foster carers who have had angry and hostile parents at their door at all hours of the night, demanding that they hand over their child – the child who they traced via social media. Not good.

Here is a link to an excellent article in the Guardian more than 5 years ago - yes, it was happening then;

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/may/23/birth-parents-stalk-adopted-facebook

Another scenario is where a child is deemed to be safe with one parent but not the other. Let’s say that the mother has been a victim of serious domestic violence and the court has awarded her custody of the child, but denied the aggressor any visiting rights. The mother flees to start a new life, but the aggrieved and violent father traces the child using social media and in such a case, the results can be truly catastrophic.

The final scenario, which was of great concern, was a post about a beautiful young woman who was reported to have been killed overseas. The person posting the tale, said she was a close friend of the victims and accused the woman’s boyfriend of her murder. She asked for help in tracking him down and pleased with us to re-share the post. Again, there was no possible way of knowing if it was even true.  I Googled the story and found no news reports on it whatsoever; no mention of the so called murdered victim and yet ........... the story had over 150,000 shares!  

Facebook can be a wonderful way to maintain long distance relationships, share family photos and much more. However, please accept this word of caution and be very selective in what you share. Read the small print and ask yourself why this post is on Facebook and what exactly is it asking; more importantly who is asking and why?

Post Script

I am grateful to one of my social work colleagues for bringing her excellent blog to my attention. The same subject matter was discussed in this blog in June of this year, and can be read by following the link below.

http://barefootsocialwork.weebly.com/blog/the-dangers-of-social-media-for-missing-children 

Freya