by socius100

Created on: January 04, 2010   Last Updated: December 29, 2010

Photo and Video File Sharing Online: Safety Tips for Parents and Educators

In this time and age, social networking is no longer limited to mature internet users. Children and teenagers are fast becoming accustomed to user-friendly, highly navigable, and popular networking sites with a variety of features. The phenomenon of Facebook, for example, has paved the way to tap, not only the mature audience, but even small, pre-school age children, as well.

In the same way, digital cameras, videos, laptops with built-in webcams, and scanners, have reached its peak of distribution, and these gadgets enable sharing of photographs and videos simple and less complicated. Also, the wide availability of free programs that store images (such as Photobucket, Kodak Gallery, Flickr and AOL) have made posting, uploading, and storing of images remarkably simple.

Because online programs are provided for free, it is also implicitly understood that space providers enable a 'file-sharing' feature so as to attract more customers and members. The unsuspecting uploaders eventually discover that their images are used, even without permission, by other members of the same program where they posted their images.

It is essentially the role of parents and teachers to facilitate and monitor the children's activities related to uploading and posting of still photos and videos. As such, teachers and parents should be familiar with the nature of online uploading and posting in order to provide safety procedures to this modern age's multimedia learners.

Why are children so attracted to posting of videos and photos? Some advantages are enumerated below:

1. It allows file sharing. Children and their peers, regardless of time and space, can share and exchange digital images with one another. Gone are the days when the only way through which a friend or a relative in a distant location can only be updated using snail mail. Digital photo and video sharing has gone beyond mere imagination.

2. It enables children to maintain open relationships with close relatives, absentee parents or siblings, or peers who have moved to other places, or have migrated to other countries.

3. It has made life easier to establish contact with people around the world. Indeed, internet has made our world a small global village where communication is just within a fingertip.

4. It allows learners to exchange thoughts, make comments, and request for elaboration or discussion of new and more complicated topics.

5. Online uploading and

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