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If you saw this photo of your friend's daughter - would you say something?

By ANONYMOUS

The photo shows a girl with her arms seductively gripping the pole of the horse on the merry-go-round. Her eyes were closed, her mouth slightly open in that way that suggested something more. Her skirt was pulled up, showing  long beautiful legs, a seductive image of youth, of beauty.

The girl in the photo is just nine years old. She is a friend’s daughter – and somehow, in that photo, she had moved from the space of a happy child in an innocent childhood picture, to one oozing sexual tension in a pose more suited to a men’s magazine.

It made me uncomfortable. I didn’t initially know how to respond. I kept looking at the photo, putting down my iPhone and moving away. I kept returning to it. I wondered if my friend realised that this moment capturing what should have been an innocent time, had captured something quite different. I looked again. The mother had commented. Yes, she quipped, it looked like pole dancing.

I felt emboldened – she had recognised it too – so I sent a private message. I felt the need to talk about it because the moment in time caught by the camera had unsettled me so much.

Why would an adult have posted that image, I wrote. The mother hadn’t done it – it was posted by a third party (another mum I didn’t know). Why would that mother post it on a Facebook account that could be access by unknown people? Yes by me, but who else?

I was upfront. I’d told my friend I was hyper sensitive to the photo because I’d just spent a day listening to PhD presentations about a range of human rights issues including the sexual exploitation of children (specifically those who had been trafficked) and she knew from my own posts that the week previous I’d been listening to research on body image and eating disorders. I’ve been thinking a lot about the issues surrounding the impact of the sexualisation of pre-pubescent children.

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I realise now, I should have known better. Raising these issues were like waving a red flag at a bull. As an educator and a journalist, I think I have a good understanding of the impact of the media and social media. I do worry about what people who aren’t trained in broadcasting post about their private lives. Facebook is a broadcasting medium – I always say that you forget that at your peril.

My private message was met by an angry retort from my friend that I was criticising her and her parenting, and also her daughter’s character, and she prompted defriended me. I’m really sorry I didn’t make my point better. I certainly hadn’t set out to suggest anything about her parenting or her daughter’s character. That wasn’t what my message was about.

My concern however was for the safety of a child, because a third party had posted a unsettling photo which could be downloaded and used by who knows who. If it could be accessed by me, then the privacy settings on the third party friend weren’t good. Did my friend understand that? It didn’t appear so.

Would I send the same message again. Certainly not in the same way. My husband suggested I should have just deleted it. If it had been an image of someone I didn’t know, I probably would have done that. If it had been a photo of a young woman who had chosen to pose in that way I also wouldn’t have said anything. Her life, her choice.

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But when it comes to children, do we have a higher responsibility? Maybe sending a private message on Facebook wasn’t the place to do it. I’m so used to using it, it didn’t occur to me to pick up the phone. Although I’m not sure I’d have had a different response – I might have been able to picked up the vocal cues a bit better than the written ones.

Who’s really looking at your Facebook pictures?

It’s not the first time I have thought about the protocols of posting pictures of other people’s children on Facebook.

One of my relatives doesn’t allow photos of her children on Facebook. Her children have said they don’t want to “be on the internet”, so I respect that.

Some parents, aware that I’m an avid Facebook user, have also asked  me not to put their children on Facebook. Fair enough, happy to comply.

Many people have seriously good reasons for not putting pictures of children on the internet.

For those children whose pix I have posted I’ve always treated it like a photo you’d put in a newspaper – that means with a certain amount of respect and always nice pictures.

And while bare bums and other candid moments are great for the family album I don’t think they have any place on the internet. That’s what my media training tells me. Maybe it’s something all of us mothers need to think and talk about –perhaps we can find a way that doesn’t end a friendship.

The author of this post is known to Mamamia but has chosen to remain anonymous.

Would you have told the girl’s parents?