This article is one of a series written by Data Protection Education in collaboration with Litus Digital, a social media management company.  The articles came about from questions asked by Data Protection Education's customers, our own experience of working in education,  as school governors, parents and data protection professionals.  The articles raise questions about how social media can be used as safely as possible in a school environment,  security considerations, the law and protecting children.  It is not possible to cover every aspect of social media, but the articles aim to provide guidance, raise privacy questions and provide some support for safe posting.

Reviewing use of social media as an administrator or as an audience is not a one-time task but something that constantly changes.  While regulators and countries are working on laws and regulations to try to protect children, the number of fines and reprimands for social media companies is on the increase:

TikTok fined £12.7m (2023)

GDPR breaches - Art. 5 (1) a) GDPR, Art. 12 GDPR, Art. 13 GDPR

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has fined TikTok £12.7m for a number of breaches which include illegally processing the data of 1.4m children under the age of 13. The regulator found that TikTok didn't do enough to prevent under-13s from accessing the platform, and they failed to conduct adequate checks.

The ICO identified that TikTok failed to ensure personal data belonging to UK users was lawfully processed in a fair and transparent manner. Following the investigation, the ICO has published a Children's Code to help protect children in the digital world.

With the momentum of AI there is a rise of ‘deep fake’ where AI is used to create fake video, audio and photography which is becoming harder to spot.  The NSA have written some guidance about Deepfake threats: Contextualizing Deepfake Threats to Organisations

While cyber crime is important to be wary of when using social media platforms, data privacy and collection  of personal information is a huge risk with social media use.  Be aware that another separate website that you may have visited and agreed to their privacy policy, may have links to something like Instagram which will then share your private information.

The government are attempting to put rules and regulations in place for protection against harm caused by online advertising: New rules crack down on illegal ads and protect children online and the introduction of the UK Online Safety Bill.  Review: The UK Online Safety Bill becomes an Act (Law).

The use of social media is mentioned many times in the Keeping Children Safe in Education 2023, and covers child sexual exploitation, staff behaviour, promoting positive health, online sexual harassment, bullying, victim identity exposure, children being targeted and recruited using social media, radicalisation via the internet and social media. When safeguarding children then social media is very likely to play a central role in an incident or alleged incident given the breadth of the topic.  We would advise the use of policies and documented procedures around the use of social media for both personal and work/organisation use, along with continual review and raising awareness of the pitfalls and dangers.  ( document DPE Model Social Media Policy (51 KB) ). The social media topic is so vast that this document barely touches the surface, but hopefully gives a starting point for guidance, where to get support and some of the pitfalls, while still being able to post safely.

We would like to thank Litus Digital for their part in researching this series of articles.

Guardians of Privacy: Social Media Articles