Instagram Event At Facebook HQ London Protecting Our Teens In Association With Mumsnet

On Monday I travelled up to London for an Instagram event at Facebook HQ. To a lot of people that might not be a big deal, but for me it was a very big deal!

I have been blogging for a long time now and I have lost count of the amount of times I have been invited to events, and the truth is I have never gone to one. There are a couple of reasons why. The major reason is that I live in South Wales and invariably the events take place in London so it’s a big effort for me to make that journey, and truth be told I can be lazy. However, that all changed on Monday because I actually went to my first event! You may wonder why?

There was a few reasons why, and the first was that the last few months I had started to fall out of love with blogging. This was mainly due to the ill health I had earlier this year. I felt it had all started to get on top of me and I had lost the spark to blog.

Secondly I rarely go anywhere out of my home town, but the chance to attend an Instagram event at Facebook HQ in London was, well, to be totally honest, was just a fantastic opportunity and I just didn’t want to miss it! Yes, I was seriously buzzing at the thought of being at Facebook HQ.

Finally the subject matter of the event was also something that being a father of five children is very important to me. The Instagram event was about how we can protect our teens on social media and obviously centred on the Instagram social media platform.

As I have said, I am a father of five children, two of which are now in their twenties, two are six year old twins, and the other one being a nineteen year old, still just a teenager. So the issue of staying safe online is very important to me.

The event had many experts speaking on the panel including Justine Roberts, the CEO of Mumsnet, Tessa Ojo, and Claudia Winkleman among others. It was very interesting to listen to how they thought we should be dealing with our children’s safety online. There were times when I felt they were actually being a bit naive that their own children were safe, mainly because for a teenager being on a social media platform such as Instagram can be their own secret world that we as parents are not allowed into. It really is no different to when we wrote diaries and locked them away. It is the nature of a teenager to keep a part of their lives secret from their parents. It is not actually very new, but in today’s world it is way more scary simply because of the internet. My question is, do we really know who our children are talking to, and how many accounts do they have? We may think we are savvy to our children’s behaviour online, but in my opinion we are not even close. This is not our world, it’s their world, and their understanding of social media is much more superior to ours. They have grown-up with social media as an important part of their life and that is simply what makes them more savvy than we will ever be.

One person who I thought made some very good points was Tessa Ojo from The Diana Award. One of her thoughts was that we need to teach our children kindness and caring in real life, and hopefully that will transfer to social media and I fully agree that is a great way forward. I’m not naive enough to believe that all teenagers will behave like that on social media because just like the real world teenagers can be unkind and not caring enough, but for all of that we should be teaching our children to be nice, caring human beings as a matter of fact.

Also speaking on the day were four teenagers who were doing great things on Instagram and showing us the right way to use social media. Quite honestly they blew me away with the way they beautifully articulated themselves. They were a fantastic example of the youth of Britain showing us how to behave in am adult, kind and caring way.

So throughout the entire day what did I learn about social media and in particular the Instagram platform?

One thing Instagram is doing is always putting in tools to enable parents to help keep our children safe online. Another point that I didn’t actually know was that you have to 13 years old to have an Instagram account, but if you go to the Apple App Store it states you have to be 12 years old. This was a little bit disconcerting that the head of communications of Instagram for UK didn’t know this. Anyway, the DM side of Instagram also needs to be closely monitored by not only parents, but also Instagram as well. This is still very open to abuse and bullying amongst teenagers.

My overall thoughts on protecting our children online is that yes, we need to, and as parents it’s our responsibility. It’s why we are parents, to make sure our children are safe in all areas of life, and yes I believe social media platforms are taking more responsibility, but they still need to take even more responsibility and also need to be held more accountable.

The problem I see for all of that is how can anybody control a social media platform like Instagram that has a billion people in their community globally with over 500 million logging in every day? A near impossible task.

Instagram have produced a booklet to help you with guiding your teens through their Instagram experience which can be found online here.

My day at the Instagram event was informative and I learned so much, and OMG! I got to visit Facebook HQ in London! What more could I ask for?!

My very final thought was yes, Instagram is making a huge effort to protect teenagers when they are using Instagram and that is fantastic, but it has to be combined with parents. One other point that I heard from the panel and experts was something I have always done as a parent, which is keeping dialogue and conversation open at all times with your children, and to make them feel that they can come to you to talk about anything and not be judged. Truthfully though I still feel we have a long way to go.

Thank you to Mumsnet for inviting me to the Instagram event. The brownies were to die for. Simply delicious!

If you get minute it would be fantastic if you could follow me on Instagram.