Courtney McCarty sent an urgent message to parents after seeing a rise in a “deeply concerning” trend involving social media and children. She warned to “act now”
A mum has issued an urgent warning to other parents after noticing a horrifying rise in a social media trend. It comes after UK’s social media ban for kids could be revealed within weeks as Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said “drastic” action is needed.
Courtney McCarty, who began her account in the “mummy blogging era”, now hopes to get the message across to other parents in light of the news. She spoke about how people are taking images of children from school websites and social media accounts before using them in a “deeply concerning” trend. She advised mums and dads to educate their children more to stop this problem.
She told her 46,400 Instagram followers: “Hey gorgeous people, alright. My account started in the mummy blogging era, I became a mum online, I shared my babies, I shared their early years and I have deep regrets about that.
“But this video isn’t about that, this video is about something concerning that I’m seeing. UK school are being blackmailed, people are taking images of children off their websites, off their social media accounts and creating child abuse material and blackmailing the schools, I’m not even joking.
“This isn’t something new sadly, I’ve heard cases of this last few years, I’ve even had Australian mothers contacting me on here and sharing their experiences where their daughters’ images have been reproduced by other kids in their grade and shared around the group, AI, pornographic content of your kid.”
She warned situations like this has resulted in children ending their lives as a result of the shame and trauma. Courtney admitted she did some dumb stuff in school, but urged parents to have these conversations with their children now.
The mum added: “I think we need to have conversations with our kids about this, how they could fall victim to this and how can they be involved in something like this.
“Being influenced by their peer group to think something like this would be funny, this could change the outcome of their whole entire life, think about it for a minute.
“Think about how you would feel as a parent if your child became a victim of this or your child is a perpetrator of this simply because of influence from another bunch of kids who thought this was funny at the time.
“Think of the outcome, we need to do better, we need to educate more, we need to just delay the way social media is used, not just in schools but the images our kids share and it’s on us. Keep our kids off social media.”
Since she shared her post, other parents came forward to thank her for the information. One said: “Omg that’s horrifying.” While another added: “I’d love you share tips of where to start! Like, how do I start to remove my kids from my social media? Do you just go and delete all photos and posts or how?”
