It can make expat life that bit easier. Staying in contact with friends back home – especially for kids – can be crucial to allowing themselves to settle to a new home. I heard a story – which I suspect might not be true – which made me stop and think. The story goes that Einstein’s daughter was moving to Europe to work and he was lamenting her departure. A friend said, ‘Hey, don’t worry. There’s the telephone now – you’ll be able to talk to her.’ He reportedly replied, ‘If it weren’t for the telephone, she wouldn’t be going.’
I suspect that’s true of email and Facebook and Instagram and Skype for many of us on the expat circuit. Social media allows us to think we’re staying in touch, staying connected. It may have been a deciding factor in your move. But it comes with risks for all of us, and children in particular…
“We know that a significant amount of children are being contacted via popular live-streaming apps, such as TikTok, by abusers who are using them as a hunting ground,” a spokesperson for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) said this weekend.
The NSPCC said it surveyed 40,000 schoolchildren and discovered that 25 percent of the children had live-streamed with a stranger. One in 20 children were asked, while live-streaming or in the comments of a posted video, to take their clothes off, according to NSPCC.
TikTok, livestreaming apps are ‘hunting ground’ for abusers, warn kids’ advocates