Every family now negotiates screens and social media. Wealthy families negotiate something else as well: the fact that their children's posts are read by people who are interested in the family's money, and that a photograph of a holiday is also a photograph of an empty house. The rules below are the ones that security consultants give to their clients and that the clients' children ignore unless the family agrees them together.
The five rules
- No live location, ever. Posts about a holiday go up after the holiday. The house, the school and the boat are never tagged. Location services are off on every app that does not need them.
- No house interiors, no cars, no jewellery. The photograph of the new watch is a photograph of a target. Friends' houses are equally off limits; ask before you post someone else's home.
- No school uniform, no school name, no team photos with the crest. The uniform identifies the school, the school identifies the family, the timetable identifies where the child is at three o'clock.
- Private accounts, real friends only. Not the friend of a friend. Followers are reviewed together, once a term, without drama.
- Nothing you would not want on the front page. The party photograph at sixteen is the interview question at twenty-two. Screenshots are permanent; the delete button is decorative.
The parents' rules
Children learn from what they see, and the parent who posts the interior of the villa and the tail number of the jet has no standing to enforce a rule. The same five rules apply to the parents, and to the staff: a nanny who posts the children on a beach is a security problem, and the employment contract should say so.
Age and access
Most platforms require thirteen and most children join at eleven. The families who manage this best delay the smartphone to twelve or thirteen, give a phone without social apps first, and open the accounts together, with the parent holding the password until sixteen. Boarding schools help: phones are collected at night and banned in lessons at most of them, and the child has a peer group that is doing the same.
Reputation and the family name
Children of well-known families are held to the family's standard by strangers, which is unfair and true. A teenager's careless comment about a brand, a country or a person is a story if the surname is recognisable. The rule is not silence; it is the pause. Nothing is posted in anger, nothing is posted at night, and anything about politics, religion, money or other people is discussed with a parent first until eighteen.
When something goes wrong
It will. A photograph gets out, an account is hacked, a friend posts something. The response is calm and fast: screenshot, report, remove, tell the school if it involves the school, tell the security adviser if it involves the house, and do not punish the child for telling you. A child who fears the reaction hides the next problem, and the next problem is the one that matters.
The conversation, not the contract
Some families write a signed family media agreement. It helps, mostly because the writing forces the conversation. What keeps children safe is not the document but the habit of talking about what they saw online, at dinner, without a lecture. The family that discusses a friend's oversharing over pasta has done more than any contract can.
