In the fast-paced, technology driven world that is 2017, an online cartridge company discovered we don’t value photographs as much as we did 25 years ago. Despite the popularity of photo and video sharing apps and social media sites such as Instagram and Snapchat that allow photos to be uploaded instantly, 83% of parents are wary of sharing photos of their children online.
With more than 600 million monthly users on the most popular instant photo sharing app Instagram, we’re constantly overwhelmed by an overload of images shared by friends, family and strangers around the world. Technology has advanced enough that now anyone can share their media online instantly; this is a stark difference from just 20 years ago where the only way to share photos was to get them printed and pick the best ones to give to friends and family. Has this technology changed the value of a photo forever?
To take a closer look at how we now value photographs and to find out how much we worry about their reach in the online world, https://www.cartridgesave.co.uk/ asked 1040 people aged over 18: “Are you happy sharing photos of your children online?”
The results were that 83% of parents who responded to the survey were wary of sharing photos of their children online, while just 17% were fine with it.
Many people aspire for their lives to look like those of the celebrities they follow on social media, many of whom upload countless snaps of their daily life every day, taking hundreds of photos in the process, to achieve what seems to be the perfect life online. The photograph has become more disposable as we are now able to delete the ones that don’t show us in a good light and share only the ones we like.
However the revelation of parents’ fears for photographs of their children online comes following numerous examples of file leaks where even celebrities including Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton and Kaley Cuoco had their supposedly secure iCloud accounts hacked. Their photographs were then released across the internet in scandals such as happened in August 2014.
Speaking about the study, Ian Cowley, Managing Director of Cartridge Save said:
“Our lives are now lived online; it’s a culture to take tens, if not hundreds of photos a day and share them with friends, family and strangers – what we’re doing, what we’re eating, where we are. It seems that photographs, now that they are no longer limited by cost, are rarely printed and kept safe so have lost their value and become worthless to us – they can always be deleted and replaced with another, better, selfie or snap of your meal.”
He continued with a warning:
“Despite assurances of online safety, once photographs are shared online, their reach is no longer in your hands. Even if they are deleted from a social site shortly after being uploaded, or even if you upload them to an account that it set to be private, the photos will already be backed up in servers around the world that may be vulnerable to hacking.”
