Online safety experts are urging people to rethink participating in a current TikTok trend that encourages users to share nostalgic childhood photos of themselves.
The seemingly innocent ‘this is who’ social media trend invites people to showcase their evolution by pairing old childhood photos with captions highlighting their current job titles or life status.
Kylie Jenner’s beauty business, Kylie Cosmetics, was among the well-known brands to recently embrace the social media trend, with several employees contributing to a post by sharing photos from their younger years.
Even the reality star herself joined in, sharing a childhood photo accompanied by the caption: ‘This is who runs the whole company’.
But online safety experts have since raised concerns about a facet of the trend that not only sits uncomfortably, but worryingly, may even pose a security risk.
‘Even though adults are sharing the photos themselves, the image still depicts a child. Once something is placed online, it becomes part of a permanent digital ecosystem that we no longer control,’ former child abuse detective Kristi McVee told news.com.au.
The woman, from WA, explained that while the risk may seem reduced, since in this instance it’s adults who are sharing their own childhood images, once these photos are publicly available they have the potential to be ‘downloaded, copied, altered and redistributed’ nefariously.
She said that any image of children shared publicly on social media – regardless of whether it’s current or old – can potentially be exploited.
Kylie Jenner, pictured here getting ready before the 2026 Oscars, is one of the more high profile participants in the ‘this is who’ TikTok trend
Kylie Jenner’s beauty brand Kylie Cosmetics jumped on board the trend, with the business owner sharing this childhood image alongside the caption: ‘This is who runs our whole company’
Former detective, Kristi McVee (pictured) who specialised in child sex abuse cases has highlighted the potential risks of the trend, which sees people sharing nostalgic photos
‘Offenders who collect child images rarely care about the context in which the photo was shared. They are simply looking for images of children.’
For this very reason, experts like Kristi have been consistently urging parents to think twice before posting any photos of their children online.
If, even after heeding this warning, an adult decides they would still like to participate in the latest social media trend, Kristi cautions against sharing images that depict a child vulnerably, such as in the bath or partially clothed.
Kristi previously spoke in 2022 about her top piece of advice for parents on keeping their kids safe.
Speaking with ex-detective Gary Jubelin on his I Catch Killers podcast, she said parents are ‘letting their kids down’ if they don’t discuss consent, sex, and what is and isn’t appropriate behaviour from friends and adults throughout childhood and adolescence.
She noted that the rise of the internet and children using electronic devices from as young as four has ‘made it easier’ for predators to groom kids online.
‘Scarily, 94 per cent of Australian children will have their first device by the time they’re four years old and an average of three devices they can access by the time they’re four,’ Kristi said.
‘If we’ve got four-year-olds with devices and we’ve got all these predators because it’s so easy, as parents we just need to be more mindful and more educated.’
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Should adults be more cautious about sharing childhood photos online, even of themselves?
Kristi worked in the police force for ten years and nowadays uses her experience to educate parents about issues such as online safety and commonly missed red flags regarding child sex offending and abuse
Kristi worked in the police force for ten years before she had to quit, having developed anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder from the job.
She now uses her experience to educate parents about commonly missed red flags regarding child sex offending and abuse, both through her social media channel @kristimcvee and her book, Operation Kid Safe: a Detective’s Guide to Child Abuse Prevention.
‘If parents knew what I knew, they would do things differently. We look at child sex offenders and we think of that white van and that old man, but that’s not it,’ she explained.
Kristi said starting conversations about consent with children when they are young can make it easier to open up honest discussions about sex during their tween and teenage years.
‘The reason why we need to talk to our kids about sex and sexting is that our children are being groomed online from the minute they’re able to get a device,’ she said.
‘An educated child is an empowered child – if they know their rights, if they know what consent is, what affirmative consent is, and what’s appropriate and inappropriate.’
