Six months on: What we've learned since rethinking our school’s social media

August 4, 2026

When we made the decision to stop publishing easily identifiable photos of students under the age of 16 on our public social media channels six months ago, we knew it would change the way we marketed our school.

As the communications and marketing team, we also knew it would make our job harder.

School marketing has become increasingly visual. We celebrate smiling faces, sporting triumphs, performances, camps, excursions and classroom moments because that's what people naturally connect with. Parents want to see children thriving. Prospective families want to picture themselves as part of that community.

So when St Joseph's College introduced a new social media policy in December 2025, we weren't just changing a communications process. We were challenging one of the fundamental assumptions of school marketing.

Six months later, what are we learning?

The right decision isn't always the easiest one. There are many days (almost every day) when one of our junior students achieves something extraordinary and our instinct is to share it with the world. Instead, we pause. And we ask ourselves not, ‘can we publish this? but should we?’

That shift in thinking has been one of the biggest lessons. Our decisions are no longer driven by traditional marketing metrics. They're driven by our responsibility to protect the digital footprints of the young people in our care. In an era where AI can identify, scrape, manipulate and repurpose images in ways few of us imagined only a few years ago, that responsibility feels more important than ever. 

Commentary just last week from Australia’s top online safety educator Kirra Pendergast and the eSafety Commissioner reinforces exactly that point: consent and permission to publish look very different in the age of artificial intelligence. The conversation has moved well beyond simply asking whether a parent has signed a media consent form. It's about understanding the long-term implications of creating a permanent digital identity for children before they're old enough to make those decisions themselves.

At St Joseph’s, we've had to redefine what successful marketing looks like. And if we’re completely honest, there are moments when it feels really hard. If someone only follows our public social media channels, they could be forgiven for thinking we’ve stopped doing all the wonderful things we used to do, and that perhaps we don't have as much happening as other schools who are continuing to use their social platforms as they always have.

The reality couldn't be further from the truth. Our students continue to excel in sport, the arts, leadership, community service and academic pursuits. We continue to celebrate those moments enthusiastically, but the difference is who we're sharing them with. Many of the stories that once appeared publicly are now shared only through our private family communication channels. Our school community still celebrates every achievement, we've simply become more intentional about the audience.

From a marketing perspective, that's been really challenging and uncomfortable. But from a child safety perspective, it's absolutely the right move. We've discovered that stories matter when you can't show faces. When you can't rely on a close-up image to capture attention, the story itself has to do the heavy lifting. We've found ourselves writing with greater care, and looking for different ways to share stories and achievements.

When we introduced this policy, we knew we were stepping into relatively new territory. There wasn't a roadmap and there weren't many examples to follow. Today, the conversation around AI, children's privacy and digital identity is moving rapidly. The questions are becoming harder, not easier. What felt like a cautious decision six months ago increasingly feels like a necessary one.

This isn't about judging schools that have made different decisions (although we hope more schools, sporting clubs and other organisations join the conversation), it's about recognising that the environment has changed dramatically.

We don't pretend to have all the answers and we know we’re not doing it perfectly. But we’re trying. And six months on, we're more convinced than ever that putting children's long-term wellbeing ahead of old-school social media marketing is the right thing to do.

Leonie Canham & Katie Eldridge

St Joseph's College

Communications & Marketing Team