Terms and Conditions – how important are they?

When you sign up for an account on social media apps such as Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook or Twitter, you’ll usually be asked for some information about yourself; you’ll get to choose a username and password and then you are presented with the notorious Terms and Conditions (sometimes called Terms of Service).

Terms and Conditions can often be long, difficult to understand and contain lots of jargon (specialised words) and legal language.  

My thoughts at this stage are often:

“I’m just going to skip this!”

“Ugh, this is so long!”

“They’re not that important.”

“I’m going to scroll right to the bottom so I can click accept as quickly as possible!”

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But what actually are Terms and Conditions?

Basically:

• They are a set of rules to follow in order to use a service (like agreeing not to engage in bullying behaviour on the platform)
• They outline the rights of the social media company (like potentially using your photos and not having to pay you for them)
• They outline your rights too as a user of the social media platform (such as being able to retrieve an archive of your data on some platforms)

It’s important to be informed and to understand what you are signing up for, as by ticking ‘I accept’, you’re agreeing to several different things. You’ll be agreeing to behave in a certain way on the social media platform and you might be giving the social media platform access to various parts of your account or data such as your photos, videos and microphone.

By understanding the Terms and Conditions, you’ll be able to make more informed decisions and can make the most of social media and all the opportunities that being online can bring.

So... guess what? We’ve done the hard work for you! We’ve highlighted some of the main Terms and Conditions on several different social media platforms below.

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Do check them out!

Snapchat Terms and Conditions – Info sheet

Instagram Terms and Conditions – Info sheet

TikTok Terms and Conditions – Info sheet

Twitter Terms and Conditions – Info sheet

Facebook Terms and Conditions – Info sheet