Kids are taking part in a new social media trend – and while it might seem harmless on the face of it, some cases may be veering into bullying territory.

The ‘flip the camera’ trend involves kids (usually a group of them) asking someone to film them doing a dance, typically emulating swimming, with the phone screen facing them.

Just as they get going with the dance, they pause to ‘flip the camera’ so the person recording the clip is then unknowingly the focus of the video, which is (usually) then uploaded to social media.

While unintentionally becoming the butt of the joke isn’t fun for most people, there is also a very real privacy risk involved as far as the people who are asked to record these clips are concerned.

Dr Sasha Hall, an educational psychologist, told HuffPost UK that while the flip the camera trend “might appear harmless”, it also “raises real concerns around consent and online safety”.

“When a child agrees to record someone’s dance, they are not agreeing to be filmed themselves, or to have their image shared online,” she warned.

On top of that, “for many young people, or even adults, unexpectedly becoming the focus of a video can feel exposing,........

© HuffPost