OPINION: Child gets 3/9 on GMRC. Her tita’s cloud-chasing video is the bigger fail

In a single post, an adult publicly shared a child’s face, name, and school details—information that should have stayed private.

A child scored 3 out of 9 on a GMRC test—and her tita found an opportunity to turn it into content.

In a viral Sept. 2 Facebook video, the camera is pointed at the child’s face as her aunt goes through her answers. The child is repeatedly told to sit down and hold the test paper while her aunt asks, “Tama ba ’tong sagot mo sa GMRC?” She later tells the child, “Popost ko ’to para makita ng lahat.”

The answers are objectively wrong in ways that make the video easy to laugh at. She chooses “Iwasan siya palagi” when asked what to do with a classmate who uses a wheelchair. She picks “Umalis ka nga!” as a polite way to speak to a friend. She answers that a friend can be called “sa anumang tawag kahit ayaw niya.”

As the video went viral, the aunt explained that the child wasn’t being scolded. In a comment to her own post, she said, “pamangkin ko po sya ganyan talaga kami mag bonding ng pamangkin ko,” adding that they explained the mistakes afterward and the child understood. Amid perceptions of her angry tone, she said it was her “normal na boses.”

Her original caption read, “Paano maging mabait na bata!,” but she later edited it to add, “Hindi po yan sya pinapagalitan actually natatawa talaga ako dyan, mataas lang boses gawa ng Natural ko talaga na boses yan.” She also said, “ganyan talaga mukha nya pag alam nya mali sya,” but called her a “matalinong bata” who is “magaling magbasa,” adding, “iwan ko bakit ganyan sagot ng pamangkin ko.”

A follow-up video shows the two in kulitan and lambingan mode, exchanging I love you’s. The aunt calls her smart and good at reading.

Fine. Maybe it really was harmless family bonding. Maybe the child knew her aunt was joking.

But whether she was being scolded is beside the point. The test itself is about how to treat other people. So, in the spirit of GMRC, here’s one for the adults: Your niece gets 3 out of 9 on a test. What is the most appropriate thing to do? A. Explain what she got wrong and reassure her. B. Laugh about it at home. C. Put her face, full name and test paper online for strangers to laugh at, too.

Apparently, the answer was C. The aunt calls the child by her full name, while the test paper appears to contain school information. In a single post, an adult made a child’s face, name and school-related information public—details that never needed to be shared in the first place.

Once it’s online, everybody knows things can stay there forever. The video can be saved, reposted and shared far beyond the family’s control. Predators can use a child’s face, full name, and school information to identify or track them. The same details can also be used for identity theft or fed into AI tools to create manipulated images or videos.

But this goes beyond one viral video. We have become addicted to documenting life before we’ve even lived it. Every funny, embarrassing, or mundane moment has to become a Story, Reel or Post. Someone has to react. Someone has to hit “Haha.” Someone has to share it. Otherwise, did it even happen?

Clout-chasing has made oversharing look normal. Likes became permission, views became validation, and virality became motivation. We have somehow convinced ourselves that every private moment is a public opportunity.

But none of those are reasons enough to disregard someone else’s privacy, especially a child’s. A child’s dignity should never become collateral damage in an adult’s pursuit of social media fame.

Maybe the aunt truly meant no harm, and maybe the child really was laughing after the camera stopped rolling. But that doesn’t change the fact that an adult chose to put a child’s embarrassing moment online and, even if unintentionally, put her at risk.

Maybe the GMRC lesson was meant for the adults, after all: Know when not to post.

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