Adult content is easily accessible on social media sites/apps and in a previous post, we shared a video link that shared some of the impact of violent or adult material a developing brain. Now comes a poll from the UK that shares data that more than 50% of 11-17 year olds have viewed violent, sexual or adult oriented material on social media.  Many parents are completely unaware this has occurred. Here are some of the ones that come up often with our users and parents should be aware of.

Tumblr

Description: Tumblr allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog. Users can follow other users’ blogs, as well as make their blogs private.

What to watch for: go to www.tumblr.com and use the search bar in the top left. Searching for anything innapropriate such as sex, violence, etc will be readily available to view with no account required.

 

 

 ASKfm

Description: Ask.fm is a social networking website set up in a question and answer format that is very popular with teens and tweens.

What to watch for: The catch here is children can ask anything, anonymously with no moderator from ASKfm. So this results in inappropriate Q&A that has been know to result more often in abusive, bullying and sexualized content. Read more about other reasons here.

 

Twitter

Description: Twitter is an online social networking service that enables users to send and read short 140-character messages called “tweets”. Registered users can read and post tweets, but those who are unregistered can only read them.

What to watch for: Just like Tumblr above, searches for inappropriate content is readily available and public. In your user profile, you can enforce filters but this is done by the user and cannot be locked by parents.

 

Kik

Description: Kik is a free messaging app that allows users to share texts, images, videos, etc and as long as your device has an internet connection (WiFi or Cellular), users can communicate.

What to watch for: Kik as no parental controls and anyone can start a conversation with you. Kik has been known for online predators to reach out start conversations that end up with request of “what are you wearing”, “pictures of innapropriate parts”, etc.

Yik Yak

Description: Yik Yak is a social media app, available for iOS and Android, that allows people pseudo-anonymously to create and view discussion threads within a 5-mile radius (termed “Yaks” by the application).

What to watch for: Yik Yak is a free, local social-networking app and website that lets users post “anything and everything” anonymously, including a lot of explicit content that’s clearly not for kids.

Summary

There are a ton of examples of this and this list could have been a lot longer! All of the above typically require its users to be 13 years or older but even that doesn’t prevent younger children from signing up. My goal to hopefully educate parents and provide awareness that they should be asking questions to their children about their online life as this is where most kids are spending their time now vs. face to face interactions. Please leave comments below on your personal experiences, it means a lot!