It is always a good idea to keep track of the apps your child puts on their phone and to set up ground rules for them to follow in order to continue using social media apps. Regardless of your rules though, there are some social media apps that you should look out for if you have teens.

5 Social Media Apps You Should Look Out for if You Have Teens

If you have teens in your home, you are more than likely very familiar with social media. Kids these days are all about social media, be it Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat or whatever! I know we are all aware of most of the concerns about social media. However, because there are new social media apps popping up all the time, we as parents aren’t always familiar with all of the apps that our kids are familiar with and which ones may be better than others. There are some good ones, check out these 4 that can benefit your kids! 

Kik

Kik is an Kik is an app that supposed to be for teens over age 13, but is very popular with kids even younger than that. The fact that there is no age verification in place makes it much easier for kids of any age to sign up. Kik is messaging/social media app where its users can send messages, photos, cards, etc. There are also ways for kids to communicate in groups. There have been countless reports of sexual predator behaviors taking place on Kik and there seems to be many conversations sexual in nature. Due to some high profile news reports (sexual assaults, harassments, and even murder) Kik has been named one of the 8 Worst Apps for Your Kids from Education.com. There are no parental controls available for this app.

Whisper

Whisper is a social media app that promotes itself as anonymous and allows you to share your secrets with others on the app. The problem comes with the fact that it tracks your location and lets others know when the “secret” is shared by someone within a mile radius of you. If the app knows you are that close to another user, you should expect that hackers could easily find that information as well. (Remember the big Snapchat hack? It’s not that uncommon). No stranger needs to know your secrets and your location.

Omegle

Omegle is a video chat social media app where the app itself sets you up to video chat with strangers. I feel like this is all of the explanation that is needed. Video chatting with strangers puts your teens at extreme risk of being violated.

Yellow

The social media app, Yellow is a newish app that has been dubbed “Tinder for Teens” and by its own admission, promotes “long-distance flirting.” For those that are not familiar with Tinder, it is basically an app that people use for “hook ups” or sexual encounters. Not at all appropriate for teens, yet this new app is scarily similar to Tinder.

Snapchat

I don’t believe that Snapchat is all bad, the filters are fun and today’s youth really does love their selfies. However, I do believe that your teens need to be monitored and spoken to regularly about their online behaviors because Snapchats “snaps” and messages can be deleted very easily and it is hard to monitor them all the time.

If you teen uses Instagram check out this post on how to monitor that platform! And here is the Twitter guide in case you need some pointers on monitoring their activity over there.