Family Tech Blog

Tag: predators

  • Facebook Stories is Going Public

    Facebook Stories is Going Public

    Instagram, WhatsApp, and Snapchat have proven that 24-hour disappearing story feeds are the latest social media trend. Facebook is trying to increase user-ship of their stories feature by allowing people to post publicly. After a recent Facebook update, you can now change the privacy settings on your story posts to make them visible to anyone on Facebook. 

    Facebook Stories is really the only version of the daily posts feature that has been lagging behind in user-ship. Celebrities and brands will now be able to use Facebook stories to promote publicly just as easily as they can on Instagram and Snapchat. This may be an attempt for Facebook to increase the number of people using their stories feature but it’s likely, also, a way to entice more advertisers into using the feature.

    What Parents Should Know

    Any option to share something publicly should be known to parents. If your kids use Facebook and enjoy posting their daily activities on their Story feed you should know how to check and see if they’re posting publicly. Below is a slideshow of how to check the privacy settings on Facebook Stories.

    Be sure to check out what your kids have been sharing publicly and talk to them about the permanence of anything shared online. It’s also a good idea to talk to them about what to do if they receive contact from people they don’t know on any social media platform. As parents, we are the ones responsible for our kids’ safety and privacy online. Learn the ways these social media services have provided for you to keep them safe and private.

  • Musical.ly Teams Up with Apple Music to Sell You More Stuff

    Musical.ly Teams Up with Apple Music to Sell You More Stuff

    Musical.ly allows users to film themselves lip-syncing and performing current pop music hits and scenes from movies or TV shows. It has become one of the most popular apps for teens and pre-teens and a connecting point for music artists and their fans. In fact, there are now Musical.ly stars who are seeing success in more mainstream markets as well. Most of them are quite young teenagers. Today, Musical.ly has announced that they’re partnering with Apple Music to provide the song clips that make up their lip sync library. They will also be promoting subscriptions to the music streaming service and allowing Apple Music subscribers to listen to full versions of songs.

    Musical.ly grew a ton in 2016 and has seen a tapering off in their young audience during the beginning of 2017. This move seems to be a way to bring more value and financial stability to Musical.ly while putting Apple’s music streaming service in front of another audience. Apple Music has been chasing Spotify for subscriptions and the aren’t gaining ground. This is an obvious attempt to target Musical.ly’s young audience with their option for streaming music. Allowing full versions of the songs kids are lip syncing to in the app is adding value that many of the app’s users will see as valuable. Possibly valuable enough to ask their parents for a subscription to Apple Music. That is if they don’t have the ability to sign up on their own.

    What Parent’s Should Know

    I have been pretty outspoken on my disdain for Musical.ly in the past. One of the major reasons is the lack of an age restriction to sign up and the CEO’s attitude about it. Now I see another potential hang up for parents who’s kids use the app. There are already songs available on the app that many parents may feel are unsuitable for the age of their kids that use the app. Now the entire songs will be available if you are one of the 20million families who have an Apple Music subscription. If you don’t have a subscription be warned that the app will be consistently asking your pre-teen if they’d like to sign up for one. Also, there are likely to be features made available that won’t be useful without an account with Apple Music. How many times will your 13 year old have to be blocked from using a song until they start asking you to subscribe for them. Advertising is still, however, the least of my worries with Musical.ly.

    Parents of young teens should pay close attention to what their kids do on Musical.ly. If your young daughter is spending a lot of time singing and dancing in front of her camera know that there is no age verification so the fourteen year old boy who watches every one of her videos could actually be anyone, anywhere, of any age. In this day and age where kids are being asked to meet up by strangers and actually saying yes, there is no reason for your kid to be unsupervised on an app like Musical.ly. I recommend and uninstall if your kid is under 17 and then to closely monitor their use of the app. 

  • The Monkey App will be a Hotbed for Predators

    The Monkey App will be a Hotbed for Predators

    You can often tell a lot about an app or product by their logo. (See Instagram or YouTube) They often use the small icon to entice you into using their app based on the style or the creative way the image can explain what the app is used for. Sometimes, though, you can be lured into a false sense of security by the playfulness of an app’s logo or icon. Monkey is a perfect example of this. When I saw Monkey listed as number 51 on the app store’s top downloads I was expecting to see some kid’s social media platform that would allow you to chat privately or play games or something. That’s not at all what I found.

    In reality Monkey is a chat roulette type of video chatting app. Once you’ve downloaded the app it will ask you your age. You set your age to whatever you’d like it to be, provide your phone number and your snapchat username and you’re in. It immediately begins connecting you with someone to video chat with. While it’s connecting it shows your face dimly in the background and says who it’s connecting you to. You have the option to skip the connection or accept. If you accept you’ll be shown their video feed and they’ll see yours. In the short time I tested the app I was connected with all males ranging from ages 22-45.

    Once you have connected with someone a countdown clock begins. You can tap the clock to add time and keep talking but if they don’t tap their clock you’ll be disconnected. This is another “swipe right” concept that gives each user the option to continue the connection with a simple gesture on their smartphone. To be honest I never accepted a connection. I still just don’t get a good feeling about the gamble of finding random video chatting partners. I don’t know what I”ll see when I connect. You also don’t know what your kids might see.

     

     

    What Parents Should Know

    The dangers of a roulette style video chat app should be pretty obvious. The potential for unwanted material and contact with dangerous people is real. While there is a report button to flag any inappropriate content, that method takes the “after the damage is done” approach to keeping their app free from pornography and bullying. The app is rated for users aged twelve and over and the terms and agreements explain how the company takes no responsibility for the content that may be displayed on the app.

    YOU FURTHER UNDERSTAND AND ACKNOWLEDGE THAT, WHILE THE SERVICES ARE NOT PROVIDED FOR PORNOGRAPHIC PURPOSES OR FOR MAKING SEXUALLY EXPLICIT CONTENT AVAILABLE, YOU MAY BE EXPOSED TO CONTENT THAT YOU DEEM TO BE OFFENSIVE, INDECENT, OBJECTIONABLE, OR SEXUALLY EXPLICIT, AND YOU AGREE TO WAIVE, AND HEREBY DO WAIVE, ANY LEGAL OR EQUITABLE RIGHTS OR REMEDIES YOU HAVE OR MAY HAVE AGAINST MONKEYSQUAD WITH RESPECT THERETO. – Monkey Terms of Use (All caps theirs.)

    This app was developed by two sixteen year old kids from Australia. They said that they designed the app to allow teens to build more random online relationships. Ben Pasternak and Isaiah Turner told Mashable “…Snapchat is for your real life friends and Monkey is for your internet friends.” These teenagers saw a line between their real world relationships and the ones they could make with people all over the world through the internet. This is exactly what parents need to consider. While living in a more globalized world has many positives there are also very real risks to exposing our young teens and kids to the entire globe. 

    My advice is to put this app on your uninstall list. Never trust an app based on their branding or icon. Have a real conversation with your teen about the potential of seeing body parts or other unsightly things on this app. Remind them of the problem of connecting with random people online. There are always people who will lie about their age or their gender in order to connect with someone they’d like to prey on. Even if they know they’re only going to be connected for a few seconds. Sometimes a few seconds is enough to cause major problems for our young kids. Don’t let the cute monkey emoji logo fool you. Uninstall on sight!

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