A Complete Guide to Potentially Dangerous Apps for Kids
In today's digital age, where technology pervades every aspect of life, parents face the daunting task of shielding their children from the darker corners of the online world. This guide aims to shed light on potentially dangerous apps for kids, emphasizing the need for parental guidance and oversight.
From anonymous messaging platforms that can be breeding grounds for cyberbullying to seemingly benign social media apps that may expose children to inappropriate content, this guide will provide an overview of apps that warrant a closer look by guardians. It's crucial for parents to stay informed and proactive in discussing online safety with their children, setting appropriate boundaries, and utilizing parental control features where available.
Possibly Dangerous Apps for Kids
Friending your child on Facebook and vetting what they post on Instagram is now just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to online safety. Click through to see some of the sites and new apps tweens and teens are flocking to these days, and get useful tips for protecting your child from cyberbullying and other online safety hazards.
If you're scratching your head, it's time to read up on popular social media apps kids are using so you can keep up and stay informed.
1. Zoomerang
What's the Purpose: Zoomerang is one of the most popular apps right now. It is a simple video creator that allows you to capture short videos, apply filters, and add special effects and background music. You can then share these videos on social media. It is most popular for helping people create videos for Instagram and TikTok. Zoomerang is known for its simplified tutorials which make video creating and editing accessible to almost everyone, including younger kids with access to a child’s iPhone or any mobile device.
Why Parents Should Be Worried: One of the features that is cause for concern with Zoomerang is location tracking. This can allow online predators to see where your child is located when using the app.
The Zoomerang app is rated E for Everyone, but as is the case anywhere where your child can share videos of themselves, there is risk involved. It is easy to screenshot portions of a video to manipulate them and to take brief moments out of context. Cyberbullying does occur regularly utilizing this tactic.
2. Parlor
What's the Purpose: Parlor shares that they are a social talking app and that their purpose is for people to have amazing conversations and to talk about the same thing with each other. It allows people to message each other and share photos.
Why Parents Should Be Worried: The Parlor app is becoming confused with Parler, an app that has recently been banned and one that has received extensive media coverage.
There has been much concern as Parler was used by many for conversations about violence and guns, and due to the fact that plans for the U.S. Capitol insurrection had been shared within the app.
Parler was cut from Amazon Web Services, and then both Google and Apple decided to stop distributing the app. This may be an app that pops up again and then is removed depending on the decisions of the tech companies, but either way, there have been enough violent and extremist views and plans shared via this app to cause concern for parents.
3. GamePigeon
What's the Purpose: GamePigeon is a gaming app designed for iOS devices that can specifically be used within the Messages app. Available games range from 8 Ball to Checkers to Four in a Row to Word Hunt. It has received positive feedback for allowing introverted people to play games with others in a multiplayer format and for providing distanced entertainment throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Why Parents Should Be Worried: This app has in-app purchasing available so younger children can easily run up significant bills without realizing what they are doing. Parents may also want to establish time limits during the use of this app if they are concerned about screen time.
4. Chat Master
What's the Purpose: This is a unique game where you play as you are texting with someone. There are no sounds or music, and the app gives you two to three options to choose from as you answer questions in a text conversation. Between rounds, there are short activities to do like rearranging apps on the phone or cleaning the screen. There are no items to purchase within the app and you can pay a low price to avoid all ads which can be worth it when children are using the app.
Why Parents Should Be Worried: This isn’t really a dangerous app, but if you don’t pay to remove the ads, they can be overwhelming. Also, you cannot customize responses, so children may choose responses that don’t really represent what they want to say.
5. Among Us
What's the Purpose: Among Us is an online multiplayer social deduction game. It takes place in a space-themed setting and players take on one of two roles. They then try to determine who the imposters are. It requires four to ten players to start a game.
Why Parents Should Be Worried: In 2020, the game was hacked, and the hacker messaged players with promotions to visit his YouTube channel and server. They both contained racist language, gore, pornography, and extremist political views. The hacker also sent disturbing messages right within the game. In addition, parents might be concerned about their children playing multiplayer games with strangers as you never know who these players might be and what they may share throughout the game.
6. Banuba
What's the Purpose: Banuba is an app that provides features such as a face changer, live filters, funny effects, and masks. They can be applied to photos, videos, and selfies.
Why Parents Should Be Worried: Banuba offers auto-renew subscription features per week, month, and year, so this is another app where kids can easily run up charges. There are also a lot of ads that pop up throughout the experience. As with any augmented reality app, parents may be concerned about how pictures and videos are represented and utilized out of context.
7. TikTok
What's the Purpose: TikTok is an app for creating and sharing short videos. Users can create short music videos of 3 to 15 seconds and short looping videos of 3 to 60 seconds. It encourages users to express themselves creatively through video. Special effects can be added to the videos.
Why Parents Should Be Worried: Thirteen is the minimum age, but there isn’t a real way to validate age so anyone can download the app. Also, parents express concern that there is a lot of inappropriate language in the videos so it’s not appropriate for young children. Lastly, by default, all accounts are set to public so strangers can contact your children.
For more information on this app, check out our Complete Parent's Guide to TikTok.
8. YouTube
What's the Purpose: YouTube is a place to house and share your videos. You can control privacy settings. It’s also a great resource for educational videos and entertainment.
Why Parents Should Worry: Inappropriate content has been sliced into both all-ages content and children’s content. Also, comments on videos can be extremely inappropriate and hurtful. YouTube also has a known pedophile problem which is a major cause for concern.[1]
9. Tellonym
What's the Purpose: This is an anonymous messenger app. It calls itself “the most honest place on the internet.” This app is extremely popular in middle schools and high schools and it allows kids to ask and answer questions anonymously.
Why Parents Should Worry: It is a regular occurrence to see cyberbullying, violent threats, and sexual content. It also offers unmonitored access to the internet. The age restrictions are inconsistent ranging from 12 to 16, but this app is inappropriate for anyone younger than being in their late teens.
10. Bigo Live
What's the Purpose: Bigo is a live-streaming app. It is rated for teens 17 and up. Users can vlog about their lives, live stream video gameplay, and host their own shows.
Why Parents Should Worry: There is no age verification and users have to provide personal info like their age and location. This is a place where bullying, nudity, violence, and profanity are common.
11. IMVU
What's the Purpose: This is a virtual world game like SIMS. Users interact with each other as avatars. IMVU stands for Instant Messaging Virtual Universe.
What Parents Should Worry: There is nudity and sexual encounters in areas that are for 18+, but there is sexual talk and behaviors in the regular area of IMVU as well. There is a Chat Now feature that randomly pairs users with other users which can lead to inappropriate pairings and interactions. All profiles are public, and there can be bullying and predators trying to get other users to share their phone numbers and send pictures.
12. Houseparty
What's the Purpose: Houseparty is a video chatting app that's pretty open. Friends can communicate with each other through live video and texts in chat groups. It has become particularly popular throughout the COVID-19 pandemic as a way for tweens, teens, and adults to stay in touch and hang out while maintaining physical distance.
Why Parents Should Be Worried: There's no screening and the video is live, so there's nothing to keep kids from inappropriate content. Users can send links via chat and even take screenshots. There's also nothing keeping friends of friends from joining groups where they may only know one person.
13. Tinder
What's the Purpose: Tinder's developers describe the app as "the fun way to connect with new and interesting people around you." But it's mainly used as a dating app or an anonymous hook-up (read: one-night stand) locator by 20-somethings, college students, and even younger teens and tweens. (Yikes!)
Why Parents Should Worry: The app is rated for ages 17+ but Tinder's privacy policy allows teens as young as 13 to register (the app connects with Facebook—which is also technically for ages 13+—to pull in photos for users' Tinder profiles). Tinder helps people find others in their geographic location and allows users to view each others' photos and start instant messaging once both people have "liked" one another.
The geo-location features and anonymous nature of the app put kids at risk for catfishing, sexual harassment, stalking, and worse. Learn more scary facts about the Tinder app.
14. Ask.fm
What's the Purpose: This app allows users to interact in a question-and-answer format—with friends, peers, and anonymous users alike.
Why Parents Should Worry: The app is rated ages 13+ and is most popular in Europe but is catching on in the U.S. Some kids have used the app for hurtful cyberbullying that has been linked to suicides, including the death of 12-year-old Rebecca Sedwick of Florida.[2][3] British schools have sent home letters calling for students to stop using ask.fm because of its use in several cyberbullying incidents there, and its loose regulation and lack of monitoring.
15. Kik Messenger
What's the Purpose: Kik is a mobile app that people can use to text with friends at high speed and with more of a "face-to-face feel" than regular texting (users' profile pictures appear in a little bubble next to their text, and they can quickly text photos, sketches, or even pre-designed greeting cards to individuals or groups).
Why Parents Should Worry: The app is rated for ages 17+, but there is no age verification so anyone can download it. Like some other instant messenger apps, Kik allows your teen to connect with others using just a username (rather than texting from her phone number). But it begs the question: Should teens be texting with people beyond their phone contacts?
Reviews in the App Store and Google Play store reveal that many people use Kik to meet strangers for sexting. The app has also been connected with cyberbullying. Rebecca Sedwick, the Florida bullying victim who killed herself, reportedly used Kik and Voxer in addition to ask.fm—receiving messages like "Go kill yourself" and "Why aren't you dead?"—without her mother even knowing about the apps.[4]
16. Voxer
What's the Purpose: This walkie-talkie PTT (push-to-talk) app allows users to quickly exchange short voice messages. They can have chats going on with multiple people at a time and just have to tap the play button to hear any messages they receive. Although it largely has an adult following, including some people who use it for their jobs, it's becoming popular among teens who enjoy its hybrid style of texting and talking.
Why Parents Should Worry: Hurtful messages from cyberbullies can be even more biting when they're spoken and can be played repeatedly. Surprisingly, the app is rated ages 4+ in the App Store.
17. Snapchat
What's the Purpose: Snapchat is an app that allows users to send photos and videos that disappear after they're received. It's rated ages 12+. The filters and special effects allow users to alter pictures.
Why Parents Should Worry: Some kids are using the app to send racy pics because they believe the images can't be saved and circulated. But it turns out that Snapchat pics don't completely disappear from a device, and users can take a screenshot before an image vanishes in the app.[5]
And while recent studies revealed that "sexting" (sending sexual messages and images, usually via text message) is not as popular as parents had feared, "disappearing photo" apps like Snapchat might embolden kids to send more explicit photos and texts than they would have before through traditional texting.
18. Vsco
What's the Purpose: Vsco is a photo creation app that gives users the tools to shoot, edit and post images to a profile, kind of like Instagram.
Why Parents Should Worry: You should know that you have to manually turn on privacy settings and limit location sharing. There are also in-app purchases for more serious photo editing tools that could cost you some serious money if your kid decides to download them.
19. Whisper
What's the Purpose: This 17+ app's motto is: "Share Secrets, Express Yourself, Meet New People." It has a similar feel to the now-defunct PostSecret app, which was discontinued shortly after its release because it filled up with abusive content.[6]
Why Parents Should Worry: Whisper lets users set up anonymous accounts to make their messages or confessions overlap an image or graphic (similar to e-postcards), which other users can then "like," share, or comment on. While it allows for creative expression, it can also take overly personal content viral.
The app also shows a user's location. Although the app is geared toward older teens and adults, younger children are finding their way to it. A 12-year-old girl in Washington was reportedly raped by a 21-year-old man who met her on Whisper.[7]
20. Tumblr
What's the Purpose: Many children and young teens are also active on this 17+ photo-sharing app. It can also be used for sharing videos and chatting.
Why Parents Should Worry: Common Sense Media says Tumblr is "too raunchy for tykes" because users can easily access pornographic, violent, and inappropriate content.[8] Common Sense also notes that users need to jump through hoops to set up privacy settings—and until then, all of a user's photo and content is public for all to see. Mental health experts say that Tumblr can be damaging to adolescents' mental health because it tends to glorify self-harm and eating disorders.[9]
21. Instagram
What's the Purpose: This hugely popular photo-sharing site is owned by Facebook, so you may be more familiar with it than with other photo-sharing apps. Users can add cool filters or create collages of their photos and share them across Facebook and other social media platforms.
Why Parents Should Worry: The app is rated 13+ and may be slightly tamer than Tumblr, but users can still find mature or inappropriate content and comments throughout the app (there is a way to flag inappropriate content for review). "Trolls"—or people making vicious, usually anonymous comments—are common.
22. Look
What's the Purpose: Look is a free video messaging app. Users can send videos (of course), texts, emojis, and gifs. They can also draw on and use filters on their videos.
Why Parents Should Worry: With Look, strangers can message kids pretty easily, and because there are no content filters, kids can come across inappropriate content. Users have reported cyberbullying activity and have found it difficult to delete their accounts.
Jailbreak Programs and Icon-Hiding Apps
What's the Purpose: These aren't social media apps—and they're confusing—but you should still know about them (especially if you have a tech-savvy teen or have had to take away your child's mobile phone privileges because of abuse).
Why Parents Should Worry: “Jailbreaking" an iPhone or "rooting" an Android phone basically means hacking your own device to lift restrictions on allowable applications—meaning, the user can then download third-party apps not sold in the App Store or Google Play store (read: sometimes sketchy apps). It's hard to say how many teens have jailbroken their mobile devices, but instructions on how to do it are readily available on the Internet.
Cydia is a popular application for jailbroken phones, and it's a gateway to other apps called Poof and SBSettings—which are icon-hiding apps. These apps are supposedly intended to help users clear the clutter from their screens, but some young people are using them to hide questionable apps and violent games from their parents.
Be aware of what the Cydia app icons look like so you know if you're getting a complete picture of your teen's app use.
What About Facebook and Twitter?
Do all these new social media apps mean that Facebook and Twitter are in decline? A 2013 survey by Pew Internet found that U.S. teens have "waning enthusiasm" for Facebook—in part because their parents and other adults have taken over the domain and because their peers engage in too much "drama" on the site.[10]
But Facebook still remains the top social media site among U.S. teens, who say that their peers continue to stay on the site so they don't miss anything happening there. Your child may keep a profile on Facebook but be much more active on newer platforms. Meanwhile, Twitter use is rising among teens. The 2013 Pew survey found that 24 percent of online teens are on Twitter, up from 16 percent in 2011. Twitter is more popular among African American teens than Hispanic and white teens.
Additionally, a study found that teens who deal with online risks frequently show signs of PTSD and other mentally damaging issues, which only exacerbates the entire problem with online safety and moderating social media presence.[11]
Next Steps for Parents
Internet and social media safety is very important for all ages, but it is crucial for children, tweens, and teens. So, what can parents do next? Here's what we suggest.
- Sit down with your child and find out which apps she's using, how they work, and whether she has experienced any issues with them, such as cyberbullying or contact with strangers.
- Look into apps and products that help you monitor your child online.
- If your main concerns are web browsing and social media safety, we recommend Qustodio. They provide a comprehensive dashboard to help you monitor your child's online activity. Their premium subscription allows you to track kids' location, block certain games and apps, monitor calls and text messages, and more.
- If your main concern is filtering web content and setting internet time limits for multiple kids and/or devices, Net Nanny is a great option. The software automatically filters web content for each user based on whether they fit the Child, Pre-Teen, Teen, or Adult profile. It allows you to "mask" profanity on web pages. It also makes it easy to prevent web access during homework time or bedtime.
Tips for Protecting Your Child Online
What else can you do to keep your kid safe while still allowing them the freedom to enjoy online media and communities? Let's finish with a few more tips
- You can set up age limits on your child's device. The above-mentioned 2013 Pew Research Center survey found that nearly 40 percent of teens say that they have lied about their age to gain access to a site or create an account, so restricting kids' access to apps by age rating is a wise move. You can't join every site or app and monitor your child's every move online; teens will always find a new platform that their parents don't know about yet. Rather than hovering or completely barring your child from downloading every social media app, sit down and go over some general rules to keep them smart and safe online.
- Tell your child to let you know if someone is hurting her or making her feel uncomfortable online, even if the person is acting anonymously. Use the Cyberbullying Research Center's "Questions Parents Should Ask Their Children About Technology" to guide your discussion.[12]
- Get yourself some resources. Our printable anti-bullying pledge and parent/child online agreement are useful tools, and you can access them for free on Family Education!
- Make a rule that your child must ask for permission before downloading any apps—even free ones—just so you're aware of them. When your child wants to join a new social media platform, go through the security settings together to choose the ones you're most comfortable with.
- Keep passwords private. Advise your child not to share passwords with anyone, including best friends, boyfriends, or girlfriends, and make sure you are aware of any little kids' passwords yourself.
Keeping Kids Safe Online
Empowering yourself with knowledge and maintaining open lines of communication with your children are key strategies in fostering a safe online environment. By setting clear expectations, using parental controls, and regularly discussing online safety, parents can significantly mitigate these risks and ensure their children benefit from the positive aspects of technology. Remember, guiding our children through the digital landscape is a collaborative and ongoing process that adapts as they grow and as new technologies emerge.
Additionally, it's important to remember that not all apps are dangerous; there are plenty of free educational apps for children to enjoy!
