As a mom, and a communications professional in the technology space, I’ve heard some pretty scary stories about kids’ use of social media and kids having secret social media accounts. Predators lurking on Facebook, bullying happening via Twitter and even suspicious activity occurring on Minecraft.
As parents, we try to stay on top of what our kids are doing, but the technology seems to be outpacing our ability to monitor. And there seems to be a new breed of apps out there that are wreaking havoc on our children. SnapChat and ask.FM seem to be particularly problematic. Well, at least that was before a friend — someone I have no doubt is an engaged mother — wrote the following words to me:
“I want to share my story to as many moms as possible, so it doesn’t happen to anyone else.”
I thought she would share a bullying story gone wrong, but it was much, much worse. My heart ached for her — but even more for her 12-year-old daughter.
You see, we continue as parents to try to give our kids an inch of technology so they can feel accepted and part of their generation. We often complain that we see only the tops of our kids’ heads because their noses are always in their phones — but we don’t take them away or limit their use. We think we have explained the rules, controlled the mechanism, established boundaries — but then a new company comes along with a new “app” that is better, faster, easier in every way, and it probably is. Until it’s used for evil and not its original intent.
And we don’t even know it’s happening.
Secret Social Media
Enter Kik (and several other messengers that fly under the radar of parental controls because they are secret social media apps. And oh yeah, kids can delete the messages so they are no longer on their device –although they can remain on the recipients.)
Kik Messenger (launched in late 2010, but gained a lot of popularity in 2012) is an instant messaging app for mobile devices that kids use as a secret social media app. The app is available on most iOS, Android, and Windows Phones operating systems free of charge. It uses a smartphone’s data plan or WiFi to transmit and receive messages, so kids that have limited texting or no cellular texting at all love it — particularly because we now live in a world where free wi-fi is everywhere.
