Monitoring your child's activity on the Internet can be complicated and even frustrating. Your child may demand a certain level of privacy and not be completely upfront with his or her actions. In addition, if you think monitoring your child's Facebook and Twitter accounts is satisfactory, you're sadly mistaken.
Every day there are new social media apps being created. Some are fads and last for about a week, but some hang around and can even go viral. With so many new apps being created daily, it's almost impossible to keep up. But some of these social media apps can be nasty and they require parental attention.
The latest example of such an app is Yik Yak, designed for Android and Apple devices. A recent Los Angelos Times article explains what Yik Yak is and why it garnered so much negative attention:
“Like on Twitter, users can post short blurbs of text. But these “yaks” don’t have any name or user name attached to them. The messages can be read by the 500 "yakkers" who are nearest the writer. The app is free but the writer can pay to distribute messages to more people over a wider geographic area.”
With a pretty large audience and promised anonymity, it's not difficult to imagine what kind of problems this app could cause. According to the article, three schools in Mobile County, Alabama had to shut down for a day because of terroristic threats made on the app.
The moral of the story is that even though the app wasn't created with bad intentions, it fell into the wrong hands. It's important to make sure that your children don't become the victims of such attacks. It starts with monitoring what apps and social networks your child uses, coupled with explaining how such technology can be dangerous.
