Beware Parents: Do Your Kids Use Any of These Four Apps?
Then you should pay attention
Created: 04/22/2022, 15:15
By: Magdalena von Zumbusch
The Tiktok app has extremely high user numbers, especially among young people. (Iconic image) © Rüdiger Wölk/Imago
Chances are your kids use at least one of these four apps.
Telegram, Roblox, Tellonym, and Tiktok all pose dangers parents should know about.
Munich – Tiktok and Telegram in particular have extremely high user numbers, including among minors.
The apps sometimes promote harmful user behavior, and inexperienced young users in particular run the risk of being harmed.
Roblox: The expert in computer games is particularly popular with children under the age of 13
Roblox is an online platform for computer games, and an app is now also available.
During the corona pandemic, the platform was able to expand the already high number of users and already reached 164 million users worldwide in August 2020.
According to
Roblox
, it is most popular with children under the age of 13.
With certain options, users can act as game developers themselves and share their games with other users.
The game made headlines when a six-year-old girl was invited into a virtual sex room that a user had created, as
reported by the online platform
giga.de.
T-online.de
recently reported again that sexual content (sometimes linked to violence) is currently being distributed on a large scale on the platform.
This is therefore probably only suitable for children under supervision.
The Tellonym: Format app encourages bullying
In the Tellonym app, users can ask questions about themselves, which can then be answered anonymously by their friends.
Thanks to its anonymity, the app promises honest answers about what people around you think about you.
Anyone who creates a Tellonym account will receive an individual link that they can send to friends and acquaintances.
Everyone who receives the link can write messages to the user, even without registering with the app themselves.
The problem with the app is obvious: Because it is not clear who is behind the answers, the platform is not only used for honest answers, but also for bullying and sexualized messages, the
FAZ
reported .
Although the app is only released from the age of 17, the age is not checked when creating an account.
After the feedback and comparison options on platforms like Instagram already have a harmful effect on the mental health of adolescents and young girls in particular (according to the internal findings of Meta itself, as reported by the
Tagesschau
in September 2021 ), the format of Tellonym also suitable to unfold a dangerous dynamic under certain circumstances.
The Telegram app: used to distribute radical content
The messaging app Telegram offers encrypted chats, which are more difficult to access, including by the state, than other messaging services such as WhatsApp.
According to the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), Telegram is therefore criticized as a medium of radicalization.
Reich citizens, radical corona deniers and other supporters of extreme ideas communicate there in anonymous groups, so that bans are already being discussed.
In Upper Bavaria, too, there was recently police persecution again.
The messaging service is therefore not unsuitable per se for children and inexperienced young people, but there is a certain risk of getting into groups in which content that is not suitable for children is shared and users may (consciously or unconsciously) be influenced.
Calculator #: Not necessarily dangerous, but useful feature
The Calculator # app looks like a calculator and can also be used as such.
But behind this camouflage function is a folder on the phone where users can hide photos, videos and other documents.
Access is only granted to those who enter the correct PIN on the device.
Apparently, the app does not necessarily pose a potential risk: A young person who has parents who want to access any content on their child's cell phone probably has a legitimate interest in discreetly hiding certain content in an app.
But the function of the app for parents is definitely worth knowing, especially since smaller and smaller children are being equipped with smartphones and recordings of violence and other unsuitable content can also be hidden here.
Social media platform Tiktok: Danger of cyber grooming
Tiktok is ubiquitous among young Germans: According to a youth digital study by Postbank, more than every second young person surveyed in Germany (58 percent) states that they are registered with the short video network.
The app is even popular with children of primary school age.
Similar to Instagram, however, due to the strong fixation on visual content, there is a risk that the mental health of young people will suffer from constant comparisons of themselves with others.
For media coaches from "Schau hin!" (a joint initiative of the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, the German public broadcasters and the AOK Federal Association for raising awareness about media use by children) there is not only a danger for the psyche of the users: under hashtags like #bellydance and #bikini, the app repeatedly contains videos of minors dancing provocatively to popular songs, the initiative reports on its website.
This could lead to cybergrooming, i.e. the establishment of contact between adults and children on the Internet,
Parents should therefore ensure that a private account is maintained, so that the videos posted are not accessible to everyone.
In the case of private accounts, too, there is a danger from the platform in the so-called challenges: users are supposed to master certain tasks or tests of courage and upload videos as proof.
Arson in a high school in Upper Bavaria a few weeks ago was probably due to a Tiktok challenge.
Stay up to date on consumer information and product recalls with our brand new consumer newsletter.
