Providing information and resources for parents, youth workers and educators to help kids navigate their sexuality.
A Forbes investigation found that Wattpad was a place where sexual predators target and exploit vulnerable teens, in some cases leading to sex trafficking and assault. Read the article here.
Although these platforms say they are doing what they can to keep kids under 18 off, they aren’t succeeding. Read the article here.
How to help teens have safe and healthy online relationships. Read the article here.
Roblox is popular with kids all over the world. It currently hosts 142 million users and it’s been estimated that half of kids in the U.S. under 16 have played Roblox. Sadly it’s easy for predators and bad actors to infect the Roblox platform with sexual content. Read the article here.
Defend Young Minds has this to say about OnlyFans:
“The idea behind OnlyFans was to “develop a site where creators could monetize their content free of advertisers.”
The “creators” included photographers, YouTubers, models, actors, and others involved in the creative arts. Unfortunately, the site also immediately attracted sexually explicit content.”
Read the full article here.
What exactly is Discord? And can my teen safely use it? Read the article from Protect Young Minds here.
As Gen Z enters the dating scene, this app wants to leave swiping right behind and use TikTok-esque short-form videos to connect young daters. Read the article here.
How a trend to gain social media followers is making teens vulnerable to trafficking. Read the article here.
Clothes are digitally removed from pictures of women by Artificial Intelligence (AI), and spread on the messaging app Telegram. Read the article here.
Online dating has grown in popularity, but many young women report experiencing some form of harassment on these platforms, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey. Read the article here.
“Hoop” launched late last year but in the past several weeks it’s been downloaded over 2 and a half million times. What is it and who can use it? Read the article here.
A porn studio called Naughty America is under fire from Snapchat after the app banned them from promoting themselves on the app, but the studio returned with new insidious ways to market themselves to users. Read the article here.
The massively popular dating app claims to block underage users. The only workaround? Lying. And everyone is doing it. Read the article here.
When you ask a couple how they met, it’s pretty common for them to answer, “On the Internet”. So, it’s no surprise that online dating has trickled down to teens. Read the article here.
Your teens calculator app? It could be a digital safe, hiding photos they don’t want you to see. Read the article here.
The functionality is exactly the same as regular Tinder, although the UI looks slightly different: a badge depicting users’ universities will be displayed on their main profile image. Read the article here.
A new phenomenon called Snapchat dysmorphia has popped up. Read the article here.
Facetune and Facetune 2, which can instantly zap away perceived imperfections on any photo, have together been downloaded a whopping 50 million times since the first one was launched in 2013. Read the article here.
The rise in popularity of livestreaming apps is putting young teens and pre-teens at growing risk of becoming victims of sex predators and distributors of child porn, advocates say. Read the article here.