Do you know if your teen is using Snapchat? Do you monitor their use of the popular app? If not, you should. When Snapchat added their location sharing tool, Snap Map, earlier this summer it was met with concern by parents, school systems, police departments, and child safety organizations. The feature allows Snapchat friends, many of whom your child may not even know, to see your their precise location in real time, including surrounding street names and buildings. It also shows the time of day and speed of travel. The Actionmoji even tells the contact what your teen is doing. If they are listening to music, for instance, the Actionmoji may be donning a pair of headsets. Friends will know if your teen is at the beach, the airport, or just sitting in the park or at home.
Sound scary? Perhaps it may put your child at risk, but monitored closely, the app can still be safe for your kids to use. “Keep in mind that users do have some control, and Snapchat is only accessing your location when the app is open,” says Titania Jordan, Chief Parenting Officer of Bark. “Also keep in mind that the app caches your last known shared location for up to 8 hours.”
How to keep your teens and tweens safe on their favorite apps.
Bark is an application that helps monitor your child’s social media, alerting parents when there is dangerous activity including cyber bullying, internet predators, depression, suicidal thoughts, and sexting. Jordan provided me with few tips to keep your tweens and teens safer on Snap Map and other apps.
On Snap Map your children can choose to post their location to all of their friends, only certain friends, or go into Ghost Mode where no one can see them (but they can see their friends who chose to post their location). “To be completely safe, I recommend staying in Ghost Mode, unless your child personally knows every single one of their Snapchat contacts very well,” says Jordan.
Snapchat is not the only app that poses a threat to your child’s privacy and safety. “You should prevent all apps from using your child’s location by updating the privacy and location services on their phone,” recommends Jordan. “It’s so important to reiterate to your children that they should never send their location to anyone they do not know in real life.” Together with your child, go through their friends list and review who they can and can’t share their location with. While your teen’s friends list may contain people she actually knows, it typically contains people she’s friended who are total strangers.
Jordan expresses the importance of discussing stories in the news about predators who have actually used personal information to hurt or stalk children, and that it really does happen in real life. Tell them you are taking these steps to keep them safe from that kind of harassment.
What to do when you think dangerous contacts might have your child’s location.
If you become suspicious of any of the activity on an app, get as much information about the person you think might be a risky contact, like their username and time of communication, and document it along with any other information you can find. Don’t take any chances; delete any suspicious or offending apps. Completely uninstall them so they stop posing a risk to your child’s safety. Also, update the privacy and location settings on your child’s device.
“Don’t hesitate to reach out to local law enforcement and tell them about the situation,” says Jordan. “Chances are if your child is being targeted, others are as well.”
Bark publishes helpful blog posts to help parents learn the warning signs that may show up when a child is being groomed by online predators. You can also sign up for a one-month free trial of Bark. After the free trial period the program is $9.99 per month.
Jordan can’t express enough the importance of talking to your children about risky people online and why you are putting safety measures in place–you love them and want them to be safe.
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.