3 social media apps your pre-teen can use today

As a parent to a pre-teen child, social media is bound to have come up in conversation by now.

These days, children as young as 12 and 13 are eager to get involved with social media. Whether it’s chatting to friends from school, sharing tips and opinions on their favourite games, or following their favourite musician, the possibilities are endless.  

While the world of social media is exciting to your child, as a parent, you may have some concerns about their cyber-safety, and how you can best manage this. What will they be doing on different apps? Who has the ability to contact them? And what are the risks for kids associated with the different platforms?

At Sersha, we strongly believe that social media doesn’t have to be scary. Especially if you, and your child, are aware of the risks.

In this blog, we’ve scored three of the most popular social media apps for 12-13 year olds across the key areas of safety risk (cyberbullying, stranger danger, screentime, violence and inappropriate content) so you don’t have to.

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How risky is WhatsApp for pre-teens?

WhatsApp is one of the most popular instant messaging and communication apps in Ireland. It’s features are pretty straightforward, allowing users to connect with one another using their phone number, exchange messages, create group-chats, and more recently, publish disappearing ‘statuses’ to their contacts.

WhatsApp is a relatively safe app for children to use for socialising online. However, the group-chat feature (and direct messaging) has the potential to be used for cyberbullying or social exclusion.

With WhatsApp using end-to-end encryption for privacy purposes, keeping an eye on who your child is messaging – and checking in with regularly to see if they’re exhibiting signs of cyberbullying – will be important.

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How risky is Instagram for pre-teens?

Almost 66,000 posts are posted to Instagram every minute. It’s a fantastic app for documenting your life, and people of all ages – including youngsters – enjoy documenting their social lives, holidays, and achievements via photos and videos.

Instagram’s home feed and explore page offer an almost endless stream of engaging, algorithm-based content, which serves users with content relevant to their interest. While this is great from an entertainment perspective, for your child, the key is to ensure they are not spending too long on the app.

In addition to excessive screentime, inappropriate content also poses a potential risk. Instagram does have content moderation policies and controls in place to keep this issue at bay, but with the app being driven primarily by user-generated content, this risk cannot be fully ruled out.  It’s important to monitor who your child is following and messaging on Instagram, and reviewing the nature of the content they are being served.

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How risky is Discord for pre-teens?

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Discord offers instant messaging and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) features, popular among online gaming enthusiasts and other communities. Users have the option to join virtual groups (called ‘servers’) or talk and message each other privately

Because Discord, like other open servers and chatrooms, allows you to connect with a range of individuals online, there is a risk of stranger danger that you must be aware of before allowing your child to set up an account. It’s important to ensure that your child’s account is set to private and that you closely monitor the servers they are participating in.

Despite the app having guidelines and features in place to prevent the publishing and sharing of violet content, exposure to this is always a risk when it comes to user-generated content. So, similar to Instagram and other social media apps, regularly reviewing the content on your child’s Discord account is highly advised.

To learn more…

Each social media app comes with its own set of benefits, as well as challenges, for you and your child. We believe embracing social media is the way forward, but taking time to understand the risks first, is essential.

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