"What did you just post?" This thought went through my head as a former Michigan police officer (yep, Google search gave him up) made an offensive comment against my family on social media because of the passage of the Utah Device Filtering bill.
When you stick your nose out and speak up to protect kids (which often means speaking out against porn), all the trolls come out! Even while minimally protecting kids, standing between adults and porn makes you a target - even though our work doesn't do that!
The problem that I often run into with my CHILD protection work is that it's often conflated with ADULT censorship concerns. Our work focuses squarely on the former!
Many have reached out and offered words of encouragement this week. Thank you! Emails, DM's - it was awesome. Hug your kids! Remind them that even when they make a digital mistake, they can always land softly with you.
Parenting with you,
New Blog Post this Week
Quick Trends for Busy Families!
YouTube Shorts is here in the United States. YouTube Shorts is the YouTube equivalent of TikTok. The user experience is similar to TikTok. Take-away for families: There are no dedicated parental controls for YouTube Shorts like there are for TikTok. We recommend using our YouTube guide to restrict some content.
Facebook is in the early stages of designing an Instagram product for kids under 13. Instagram has a terrible track record of providing a kid-friendly app experience. We shared our thoughts with the UK Times about social media grooming. Take-away for families: While Instagram is working on parental controls and artificial intelligence to determine the actual age of users, we can't get on board with introducing high-octane social media like Instagram to younger kids. Hard stop from PYE.
Among Us is releasing a new map today! If you read our app review, you will see that we like playing this game with our kids. But as it has become more popular, risks have arisen. The update also includes new features to make the game safer. Users will need to create an account to change their display name and use the free chat (as opposed to the preset messages). There will be new reporting options for inappropriate names and chat, cheating, hacking, harassment, and misconduct. Take-away for families: We are advocates of co-playing with kids to build digital trust. This is a perfect game to do that!
Telegram added new audio chat features. Telegram is an encrypted messaging app. It has become quite popular recently due to many users leaving WhatsApp (another messaging app). Now, admins of channels and groups can hold voice chats for millions of listeners (sounds like mega-popular app Clubhouse to us....). Take-away for families: Telegram isn’t the only app jumping on the popularity of audio apps. Twitter also has a similar concept called Spaces. The main concern with these apps is that it's live conversation and anything goes…including conversations with explicit themes.
Tap/click here on the image to contact Michele from PYE to learn more about Protect for your church or school! We have 30 organizations signed up to provide Protect to over 10,000 total families! We're thrilled!
