Musical.ly co-CEO Alex Zhu last year said:
“Today the very proposition of the app is not about creating music videos. It’s not about lip-syncing. It’s about a social network,” Zhu said. “It’s a community. People want to stay because there are other people. ” Full Article on UK Business Insider
The app is intended for teens not tweens but last year found itself in a social media whirlwind triggered by a Dad’s story who discovered his daughter had been receiving grooming messages from a user profile designed to deceive.
This week, one of the primary schools we support got in touch to say they were contacting parents in writing to advise on the inherent risks associated with the app for younger children. The age limit is 13+ BUT the trap here is that we all get overly focused on this age limit.
Seeing as it’s ‘you’ reading this post then the chances are we’re preaching to the converted and you know that this is as much about being aware what our children are using, open conversations and knowing how to manage privacy as much as any age limit.
Useful to watch
We quickly made this video to be shared with schools to help parents understand how to control just how visible and reachable they are on Musical.ly. This is all common sense stuff and applies to other networks too as you’ll already know.
Useful to read
Webwise is the Irish Internet Safety Awareness Centre which is co-funded by the Department of Education and Skills and the EU Safer Internet Programme.
Musical.ly has this for parents