After School - Funny Anonymous School News for Confessions & Compliments
After School uses kids' Facebook profiles to verify
they're students at a specific high school before
granting access to the school's page within the app.
From there, kids see images and posts created
anonymously by other students or can create anonymous
posts. The app was removed from the app store for a
few hours after complaints from school administrators
about bullying incidents, but it was relisted for age
17 and up with warnings about sexual content,
language, drug references, and violence.
Student-generated posts include frequent
confession-style references (which come across more as
bragging) to drugs, sex, and violence.
Amino - Communities, Chat, Forums, and Groups
Amino - Communities, Chat, Forums, and Groups is an
app that lets users join online communities related to
anime, gaming, books, and more. This app lets users
explore all available Amino communities and create
their own groups; there are also other
community-specific apps from the same developer, such
as Poké Amino. While the communities are predominantly
positive, bad language, violent references, and sexual
themes crop up throughout, making this a potentially
iffy choice for young teens. Also, you can easily
browse users and follow them, and it's not clear that
users can opt out of such public searches.
Bookopolis
Bookopolis is a great site for kids to connect to
readers and explore books they've already read or may
like to read. The website tracks and promotes reading
and writing through the use of badges and points,
which can possibly engage even the most reluctant of
readers. Though the site doesn't promote any violence,
sex, inappropriate language, or substance abuse, the
stories that are separated by grade level could
feature varying levels of this content within the
stories. Parents will like the ease in which their
children will safely explore new titles in this
interactive site; kids can't join the site without
using an adult's email, which means that parents also
can track their children's progress and interaction on
this COPPA-compliant website.
Disney Mix
Disney Mix is a messaging app designed for tweens.
Kids create an account with their age, birth date,
first name, and parent's email address. They'll also
need to create a username, which is used to log in,
and an avatar name, which is what their friends see
when messaging. When a kid creates an account or logs
on to a different device, parents get an email
notification. No parental approval is involved, but
email includes a link to easily cancel the account;
parents don't receive notifications of new friends or
messages. To add a friend, kids must know the avatar's
name. Language that may be even remotely offensive is
censored and replaced with "- -" while the rest of the
message is left intact.