Sweet mercy, Ethel, kids can use the Internets for the Sexing!

I work in public relations at Cook Children’s. It’s my job to be on social networking sites, peruse the internet and keep up with the latest Apps offered on smartphones. It’s a great job and I love what I do, but over the last couple years, I have learned so much about the dangers of Smart Phone Apps. It’s downright scary.

So is your Random Capitalization.

Technology, especially if you’re a little behind the times, can be very deceptive. Your kids may be downloading Apps that you think are innocent and just a simple way for them to keep in contact with their buddies, but unfortunately, this isn’t always the case.

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• Yik Yak –This App is one of the newest and one of the most dangerous. It allows users to post text-only Yaks of up to 200 characters. The messages can be viewed by the 500 Yakkers who are closest to the person who wrote the Yak, as determined by GPS tracking. Users are exposed to – and contributing -sexually explicit content, abusive language and personal attacks so severe that schools are starting to block the App on their Wi-Fi. Although the posts are anonymous, kids start revealing personal information as they get more comfortable with other users.

As they do in locker rooms, the lunch table, and during cheerleading practice! BAN ALL COMMUNICATION.

SnapChat – This App allows users to send photos that will disappear after 10 seconds. Once the recipient opens the picture, the timer starts. Then it’s gone. From both the sender’s phone and the recipient’s phone. However, the recipient can take a screen shot of the photo and have it to share with others. This App enables kids to feel more comfortable “sexting” with peers.

Or it enables kids to … send photos that will disappear after 10 seconds. What is in those photos is up to the kids, and if their parents didn’t raise irresponsible little sociopathic shitheads, they’ve got nothing to worry about.

• Down– This application, which used to be called “Bang with Friends,” is connected to Facebook. Users can categorize their Facebook friends in one of two ways: they can indicate whether or not a friend is someone they’d like to hang with or someone they are “down” to hook up with. The slogan for the App: “The anonymous, simple, fun way to find friends who are down for the night.” If that alone doesn’t scare you, I don’t know what will!

That alone doesn’t scare me. What does scare me is that these kids aren’t using condoms because Jesus doesn’t like birth control.

Whisper– This is a meeting App that encourages users to post secrets. You post anonymously, but it displays the area you are posting from. You can search for users posting within a mile from you. A quick look at the App and you can see that online relationships are forming constantly on this App, but you never know the person behind the computer or phone. One man in Washington was convicted of raping a 12-year-old girl he met on this App just last year.

And if he’d raped a girl he met at the library, would we be hearing about how libraries are dangerous and you need to delete them from your communities?

Omegle– This App has been around since 2008, with video chat added in 2009. When you use Omegle you do not identify yourself through the service – chat participants are only identified as “You” and “Stranger”. You don’t have to register for the App. However, you can connect Omegle to your Facebook account to find chat partners with similar interests. When choosing this feature, an Omegle Facebook App will receive your Facebook “likes” and try to match you with a stranger with similar likes. This is not okay for children.

NEITHER IS FACEBOOK, unsupervised. Jesus. This entire story could be replaced with, “Try not to raise little assholes and also keep an eye on their electronics and online activity,” but then, that wouldn’t give paranoiac Luddites the thrill that PHEAR THE ANONYMOUS HOOKUP APP does.

A.