Snapchat

Have you heard your tween or teen talk about Snapchat? Snapchat is a free and increasing in popularity iPhone app. Snapchat allows users to take photos on their iPhone then send them to another smartphone and determine how long the photo can be seen by the receiver, for up to 10 seconds. If the receiver tries to use another feature on the iPhone to capture the photo on the screen, the sender is notified.

Apple has design the app for 12 years and older and doesn’t mention anything about sexting but has a warning of “mild sexual content or nudity.” Another point to point out is the developers of the app stated it keeps photos on its server but claims to delete them quickly, however there is no guaranteed and users need to use this app at their own risk.

The question to ask yourself, will this new app encourage more sexting?  According to recent research coming out on sexting by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project, three percent of teenagers admit to sending sexually explicit content. Will apps like Snapchat help increase this percentage over the years?  Remember as a parent if you don’t want your teen to have the app, you can block application downloads with My Mobile Watchdog