Vine has become extremely popular with adults and kids alike, however is it safe for kids?

If you aren’t familiar with Vine, it’s time to get your education on.  Vine, launched by Twitter,  is the mobile app that allows you to create, share and watch 6 second or less looping videos. It seems kind of harmless right?  Well with all good things come a few drawbacks.

My 16-year-old daughter first introduced me to the app a few months back.  At first it seemed innocent enough, the videos she was showing me were quite hilarious.  Her father and I both got a few good laughs at several of them.

It wasn’t until I downloaded the application myself that red flags went up.  It immediately asked me to verify that I was 17 years old.   Yet my daughter was only 16 and many of the videos she had shown me were of kids younger than that.  Once I began exploring the videos myself I became a bit disturbed.  Within 5 minutes of browsing the most popular feeds,  I came across men masturbating and teenage girls smoking on a school campus, all mixed between animated puzzles and baby videos.

What quickly became even more disturbing to me was that you could view anyone’s videos and profile and, of course, anyone can view yours.  There aren’t any real privacy settings.  You can, however, stop someone you know from viewing your profile on Vine, but you can’t block a user from viewing your videos and commenting on them when they’re viewed through searches or hash tags. To block a user, you must navigate to their profile, tap the three dots at the top of the menu bar, and then select block this person.  Sadly though, all Vine videos are public and a person can simply go online and view videos there instead of on the mobile app.  There are several websites available for which you can view Vine videos online that require no login or download, a few of which I’ve listed below:

(Warning, the  links below may go straight to inappropriate material)

 

www.seenive.com

http://www.vineviewer.co/

 

VinePeek is newly posted Vines in real time:

http://www.vpeeker.com/

 

 

Not long after Vine launched it was a haven for porn, so much so that a clip made it to the Editor’s Picks list.  Since that incident Vine has updated their app making access to porn related hashtags inaccessible.  That however doesn’t mean it isn’t there, it just means it’s harder to find and people are using clever hashtags for their videos.  As I mentioned earlier, within 5 minutes of viewing puzzles and babies, a man masturbating filled my screen.  The option to report videos as inappropriate has also been added. While Vine can be creative, fun and extremely interesting, it’s much too easy to find offensive material not appropriate, in my opinion, for children under the age of 18.

Keep your young children away, innocent and safe.  You can set your child’s iPhone,  iPad or iPod Touch to age appropriate downloads and restrictions.   You can learn how to change the settings on their devices by going to the following link:

http://www1.k9webprotection.com/support/set-idevice-restrictions

 

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