Limited characters, lots of info, lasting online legacy.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 15+?
Periscope also may contain sexual content.</p>
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Periscope may contain unmoderated violent content.</p>
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Any Positive Content?
Products & Purchases
a lot
Companies, celebrities frequently use Twitter as an advertising vehicle to promote products, services. Users can sign up to follow feeds that offer discounts, other consumer deals. App also allows people, companies to embed video, which many businesses are using to air commercials (though they don't automatically play in feed).
Drinking, Drugs & Smoking
some
Given Twitter's lack of censorship, kids may very well come across posts mentioning drugs, smoking, alcohol.
Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.
Teens can search Twitter, which can yield tweets (posts) with sexual comments, links to porn sites. Live streams via Periscope also may contain sexual content.
Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.
Frequent updates to app require constant learning, and there's lots of twitter-jargon to learn: retweets, subtweets, mentions, etc.
Educational Value
some
Kids can learn about communication skills while using Twitter, including how you distill a great idea into 140 characters. It takes critical-thinking and writing skills to economize language Twitter-style, and kids will have to respond quickly to keep up with the usually fast-paced conversations. The skills kids learn can translate into the classroom in, for example, a teacher-moderated debate or answering pop quiz questions in one sentence, focusing on the important points. Twitter can expose kids to a lot of content -- some that's better suited for older users -- but they'll also see information about technology, politics, culture, and other topics. Often, news breaks on Twitter, so it's great for current events. Twitter also can be a great place to promote discussion and develop social media skills.
Parents Need to Know
Parents need to know that Twitter is a free "microblogging" and social-networking site (and app) that brings up issues of safety, privacy, and a lasting digital footprint. The service allows users to post 280-character messages and follow their other accounts -- from friends to celebrities to politicians to news outlets to organizations. New posts appear immediately, and, though you can delete tweets, they don't always immediately disappear. They can join Spaces, which is an audio-only chat room open to 11 people which can be public or private. Teens can also receive direct messages from anyone, unless disabled in settings. Live-streaming may contain all manner of content, so keep that in mind as your teens use Twitter. Read the developer's privacy policy for details on how your (or your kids') information is collected, used, and shared and any choices you may have in the matter, and note that privacy polices frequently change. Under the CCPA law you have the right to protect your personal information.Make a Do Not Sell request to Twitter.
For those of us who have filters on our internet to block dangerous content for our kids (and ourselves), this site should not be allowed through your filters. It took about 2 minutes to find adult content on the site. Not the bikini pics, but full nudity. Not just nudity, but videos with the whole sexual act (minus the dating, of course). Even with the filters I employ for my own house, blocking the dangerous keywords, it took about 10 minutes to find seriously adult videos. It was probably staged, but the video that sickened me enough to turn it off was the rape of a sleeping girl. Twitter allowed this stuff.
And it's not just some rogue posters making this content available for a couple hours and getting their accounts disabled. The help file written by Twitter gives all kinds of stipulations on what kind of adult content is allowed. The only requirement is that the user who uploads it add a tag that says it's not safe for children, which there were many posts that had no such tag / filter. And the only thing it does is make you click the button that says you want to see it. And what teenage boy doesn't? What grown man wouldn't have the impulse? The administrators of twitter care more about the adult content "artists" than they do about the innocence of children. This site should be behind every adult content block there is. From Google search to the ones that come with the ISPs. Every router should block twitter as an adult site. Cleanbrowsingdns.org should block it. When a government passes a law against obscenity, twitter should make the list of sites to disallow.
Of course, it's possible to have an account that doesn't show the adult stuff. You could follow Trump and be safe. I'm sure that most of your friends will not be posting those things. But unlike Facebook, you have to actively avoid exploring the site. Unlike Instagram, you can't just leave your kids alone with the program. It's more like a start up social media company who can't find the money to pay people to remove adult content. Like MeWe, but even they have gotten better in the last couple years. They require admin approval for sites with adult content. Twitter spreads it around for all to see. No approval. No firewall. No filters. No consequences. Horrible site.
Don’t let your children on this site, filled with predators
I was suspended by twitter staff who DID review my tweets calling out zoophilia and pedophilia communities that twitter has allowed to exist. A human reviewed my message, look at the context of the conversation, and decided I was in the wrong for speaking out against predators on their site.
No I didn’t do something distasteful like encourage violence or self harm, one of the reported responses was actually telling them to seek professional help and get better. Twitter is allowing these communities of animal and child endangerment to exist on their platform and are actively protecting them aswell.
So the twitter team has gotten back to me telling me I was in the wrong and they found nothing wrong with people advocating pedophilia, zoophilia, and necrophilia. Twitter is giving these communities and eco chamber allowing them to mass report people who tell them to seek help before they hurt somebody.
Twitter, the safe haven for child and animal endangerment.
Privacy Rating Warning
Privacy Rating
Our expert evaluators create our privacy ratings. The ratings are designed to help you understand how apps use your data for commercial purposes.
Pass
Meets our minimum requirements for privacy and security practices.
Warning
Does not meet our recommendations for privacy and security practices.
Fail
Does not have a privacy policy and should not be used.
TWITTER is an online social-networking and microblogging platform that lets users communicate through 280-character messages ("tweets"). Millions of people use it to keep up with news, gossip, weather, and more. Once you sign up, you can follow other users, who'll show up in a scrolling list of real-time tweets. Teens can follow specific accounts or hashtags. They can comment on tweets, which will be visible to other users, and find trending topics or browse general topics like sports, news, and entertainment. Users also can stream live video into their feed.
This network can be great for keeping in touch with friends or keeping up with what's going on in the world, but between mature content and potentially permanent posts, it's best for older teens. Twitter attracts a lot of web-savvy users, but it isn't really meant for kids. The ability to publicly post anything you want can get kids in trouble if they say something in the heat of the moment. And even if they delete a tweet, it doesn't always disappear immediately. The service's location-sharing features also make it too easy for kids to post their whereabouts, which can lead to face-to-face meet-ups with strangers. Finally, some tweets in the site's Trending section sound like plugs for various TV shows, and Twitter allows kids to receive tweets directly from celebrities they admire, such as sports stars, actors, and musicians. These messages can be extremely influential to impressionable minds (and are very often promoting products the celeb is getting paid to promote). It's also not that hard to find sexually explicit content, depending on your searches and who you follow. And also, comments on Twitter can be notoriously harsh and abusive if you have a public account. So, if teens use it to keep up with current events, content they love, or information they're interested in, it can be a great resource. Parents just need to keep an eye on privacy settings and your kid's activity on the platform.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about what's safe to post and what's not (for example, "prnts gone, party @ 123 main st tonite!!") for posts to Twitter and why it's a good idea for teens to limit tweeting to friends. How do you know if you can trust someone enough to make that person a "friend" with access to your private information?
Discuss teens' digital footprint and how universities and employers (not to mention friends' parents) might read their tweets and the impression they'll make based on their tweets and retweets.
Skills:
Thinking & Reasoning
:
applying information,
asking questions,
Communication
:
asking questions,
conveying messages effectively,
multiple forms of expression,
Responsibility & Ethics
:
following codes of conduct,
Tech Skills
:
evaluating media messages,
social media,
using and applying technology
Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by
suggesting a diversity update.
Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.
By Susan Yudt
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
