Wow!! that's scary. I do not think any teenager should be allowed to use an app like that. MOO
KIK is a dangerous app because it is anonymous. You dont need to link your phone number to your KIK account, and you dont need to use your real name. Anyone on KIK can pretend to be whomever they want to be. There is no way of determining whether the person you are messaging is the age and sex they claim to be, and your location can be tracked by users of KIK unless you disable location.
This is vaguely reminding me of the older, and now-defunct online chat instant-messenger service that was very popular for a time, and many, many people used to rely on to talk with each other with before all these other "Social Media" sites exploded; this is including myself, where for a few years of time even, I had running this software installed and running on my computer 24/7, some of you may recall a service called AIM or AOL Instant Messenger.
It's no exaggeration when I say that almost every single one of my closest peers happen to use, and sometimes then rely on AIM for their friend-to-friend communication throughout the time that I was in middle school, especially and even some of high school, too... back before Facebook and cellular-phone texting took over completely :crying:
Though since graduating HS in 2009, almost all of those 'chatting friends' of mine seem to now have either faded away, moved on, some have even passed on, or just gone on in to living their own destinies (Such is life, eh-? le sigh :sigh: and so now I honestly don't really even care or try to use social media, much at all anymore to 'talk to people')
But back when we first got a dial-up connection installed at my house in 2003, being at the age of twelve, a little late compared to friends at the time, but I got my first computer to learn to use and play games on in '98 at the age of 7...
So even though with me being very young when I received "the gift of the Internet", the rule and point was always made very poignant and kept abreast that I NEVER could repeat my full name, address, phone number, school name, hometown even, online anywhere or to anyone, for "personal security purposes"... (I was raised by my grandparents after the age of 4, and grandpa was a lawyer, so I can just imagine that essentially everything about me being on and using the Internet had to be a terrorizing thought for them :giggle: ; it was still drilled in to my head about where I should and have to draw the line as far as when chatting online with the familiar acquaintances and friends I had, versus the random strangers that could, and would pop up from time to time wanting to talk... and what that would mean as far as the 'limits of information' that I shouldnt expose of myself to mystery-usernames (Anyone remember, "What's ur A/S/L??")
I recall even at one point I had AIM hooked up to send my IM's (Instant Messages) to my *new* Nokia 3310 cell phone...