However, it does allow geotagging, which can broadcast your child’s physical location to their contacts.
#Most popular text messaging apps for free#
Viber can be useful for free calls and texts if used responsibly. Viber also offers the capability to make phone calls to non-Viber numbers for a small fee. Viber is a free texting and calling app that can be used to send photos and videos as well. Parents should be cautious about allowing their teens to use Kik. Adult predators have been known to pose as teens, and teens have taken advantage of the anonymity for cyberbullying. The anonymous nature of Kik is what makes it a potentially dangerous app for kids and teens.
#Most popular text messaging apps install#
Your teen doesn’t need a working phone number to install and use Kik – as long as they have data or WiFi access and a mobile device, they can use the app. What makes Kik stand out from other messaging apps is that it doesn’t rely on names or phone numbers – accounts are built entirely around usernames, making it completely anonymous. It’s free and can be downloaded to any phone or mobile device. Kik is another messaging app that allows users to send messages, photos, video, and audio. Kik Talk to your teen about protecting themselves and their personal information when using messaging apps. And some teens use the app to hide messages from their parents – if you check your teen’s texting history, you’ll need to check their WhatsApp messages too, or you’ll miss things. Predators have also been known to use the app to groom potential victims, so teens should be wary of communicating with people they don’t know offline. It’s important to make sure that teens know to leave this feature disabled. For one thing, the app can broadcast your child’s exact location. Although the app is relatively safe, there are some pitfalls of which parents need to be aware. WhatsApp also allows users to send photos and videos, make voice and video calls, and post status updates.
Since WhatsApp is free, this can save a lot of money for teens who are not on unlimited texting plans. With WhatsApp, teens can send text messages without using their phone’s text messaging service. Although Facebook owns the app, it’s isolated from the Facebook platform.
WhatsApp is a messaging app that’s owned by Facebook, but it’s separate from the Facebook Messenger app with which you might be more familiar. Messaging apps can be useful, but many popular apps also carry safety risks. Take a look at some of the most popular messaging apps for teens and find out what you need to know about them. It’s important for watchful parents to be as aware of these digital gathering places as they would be a physical location. But more and more, the new gathering places for teens aren’t physical places at all, but social messaging apps that they can access through their phones and other mobile devices. If most of your child’s friends were gathering at a new park, store, or coffee shop, you’d probably want to know something about the type of place it was and the people who were hanging out there.