App Safety Alerts
When popular apps and platforms make changes that affect children's safety, we break down what changed, what it means, and what you should do.
Instagram Close Friends: Privacy Upside, Social Downside
Instagram's Close Friends feature lets a user share Stories and some other content with a chosen subset of followers instead of their full audience.
TikTok LIVE and Virtual Gifts: The Age Rules
TikTok's own policies restrict LIVE streaming and its money features to adults: a user must be 18 or over to host a LIVE and to send or receive virtual gifts (bought with TikTok Coins and convertible by creators into money).
TikTok Shop and In-App Spending: What Parents Should Know
TikTok includes shopping (TikTok Shop) and in-app spending (Coins, used to buy virtual gifts).
Snapchat AI Selfie Features: Privacy Considerations
Snapchat offers generative-AI features (such as Dreams) that take a user's selfies and produce stylised or fantastical AI images of them.
Meta AI in Instagram: What Parents Should Know
Meta's AI assistant is built into Instagram (and Facebook), where it appears in search and chat and can answer questions, generate images and hold extended conversations.
Yubo: Grooming Risks on a Live-Streaming App
This is a standing advisory: Yubo is a social live-streaming app, popular with teenagers, whose core mechanic — going live and 'swiping' to make new connections — is built around meeting strangers rather than keeping up with existing friends.
Discord: Family Centre and Teen Safety Settings
Discord's Family Centre lets a parent connect to their teen's account — with the teen's consent — and see activity summaries: which servers they have joined and who they have been messaging or calling, but not the content of messages.
Telegram: Why It Is Hard to Make Safe for Children
This is a standing advisory rather than news of a change: Telegram remains poorly suited to children.
Apple Communication Safety: What It Does
Apple's Communication Safety feature can detect nudity in photos and videos a child sends or receives, stepping in with a warning and age-appropriate guidance before the content is viewed or sent.
Roblox: Age Verification and What 13+ Accounts Can Do
Roblox filters text chat for everyone, but more strictly for accounts registered as under 13, and some features — voice chat among them — are only available to users who complete age verification showing they are 13 or over.
YouTube Kids: Content Controls for Parents
YouTube Kids gives parents meaningful control over what a child can watch.
Reddit: Adult Content and Younger Users
Reddit's minimum age is 13, and the platform hosts an enormous range of communities, including many marked 18+ that carry adult content.
Google Family Link: Supervision Basics
Google Family Link is Google's free supervision tool for a child's Google account and Android device.
Discord Activities: Games and Watch-Together in Voice Channels
Discord voice channels support Activities — embedded games and watch-together apps that let everyone in the channel play or watch simultaneously without leaving Discord.
Older alerts
These are more than 6months old. Platforms may have changed again since — always confirm against the app’s current settings and our app guides.
Pinterest: Body Image Content and Teen Wellbeing
Pinterest is heavily used for appearance, fitness and lifestyle 'inspiration', which is exactly the kind of content that can quietly shape a teenager's body image.
TikTok: Direct Messages and Under-16 Accounts
TikTok does not make direct messaging available to accounts registered as under 16 — these accounts cannot send or receive DMs at all.
Snapchat My AI: What Parents Should Know
My AI is Snapchat's built-in AI chatbot, available to users including teenagers, and it appears pinned in the chat feed like a friend.
Apple Screen Time: Core Parental Controls
Apple's Screen Time, managed through Family Sharing, is the built-in way to supervise a child's iPhone or iPad.
WhatsApp: Controlling Who Can Add Your Child to Groups
WhatsApp includes a privacy setting that controls who can add a user directly to group chats, with the options Everyone, My Contacts, and My Contacts Except.
Character.AI: What Parents Should Know
Character.AI is an AI chatbot platform, popular with teenagers, where users hold open-ended conversations with AI 'characters'.
Steam: Family Controls and Purchase Approvals
Steam provides family tools that let a parent control what a child can do on the platform: restricting which games in the library the child can play, limiting access to the store, community forums and chat, and handling purchases by approval — a child can request a game and the parent approves (and pays) from their own account.
Snapchat: Snap Map and Location Sharing
Snapchat's Snap Map can share a user's live location with their Snapchat friends.
Roblox Voice Chat: How It Works and the Risks
Roblox offers an optional voice chat feature in supported experiences.
Minecraft: Multiplayer Chat and Family Settings
Minecraft's online multiplayer lets children play and chat with strangers on public servers, and the safety picture depends heavily on which servers they use.
Instagram Teen Accounts: What They Restrict
Instagram places users it knows to be under 18 into Teen Accounts, which come with built-in protections: the account is private by default, messaging from adults they do not follow is restricted, sensitive content controls are set to the most limited level, and there are time-management prompts including a sleep mode that silences notifications overnight.