Our kids are able to find websites that are not recommended for minors. All parents must be aware of these listed websites so that their child will not be a victim of digital injury. Unlike apps, websites make it much easier for underage children to gain quick access to explicit content. GKIS will provide a brief description of the websites, dangers attached to the websites, and methods to prevent digital injury.
Websites to Look Out For
Parler
In our previous blog article, Parler the Free Speech App was covered as a social network platform focusing on the freedom of speech protected under the first Amendment and user’s rights privileges. An increase of conservative users arrived on the platform in the wake of feeling censored on Twitter. In a battle between liberal and conservative views, big tech censorship has become a public outrage sending users to Parler.
As for children, GKIS stands by our previous decided outcome of Parler not being appropriate for minors due to extreme views and lack of censorship. According to Google Trends, the analysis of popularity for search with interest over time (IOT) ranges from 0 to 100. From January 10th to 16th 2021, Parler had a 78 IOT.[8] With a high population usage and the ability to not fact-check user’s posts, children using the app would likely be exposed to false and conspiracy-laden content.
Onlyfans
One of our most-read articles of 2020, Is Your Teen Selling Nudes on Onlyfans?, explained the risks that on Onlyfans kids and teens may easily access pornographic content. Onlyfans is a social media platform meant for users to access a creator’s content that may provide sexual content to subscribers for a monthly payment. From February 21st to 27th 2021, Google Trends reports that Onlyfans had a 99 IOT.[8] According to Onlyfans terms of service, the user must be 18+. Still, there are reports of minors bypassing the age verification without parent knowledge.[1]
GKIS cautions that minors should not have access to Onlyfans due to leaked information, stalking, life-threats, unemployment risks, and family separation. If you worry that your child could become a victim of sexual exploitation, you will get huge benefits from Dr. Bennett’s weekly parent and family coaching videos on the GetKidsInternetSafe App! Your first 30 days are free!
Toomics
In this comic book subscription service, users can receive Japanese and South Korean comics on horror, romance, and action genres. The service does provide a family mode to exclude inappropriate content. However, children can enable or disable the mode without password requirement.
GKIS recommends monitoring this service or, even better, blocking it from your children entirely. There is a vast amount of sexual content and nudity on this service, including comic book sex scenes, incest, and rape. According to the Google Trends report, from February 7th to 13th 2021, Toomics reports an 85 IOT based on search popularity.[8]
Reddit
In 2005, Reddit grew to be the most popular forum website on the internet. But how safe is it for children? The service provides subreddits of vast topics into smaller ones (e.g., from r/books into r/horror stories or r/Stephen King). Subreddits are organized by moderators who are individuals who manage the forum. As of February 27th 2021, Google Trend reports Reddit as an 87 IOT.[8]
Reddit may not look dangerous, but it does have a high volume of not safe for work (NSFW) material that may be easily accessible to children who lie about their age upon entry into the site. Reddit can be used for searching, browsing, and messaging anyone or anything which obviously holds a high risk of digital injury. For more information on the signs and risks of digital injury, be sure to check out Screen Time in the Mean Time A Parenting Guide to Get Kids and Teens Internet Safe.
The Chive
The Chive’s mission statement is “an outlet for attractive ladies from around the world to strut their stuff.” Although intended to be funny, much of the content on this site demonstrates misogynistic views and a strong prejudice against women.
Google trends reports, The Chive has a 95 IOT from February 21st to 27th 2021.[8] GKIS considers this a red light service due to its raunchy and sexist humor. A study by Brown and L’Engle (2009) reported a significant finding that adolescents exposed to sexual content in media are more likely to engage in sexual harassment two years after watching the activity.[3]
DeviantArt
DeviantArt is an online social community where members share their artwork for critique and to build a fanbase. According to their website, DeviantArt has 55 million users and has a score of 92 IOT from February 21st to 27th 2021.[8] DeviantArt earned a red light GKIS rating because reviews report extremely violent and bloody works of art. Parents also report content involving cursing, insulting, stealing art, fetishes, and nudity on community posts.[4]
4Chan
This highly controversial (and GKIS-rated red light) forum had made headlines because of anonymous users posting nude photographs of dozens of celebrities, including Emma Watson. 4Chan users often endorse sexist ideologies against female gamers like the cyberbullying of Jessi Slaughter and discuss neo-Nazi radicalism.[5] Unlike Reddit, users are not required to form an account. Due to its anonymity, kids can easily participate in R-rated posts undetected and unmonitored.[5]
If you haven’t selected a child-safe browser or set parental controls on devices, through your internet service provider, or through third-party apps and services, you’ll want to check out our Screen Safety Toolkit. We did the research for you with this comprehensive how-to safety resource guide.
Tumblr
In our GKIS article “The GKIS Sensible Parent’s Guide to Tumblr,” we rated this social media platform as a yellow-light app due to sexual images and inappropriate content often displayed on member accounts. With over 30 million users and a score of 83 IOT as of February 14th to 20th 2021, this microblogging social platform is still quite popular.[8]
High-risk content includes self-harm, sexual content, eating disorders, and drugs. There are also reports of sex offenders using the website to incite sexual conversations with children. We stand by our previous decision to recommend parents closely monitor their teen’s activities within the website.
Pornographic Websites (NSFW)
A popular website used for viewing pornographic content like photos, videos, and live streams is PornHub. To learn more about how porn impacts our kids and teens, read our GKIS article “Online Pornography’s Impact on Kids and Teens.” We previously reported that 13% of internet searches are found to access pornography. Due to increased access, that percentage has increased to 20% on the computer and mobile internet browsers.[6]
Fight The New Drug is a non-profit organization trying to reduce porn addiction and set regulations for the porn industry. In 2020, they reported that PornHub’s popular searches were “lesbian,” “teen,” “stepmom,” “mom,” “step-sister,” “hardcore,” “gangbang,” and “rough sex.”[7] Further, the average age for first exposure to hardcore pornography has been estimated to be 11 years old.[7]
GKIS highly recommends that parents add pornography websites onto their restricted website list in parental controls. The website Top Porn Sites can help you block them in child-safe browsers.
Hide it Pro
We would all love to believe that we can trust our kids not to search out, post, and collect inappropriate content online. But sadly, we just can’t. Kids and teens often delight in discovering and sharing titillating and forbidden content and hide it from parents. We cover how to check for apps that hide content in our Screen Safety Toolkit and Dr. B covers it in her coaching sessions on the GetKidsInternetSafe App. To get you started with safety, check all devices for Hide it Pro, a particularly popular hiding app.
Set up content restrictions on tablet and phone devices.
On iOS products, Apple has designated a method for parents to limit adult websites for their safety. Follow these steps:
Go to Settings > Screen Time
Tap Content & Privacy Restrictions and enter your Screen Time passcode
Tap Content Restrictions, then tap Web Content
Choose Limit Adult Websites, and Tap Never Allow: Add Website[9]
In this section, you can add each of the listed above websites to protect your child.
Google has designated parents’ methods to limit adult websites for their child’s safety on Android products. Follow these steps:
Open Settings
Tap Digital Wellbeing
Tap Parental controls > tap Get started
Select Parent
Tap Get Family Link and install Google Family Link for parents
Tap Open (review the information) > tap Get started
Use the on-screen instructions on both phones to finish connecting the two devices. Once it’s all set up, you can use the Family Link app to keep an eye on everything[10]
Thanks to CSUCI intern, Christian Sandoval for locating harmful websites that parents should restrict minors from interacting.
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.
Onward to More Awesome Parenting,
Tracy S. Bennett, Ph. D.
Mom, Clinical Psychologist, CSUCI Adjunct Faculty
GetKidsInternetSafe
[3] Brown, J. D., & L’Engle, K. L. (2009). X-rated: Sexual attitudes and behaviors associated with U.s. early adolescents’ exposure to sexually explicit media. Communication Research, 36(1), 129–151.
Were you the kid with a mohawk in the 70s or pegged pants in the 80s? Maybe you were goth, a skater, or straight-edge. Teens of every era love to experiment with creative expression and explore new philosophical ideas. The internet offers boundless opportunities to follow cool influencers andchat with like-minded others in online forums. Visiting random virtual neighborhoods can be mind-expanding and fun, but it can also be dangerous. Today’s GKIS article explores the world of online counterculture. Being in-the-know is a critical element to great parenting in the digital age.
New Age Counterculture
As adolescents begin to form their unique adult identity, they look to their peer community for ideas for current, creative interests, how they want to come across, and what they want to look like. Especially attractive to teens is anything that their parents ARE NOT. Trends that are new, fresh, and totally different from parents or social norms are aptly named counterculture.[1]
The concept of countercultures isn’t new. From the anarchists in ancient Greece to the punks of the 1970s, countercultures have always influenced trends and fashion. Because kids today form multiple identities in their real world and in various virtual worlds, they love to explore constantly-evolving countercultures.
Fun Curated Online Platforms
These days, online influencers define counterculture for kids and teens. Sometimes that results in harmless fun. Other times, influencers post sexualized and edgy content designed to shock and titillate, engaging their audience in active discussions and
sharing.
To help you become familiar with counterculture online content, we’ve selected some content creators for you to check out and explore. Please keep in mind that because we don’t monitor these sites, we can’t vouch for their choices or the choices of their followers. Only you can best decide what makes sense for your family.
Kathryn Loo, Youtube username@hellobatty, posts videos about crafts, outfits, vlogs, and more. Her gothic Lolita style and love for all things Halloween inspires her viewers to embrace their interests and gives viewers ideas on how to get creative in her own spooky aesthetic.
Alex Weaver, Instagram username@thegothicalice, posts artwork, fashion, and for-sale creations in her goth/punk style. She frequently posts about books she’s interested in, artistic projects she’s working on, and creative outfits she puts together.
Aurel Nelson, Instagram username @phonyghost,is a skilled costume creator who makes amazing images of her cosplays (meaning dressing up and portraying a specific character). Some of her costumes include superheroes. She frequently collaborates with other costume makers to make a spin-off of our favorite Disney princesses as punk rock girls.
Tae-Seon Hall, Tik Tok username@tae.seonrise,posts videos on funny reactions to how her style is perceived by the public, videos of her cat, and quick makeup looks.
Mary Rose, Blog @TheEveryday Goth, creates fun posts relating to counterculture events, fun reads, fashion posts, and references to goth classics such as The Addams Family. She also links goth themed stores and songs she loves.
Pros to Trendy Counterculture Sites
Opportunities to meet and interact with like-minded fans
Exposure to creative ideas and unique ideas that may not be reflected in your community
Encourage your child to develop independent thinking
Help to build self-confidence
Their participation reflects that your child knows your home is a safe place for expression and communication
Cons to Trendy Counterculture Sites
Unregulated, unmonitored messaging boards
Exposure to inappropriate content like sexuality, vulgarity, and cyberbullying
Exposure to hate groups, radicalization, fake news, and conspiracy theories
Conversations of that may encourage serious mental health-related behaviors like depression, anxiety, eating disorders, self-harm, and suicide
Pop up ads and marketing
Tips to Navigating Counterculture Sites
Dr. B offers the following tips to protect your child from inappropriate counterculture sites
Tell your child you’ll be monitoring their online activity and explain why you think that is important.
Have an ongoing, fun, cooperative dialogue to stay current with their interests, challenge their ideas, and teach family values.
Monitor sites your child is interested in by creating a bookmark and following the creators. Be alert for subtle messaging and links to other sites and music.
Insist on having your child’s login credentials to their devices
Review browser searches
Do not save your credit card information on sites you share with your child.
GKIS Parenting & Safety Tools
If you feel overwhelmed when it comes to keeping your kids safe online, we got you covered. Our GKISScreen Safety Toolkit offers tried-and-true tech tools to help with filtering, monitoring, and managing your child’s screen activities. We also share links to apps and social media safety guides for platforms popularly used by influencers. This parenting step is what Dr. B calls protectionism in her bookScreen Time in the Mean Time, an important part of parenting in the digital age.
If you’d love a more comprehensive parenting course to help understand not only how to manage your child’s media, but how to optimize creativity and learning potential, check out our GKIS Connected Family Course. Dr. Tracy Bennett, can even personally guide you through this process during a personalizedworkshop orin-person coaching. Our GKIS CEO is passionate about assisting families with these confusing moments and is available to you at a click of a button. Coaching is an efficient, cost-efficient alternative to in-person psychotherapy. Prevention is always better than treatment.
The Overall Verdict?
The GKIS mission is to help families achieve screen sanity, prevent digital injury, and form deeper, more meaningful relationships. That includes joining them where they’re at in experimenting with identity formation. Just like punk in the 1970s and new wave in the 1980s, online counterculture helps today’s kids discover all that this crazy world has to offer.
Special thanks to Aroni Garcia for researching and co-writing this article. If you want to learn more about the mentioned social media platforms of the GKIS approved counterculture influencers, check out the GKIS parents sensible guides to Instagram and Tik Tok.
[1] CrashCourse. (2017). Cultures, Subcultures, and Countercultures: Crash Course Sociology #11. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RV50AV7-Iwc&feature=emb_title
[2]Daschuk, M. (2010). Messageboard Confessional: Online Discourse and the Production of the “Emo Kid”. Berkeley Journal of Sociology,54, 84-107. Retrieved February 6, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/40999937
[3] Hawkes, N. (2015). Young goths may be more vulnerable to depression and self-harm, study finds. BMJ: British Medical Journal,351. Retrieved January 31, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/26521636
Thanks to CSUCI intern, Christian Sandoval for locating harmful websites that parents should restrict minors from interacting.
