The app that is flirting banned teenagers after reports of punishment. Can it be the right approach?
By Tracy Clark-Flory
June 20, 2012 3:20AM (UTC)
Stocks
Reports surfaced week that is last three teens have been intimately assaulted by grownups they met through Skout, a social network application that enables users to “flirt, friend, talk.” The business wasted virtually no time with its reaction: It quickly turn off its split area for 13- to 17-year-olds, pending analysis feasible safety precautions which may permit them to reopen the city. As a result, this new York instances reported Monday regarding the supreme trouble of dependable online age-verification, the takeaway being that Skout can not extremely effortlessly keep children from utilising the software (or keep grownups from infiltrating the under-age part). However the essential unanswered real question is whether banning minors through the service could be the approach that is right.
Comparable problems have now been raised pertaining to more traditional networking that is social — nevertheless the Skout situation involves unique issues due to the flirty areas of the solution, that are more prominent than on Facebook. Much like in Zuckerville, you’re prompted to signal your sexual orientation upon sign-on, but there is however the extra solution to see “Who believes i am Hot” and produce your own personal “hotlist” of other users (a far more direct take in the Facebook “poke”). It is not precisely a dating website, however it isn’t precisely perhaps not a dating website — it is a social networking website with an emphasis on flirtation. Because of this, David Finkelhor of this Crimes Against kids analysis Center claims the business made the best choice in shutting down the 17-and-under community. “They launched section that is[the teen up as an afterthought as opposed to as a central concern of these company,” he states. “If some body really wants to help teens do internet dating, it requires to be carefully considered with plenty of education, cautions, punishment detection mechanisms and quality settings.”