NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — A new app being used by millions of teenagers that allows them to anonymously express their feelings is causing concern among parents.
The After School app allows a person to create a message board for an entire school where students can comment or post images. To gain access, the app verifies through Facebook that a student goes to that school and lets them post without using their names.
No parents or adults are allowed.
Father of three Tennessee middle school students accessed the app through his daughter’s Facebook account and in a matter of minutes he came across a sexually explicit video.
“It did not take too long for me to get on my daughter’s phone and to scan to some very inappropriate conduct,” said Bringhurst.
News 2, sister station to WBTW, contacted the app to alert them about what we found and to find out how the video made it past moderators and onto the site.
The company co-founder sent News 2 the following statement:
“Thank you for reaching out to us. We are very, very sorry about the experience that has occurred on After School. After School takes many proactive measures to ensure a positive and safe environment within each of our communities, including three levels of moderation, anti-cyberbullying processes, and live support for at-risk teens through our 24/7 helpline feature. In addition to our moderation processes, we also allow students to remove images with a single report, allowing them to instantly remove content that is a misuse of our app. GIFs cannot be manually uploaded by students. GIFs are populated by the internet (similar to how a Google Image search works), and then the message and GIF go through moderation. In regards to the post that you brought to our attention, the post has been removed, the poster has been banned from the app due to violating our code of conduct and terms of service, and we have removed the responsible moderator from our team,” Cory Levy, Co-Founder and COO of After School.
Belmont University Professor, Dr. Sybril Brown told News 2 there are things parents can do to restrict the type of apps their children use.
“The best we can do as parents is monitor to the best of our ability. In addition, utilizing other apps like Net Nanny that can monitor mobile devices, using parental controls that Apple provides within their software and data bases, and just being very, very vigilant,” said Dr. Brown.
“Check your children’s phones, laptops, check it now. See what they are accessing,” said Bringhurst.
