15 Year Olds Most at Risk on YUBO

A recent report by DCU (Dublin City University) on the Yubo app, dubbed ‘Tinder for Teens’ due to its swipe left feature to instantly connect with other users – has indicated that 15 year olds are the age group most unconcerned about privacy and most likely to share their private details in lieu of gaining followers.

Yubo (formerly ‘Yellow’) now has 15M users who post 3M messages per day.  60 % of the app’s users are aged between 13-16 yrs with 40% aged 16-17.  Almost one third of its users are 15 year olds. 

How it works

Yubo is a location based app, which allows you to live-stream chat and video in one to ones and in groups.   

Yubo enables you to link and create ‘friendships’ by using a Swipe Left feature.

The app encourages users to use emojii’s to describe themselves.

What’s Happening on the App

65% of users use the emojiis.  Of the 8 most used, half have a sexual meaning.  These include emojiis of liquid (bodily fluids), fire (hot/sexiness) and a tongue (oral sex).

Users are embedding their username and Snapchat codes in their bio or profiles.

Users are sharing their location.

Yubo Safety Update

Recently Yubo has removed the feature allowing you to connect to Instagram and Snapchat.  Despite this the sharing of private content is still a concern on this app due to teenagers embedding their username and Snapchat codes in their bio or profiles.  So that information is readily available to all users regardless of matching or swiping.    As well as that – over 80% had integrated their Instagram profiles anyway.

Liam Challenor of the Anti-Bullying Centre at DCU said that parents needed to be aware of their child’s activity on the app.  Check out our recent blog on Yubo Safety Updates

Lastly

15 year olds pushing boundaries and taking risks is not news to parents.  We know this is a vulnerable age between childhood and adulthood. However, Yubo and other apps like it, enable risk- taking behaviour online and make connecting to strangers even easier via it’s features.  Remind your teenager of the risks of ‘friendships’ with strangers online.

Supporting you in everyday online life, 

Wayne

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