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Snapchat Sued for Serving Sexually Explicit Content to Minors

GrumpyMom said:
Well as a parent I did not know that. But I assume everything these days is used for sexting and nudes. It saves time and energy having to keep up with all the crap coming at kids from everywhere.

It's a shame there aren't many safe harbors for kids anymore. But it is what it is. And so my husband and I diligently sift through the kids' communications. The tricky part is dealing with the fact we can't control what a kid sees and hears at a friend's house if the friend's parents aren't as diligent and tech savvy. So we have to do a lot of talking about our expectations and what we deem appropriate or inappropriate and downright stupid and degrading and self destructive online activity and how we expect our child to react to peer pressure. And we have to do so in a way that doesn't scare a kid off from confiding in us. My daughter sees me as a "cool mom" so I'm let in on a lot. For now. My position is always as precarious as that of a cop working with a mob snitch and requires as much finesse. :eek::confused:

Despite all that effort, we'd have to be incredibly naive and stupid to think some stuff isn't getting past us once in awhile. We were kids once, too...
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Fair points. I think that the day sex is not seen as a 'taboo' or a 'sin', that's the day parents will have engaging and empowering talks with their kids about it rather than punishing them, scare them, or sue companies.
 
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Exile714 said:
I would say Millenials had an easier time gaining access to pornographic materials than the current generation of kids. These days, porn filters and app-download restrictions are more available to parents and much harder to defeat.
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If a school allows access to Blogger, IMGUR, Twitter, Reddit and Google Images, porn is really easy to find.
 
alexgowers said:
Snapchat is not a youth thing it's a 20s-40s thing. And i'm sorry but sex and bodies are not something that should be hidden from children by companies, it should be adults/parents/guardians who "protect the child" from what they consider offensive. You can't hold companies 100% to blame, any compensation they give to the child should be equal to what the parent is required to pay in compensation. It should cut both ways.
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Snapchat is definitely not a 20s - 40s thing.

Snapchat is a teens- early 30s thing. Most of my students don't have facebook or twitter. It's just Instagram and Snapchat.
 
Apple fanboy said:
We were kids once, but (depending on how old you are) being exposed to this sort of thing was hard work (I'm pre internet and smart phones btw.)

So we were allowed to be kids. Now you get a very small window of opportunity to not have this stuff rammed down your throat (so to speak).

I'm not sure it's helping a generation to grow up where porn and sexting are on tap whenever you want it. With their views on women especially.
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I agree. Actually I am 50 but was not particularly carefully raised by the standards I and most of my friends hold ourselves to as we try to raise our own children. My parents were lax about what I was allowed to see and read, to say the least.

I can say from experience it does a child no good to see content of an adult nature when they lack the experience and perspective and a healthy context in which to process it.
 
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adamjackson said:
If a school allows access to Blogger, IMGUR, Twitter, Reddit and Google Images, porn is really easy to find.
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They don't. It's easy to get past those restrictions though. Me and my friends gained celebrity status and mean looks from teachers when we installed proxies and so many inappropriate games on their shared servers.
I was close to figuring out how to access more administrative tasks to disrupt class lectures but they threaten to expel us.
 
If Dnapchat were an individual they'd quite rightly end up in prison for peddling this stuff to kids, somehow I doubt anyone at Snapchat will end up inprisoned....at best a fine.
 
I wonder if they talked with Snapchat first. I read what I could of the complain but it's behind a sign-up wall.
 
Exile714 said:
I would say Millenials had an easier time gaining access to pornographic materials than the current generation of kids. These days, porn filters and app-download restrictions are more available to parents and much harder to defeat. Plus, schools and parents are generally more proactive in keeping kids within a bubble of safety at all times, which makes it harder to find time to access those materials. In the 90's and early 2000's, that wasn't the case and those kids were exposed to much, much more.

So let's look at your argument about how kids who are exposed to pornographic material affects kids' treatment of women. Millenials are much more likely to show anger towards social injustice (especially toward perpetrators of sexual violence) as well as economic inequality for women in the workplace. If access to pornography truly had such a negative effect of n generations of kids, surely Millenials would be the proof.

Now before anyone goes and says "well, such and such Millenial commited this or that sexual assault" I'm going to point out two things: 1) you can't judge a generation based on the actions of an extreme minority, and every generation has sexual predators. 2) the reason we hear so much about those cases is because the stories resonate with certain audiences, and we have Millenials on social media to thank/blame for the increased focus on gender issues.
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Well I wasn't a kid in 90's or 00's. It was much earlier!
Teenage boys expectations of what a normal sexual relationship is like had been changed by what they see. It's now the norm to expect your teenage girlfriend to share pictures.
That certainly wasn't the case when I was young and you had to take your photos to the developers!
Yes porn has always been available, but not to the extent that it is now.
If Snapchat (and I've never used it, so I'm not an expert) is sharing explicit content with minors who aren't even looking for it, then something is seriously wrong.
 
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As to the suite, It has been interesting to me to see how each generation has adopted specific apps. Facebook which was the thing of colleges when created is now the thing for adults -- as my daughter said the other day: FB is for moms. Instagrams is now where a lot of the under 30 live from what I can see. And snapchat is where the under 20 live. As stated by others, two questions arise. 1. does the snapchat app have filters/settings that allow the user to filter out explicit content? 2. Did the parent and child set those filters/settings appropriately. If the answer to 1 is "no" then there is a case in my mind. If the answer to both 1 and 2 is yes and explicit material showed up, then is a case in my mind. The only way that this is a bogus case is if the parent and child failed to set the filters/setting in which case it is a classic user error issue.
 
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What is considered "profoundly sexual and offensive content" in the States? I'm really curious, because most of the time it's just ridiculous. Are we talking about mere nudity or depictions of depiction of sexual acts? There's a huge difference.
 
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GrumpyMom said:
Well as a parent I did not know that. But I assume everything these days is used for sexting and nudes. It saves time and energy having to keep up with all the crap coming at kids from everywhere.

It's a shame there aren't many safe harbors for kids anymore. But it is what it is. And so my husband and I diligently sift through the kids' communications. The tricky part is dealing with the fact we can't control what a kid sees and hears at a friend's house if the friend's parents aren't as diligent and tech savvy. So we have to do a lot of talking about our expectations and what we deem appropriate or inappropriate and downright stupid and degrading and self destructive online activity and how we expect our child to react to peer pressure. And we have to do so in a way that doesn't scare a kid off from confiding in us. My daughter sees me as a "cool mom" so I'm let in on a lot. For now. My position is always as precarious as that of a cop working with a mob snitch and requires as much finesse. :eek::confused:

Despite all that effort, we'd have to be incredibly naive and stupid to think some stuff isn't getting past us once in awhile. We were kids once, too...
Click to expand...

My wife and I actually fell into a good role. Our daughter sees her as he cool parent and me as the parent. So it's good cop, bad cop. It helps because she expects me to keep an eye on what she's doing and my wife can actually find out what she is doing and she filters it through me. For the most part though, it doesn't matter, she tells on herself.
 
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TMRJIJ said:
They don't. It's easy to get past those restrictions though. Me and my friends gained celebrity status and mean looks from teachers when we installed proxies and so many inappropriate games on their shared servers.
I was close to figuring out how to access more administrative tasks to disrupt class lectures but they threaten to expel us.
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See, kids who can do that are the reason I work so hard on establishing good communication with mine rather than solely rely on filters and bans.

I know darn well and good that despite our best efforts, either my own kid or one of the many others in my life will see or read or hear something really graphic and requiring a good dose of brain and eye bleach. That's where I hope that my open communication with them well let them feel they can come to me to discuss what they've seen and try to put it in some perspective they can optimally deal with.

At some point a proactive parent needs to just assume the worst has been seen and discuss some very squicky topics and provide a context and point of view. For example, it is a sad fact of life that most kids have already by a very early age been exposed to something degrading to women.

Heck, I've already had to make that assumption for my 11 year old just because we were stuck at a red light next to a car blaring rap music with explicit lyrics. So I've already had to provide a clear explanation of the sense of morality my husband and I want to pass along regarding how men and women treat each other and our expectations of how our child is to conduct herself.

And all this is in response to material I reasonably assume she's been exposed to despite our best efforts. Because really, just the commercials for movies and some tv shows that air during football show images that are very disturbing and demeaning to women for children too young to have a proper perspective on them.
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SgtPepper12 said:
What is considered "profoundly sexual and offensive content" in the States? I'm really curious, because most of the time it's just ridiculous. Are we talking about mere nudity or depictions of depiction of sexual acts? There's a huge difference.
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You know, that is something that a person has to decide for himself or herself past the age of 18 in the US. For 18 and under, it is up to the parent or legal guardian to decide in accordance with the laws. So for some people it would be mere nudity.

Beyond that, you would need to consult the various ratings and standards laws applicable to different aspects of the entertainment industry and media. It's complex because there are different standards for different venues.
 
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Exile714 said:
I would say Millenials had an easier time gaining access to pornographic materials than the current generation of kids. These days, porn filters and app-download restrictions are more available to parents and much harder to defeat. Plus, schools and parents are generally more proactive in keeping kids within a bubble of safety at all times, which makes it harder to find time to access those materials. In the 90's and early 2000's, that wasn't the case and those kids were exposed to much, much more.

So let's look at your argument about how kids who are exposed to pornographic material affects kids' treatment of women. Millenials are much more likely to show anger towards social injustice (especially toward perpetrators of sexual violence) as well as economic inequality for women in the workplace. If access to pornography truly had such a negative effect of n generations of kids, surely Millenials would be the proof.

Now before anyone goes and says "well, such and such Millenial commited this or that sexual assault" I'm going to point out two things: 1) you can't judge a generation based on the actions of an extreme minority, and every generation has sexual predators. 2) the reason we hear so much about those cases is because the stories resonate with certain audiences, and we have Millenials on social media to thank/blame for the increased focus on gender issues.
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Did they really? I guess if they had a computer in their bedroom they did. From what I remember of parenting in the 90's-mid 2000's most families had one centrally located "family computer" in some communal area of the house. I remember it being a pain in the tail to download anything over a 24.4 modem. Lol.

But yeah I suppose a lot of parents did let their kids have a pc of their own in a bedroom or something. I know my friends didn't. I remember everyone sharing info on how to use parental controls on their pcs or on AOL.

There were no good tablets or smart phones to speak of. When my 11 year old was born we were using Treo phones. Hah, try looking at porn on those little fuzzy square screens!

It's harder to to monitor kids now because increasingly younger kids have access to iPods, iPads, iPhones and other similar android devices that they can use away from prying parental eyes more easily than they could that pc in the den. But that's my perspective on it as an adult of that era. You clearly had a different experience of it. Very interesting.
 
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adamjackson said:
Is this the first time the've been sued for this? It can't be. I've been hearing about teens sexting using Snap chat for years which by default means that snapchat, a corporation hosts and distributes child pornography which means they should have been investigated a long time ago.

why did it take so long?
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it's not about what people send to each other otherwise there's no difference to what u can do with even a simple MMS. it's about the discovery feature.

either way, what a stupid mother. I bet she blames teachers for their kids bad grades too
 
vertsix said:
This is like suing Google for delivering porn results.
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Well, if they do it in the mode that shouldn't be delivering it, then there's something to it, right?

Also, having Google just serve up these things without you asking for them and simply by going to Google is somewhat different then searching for them, right?
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B4U said:
And the minors still find other ways to look for explicit contents on the computer at home...
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Sure, and it's also unrelated to this.
 
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Human sexuality is like a river that starts flowing when we turn 11-13. You can try to dam it ;) but it will always find a way. Perhaps the problem is not nudity or sex, but our immaturity to accept that we are sexual beings and embrace it in a healthy way.
 
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The problem is not the curated content. The issue is that kids are performing sexually explicit acts and distributing them to people with these apps. They think its safe. High school kids are doing crazy crazy things with this app. When you talk with some of these kids you really have a scary picture painted. If you want to keep your kids out of trouble you need to limit exposure to these things. Most teens have no idea the real implication of this stuff until its too late.

In the 90's household we typically had a family computer only, and it was in plain sight. That was a deterrent, especially with the 56k. Now we give them a computer they can take anywhere that nobody knows what's on it. They will always do things you don't want them to do....but limiting the opportunity is the best solution. Smartphones mixed with social media have become a real destructive force in society. People think parenting is the answer, but the truth is kids always want to do the things you tell them not too....and they always know more than you. Maybe instead of developing AI that can sell you more things....we should be building things to help our kids not make poor choices.

Most of these companies are making money by eroding our morality and couldn't care less about well being. Snapchat's user base is teens, and a big part of that user base sends explicit images and other pointless crap.....so they have no motivation to stop it. $$$$$ We could have cleaned up the morality of the internet long ago....but unfortunately the smut and filth are what make $$$$. People will always flock to money....who cares as long as we make money. Once the world moves past money there will be hope.

Social media is just another thorn in society. People think they need it, like somehow other forms of communication aren't possible. Everyone acts like we need constant communication....but the more we communicate, the less we are communicating.
 
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