What Parents Need to Know About WhatsApp

This summer I'm doing a series on What Parent's Need to Know about *insert some type of online thing here*... because it's not just parents that need to know these things but teachers too AND if there is one thing we all know it's that online stuff changes so often it's hard to keep up (especially when you aren't even using that app/program)!

Today I'm talking about another app that I don't currently have (although I have used this one in the past).... WhatsApp. I likely haven't used this app in about 5 or so years so it was interesting for me to read about what has changed and what I didn't realize when I had the app.

This is free to download here

First of all I did not know this was an app that used location sharing. It seems that location sharing is just becoming a common feature in many of this apps (Facebook and Instagram just to name a couple). So unless necessary I would make sure this is turned off asap. 

You may receive scam messages from third parties which can be super annoying wherever you get them. Make sure you and your child knows not to click on them (no matter how good the offer may seem) and delete them... it's just good practice to do this as random messages like this can and will pop up in other places (such as emails) too.

You can delete messages you send within 7 minutes. I did not know this one... so I guess instead of editing your message by resending a whole new message below the one you just sent you could just delete and start over. OR, if you sent a message to the wrong person (we've all done this) you can delete it and try again (this time hopefully with the right person). Of course the receiver could have already seen the message.

Finally, in order to add someone on WhatsApp you do so by having their phone number. This means that anyone with your phone number could one day add you on there... which for the most part is likely not a problem as we should only be giving our numbers to people we trust anyways. BUT, phone numbers are also generally not something that you change so maybe someone you knew 10 years ago still has your number and adds you and you just don't want to have anything to do with them anymore... I mean, whats stopping them from contacting you via a phone call or text I'm not sure but it could happen!

Last week I talked about what we all need to know about Twitter