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What is MeetMe? What parents should know

What is MeetMe? What parents should know

​The MeetMe app is an app that allows people to meet each other who live in the same general vicinity. Watch the following video and learn more about the app and how it works.

Meet New People is the app version of the popular online flirting, entertainment, and social networking website formerly called My Yearbook, and has some privacy and safety concerns. MeetMe is different from Facebook in that the primary uses of MeetMe are to meet new people and interact with them online rather than to keep up with your real-life friends. Teens, who must be 13 and in high school to sign up, use “lunch money” or credits to do things like put their profile at the top of the homepage as a spotlight for others to see; to get “priority in match” to increase the number of “secret admirers” you get; and play online games. Much of the communication has “flirty” overtones.

Parent concerns

In 2014, A San Francisco city attorney sued MeetMe, stating that MeetMe had “lax privacy protections give sexual predators a high-tech tool to exploit kids under 18 in California and around the country.”

Though MeetMe doesn’t allow users younger than 13 to sign up, a quarter of the site’s 40 million users are between the ages of 13 and 17, the city attorney’s office said. It said many users don’t understand that when they sign up, certain information becomes public.

What parents should know:

  • It uses geolocation to find people to meet.
  • It has chat options.
  • Divides people in the area by age.
  • It uses email and Facebook login information.

I rate this app a 1 out of 5 because it has the possibility of housing child predators posing as other people. Users should beware.

If your child is using the MeetMe app please talk to your child and find out how they are using it and with whom they are speaking. Children should especially know the rules about what they can and cannot share online. Use the skill of Effective Communication to begin the conversation.

Online safety begins at home. We encourage parents to use the skill of Effective Communication to help them talk to their children about online safety.

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Next week we will review another app. Until then, be safe in cyberspace.