Kik Review: The Good, The Bad, & The Unpredictable

This is a short but comprehensive, opinionated review of the well popular mobile phone application known as "Kik".  For those of you that are not familiar with this application that can be downloaded to your children's and teen's smartphones, it's a good idea to familiarize yourself with the app.  Kik is an instant messaging application that allows someone to message another "kik user" for free if the recipients have the application installed on their phones as well. When I first heard of kik from someone, I asked her why would I want to "kick" her and didn't know until she explained to me how kik works.

The issue I personally have with kik is that anyone can download and access this program and for young teenagers and kids, this is an app you want your kids to stay away from until they turn at least 18. The application itself, I have no issues with as I use kik to chat with friends that do not have texting plans on their phones. The only issue that bothers me is how easily accessible this app can be by kids. Although some apps have age restrictions,  kids can easily lie about their age to bypass the age restrictions and this is very unfortunate as they could be exposed to a variety of adult content that is posted and used within kik. 

As most active kik users are aware, especially females is that they are bombarded by young guys and much older MEN that could be old as their grand parents, asking for provocative and nude photos of these girls and then post them over the internet for the world to see and time and time again, you'll hear in the news how preteen and teen girls have pictures leaked online because of applications as these. Again, I'm not berating kik as it's a great application, but just not appropriate for kids and young teens.

In addition,  it's not just males that are initiating and asking for provocative pictures, but females are also asking the males for the exact same thing. If you don't believe me,  take a look at the screenshots I've took when I had kik in the past as it speaks for itself. It's unfortunate that some people attempt to exploit others and abuse a good app but as the saying goes: "to each of it's own".
Screenshots from previous kik conversations: