Can This App Protect Kids From Cyberbullying?

13 Reasons Why, Netflix’s show about a teenage girl who kills herself and leaves a box of tapes behind that explain why she took her life, has become a runaway hit amongst pre-teen and teenage viewers. But just as quickly as it’s attracted an intense following, the show has also managed to elicit outrage and condemnation from parents, teachers, and school counselors who worry the series might be doing young people more damage than good.

The show’s detractors argue that 13 Reasons Why dangerously glamorizes suicide, which could inadvertently inspire copycat-like behavior in impressionable and vulnerable young viewers. At the same time, parents are wondering what they can do to avoid missing warning signs of suicide and depression. The uproar has also led Netflix to add more trigger warnings at the beginning of episodes, while schools are trying to address the show’s growing popularity in letters to concerned parents.

But there are others, like American Girls author Nancy Jo Sales, who have made the case that the show actually does serve a greater purpose because it portrays the horrifying, all too common experiences many teens go through in high school, including cyberbullying, sexual harassment, and even assault. Perhaps what’s most disturbing about the show is that it highlights how often these instances of abuse tend to happen in a place where parents rarely know what’s going on—online.

In today’s hyperconnected world, teenagers are spending an average of nine hours a day online (Children ages 8 to 12 spend six hours per day.) Between texting, videos, gaming, and social media, kids today are experiencing more than a third of their lives through their phones. And yet, most parents have no idea what it is they are doing and what kind of interactions they’re having on that small device that’s available 24/7 in the palm of their hand.

“We’re in an unprecedented time in the history of technology because we are trying to raise digital natives,” said Titania Jordan, Chief Parent Officer at Bark, a new app that helps parents monitor their kids’ digital devices. “Not only is it concerning from a screen time point of view, or a cyberbullying point of view, but also [because they could be engaging] in some really risky behaviors like grooming and identity theft—it’s everyone’s worst fear.”

Bark isn’t the first app to promise parents peace of mind in regards to their child’s digital use. Limitly and Google Family Link allow parents to approve or block certain apps on their kids’ phones and lock their devices once it’s time for them to do homework or go to bed. TeenSafe takes monitoring a step further by linking up a child’s accounts to their parent’s phone, allowing them to see their kids’ texts, calls, browsing history, and geolocation in real time.

It’s hard to see a teenager ever agreeing to sign up for something like TeenSafe, but Bark seems like a more suitable compromise between kids and adults. With Bark, parents have the ability to monitor up to 20 social media platforms, iOS and Android texting, and email accounts, but instead of effectively spying on all of their kids’ digital behavior, Bark only lets parents see potentially risky online behavior. “We feel like teens and tweens need to have privacy and need to learn from their mistakes and develop a sense of autonomy,” said Jordan. “So we don’t feel it’s necessary to serve parents every single data point that’s going in and out of their kid’s digital lives.”

With the help of an algorithm that analyzes conversational data, the app can flag instances of sexting, cyberbullying, potential drug use, and whether a child is expressing thoughts of suicide or depression. Once it catches this type of interaction, the app then sends parents an alert and even provides next steps in how to address or talk to your child about that specific issue. “We’re not only looking for inbound risky behavior, we’re also looking for outbound,” adds Jordan. “God forbid my child is actually the bully. We want to be able to help stop that as well.”

In recent years, teens have gotten increasingly savvy in ways to hide their online interactions, mainly through vault apps, which allow users to hide questionable content, like sexting photos and messages, behind password-protected apps that resemble a calculator or a regular photo folder. But Bark keeps an eye on all of that, too. Not only does it let parents know when a new app has been downloaded, it also monitors a teen’s usage as well. “So let’s say you connect to your child’s Instagram and all of a sudden their usage goes down to zero,” explains Jordan. “Well, we know they probably haven’t stopped using Instagram; they’ve probably opened up a new Instagram account, so we alert you to that data point so you know.”

As for those parents who might be concerned about where all of their children’s data is actually going, Jordan assures that all of Bark’s information is heavily protected by SSL encryption. “We use the most stringent forms of protection that will keep their data safe and not further expose them to the danger that we are trying to protect them from,” she adds. “We hope that the public takes heart in knowing that we are a team of parents who are just trying to solve the issue that we are also dealing with our own children.” That sounds like a pretty good guarantee.