Teens

Rates of depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts are surging among U.S. teens. A recent report from the Center of Disease Control found that nearly one in three girls have seriously…

YouTube’s comments section, historically, has had a bad reputation, but a change rolling out could prevent kids from wading into the comments cesspool. In an email to parents who supervise…

Less than a week after The Wall St. Journal reported on how a Snapchat feature dubbed “solar system” was adding to teens’ anxiety, the company has responded by adjusting how…

Making a video game successful is already hard. Doing so while complying with the growing number of child safety laws and regulations around the world is an almost insurmountable task.…

An independent review of popular AI tools has found that many — including Snapchat’s My AI, DALLE, and Stable Diffusion, may not be safe for kids. The new reviews come…

Two years after testifying before the U.S. Senate over child safety concerns, including teens’ exposure to eating disorder content, YouTube today announced additional product safeguards around its content recommendations aimed…

Snapchat today is announcing a series of new safeguards for its app, aimed at better protecting teen users, similar to other efforts introduced earlier by other social apps, like Facebook…

Pinterest today introduced a series of new safety features aimed at better protecting teens using its service. The features — which include things like private profiles, more control over followers…

Following last month’s NBC News investigation into Pinterest that exposed how pedophiles had been using the service to curate image boards of young girls, the company on Tuesday announced further…

In hopes of heading off concerns over the addictiveness of its app, TikTok earlier this month rolled out new screen time controls that limited minors under the age of 18…

Anonymous social apps have a history of devolving into bullying and harassment, ultimately leading to their failure. But a new startup called Ghost believes that putting in extra guardrails around…

For another year in a row, TikTok has found itself as the social app kids and teens are spending the most time using throughout the day, even outpacing YouTube. According…

Instagram announced today it’s expanding its selection of time management tools with the launch of a new feature called “Quiet Mode.” The feature aims to reduce users’ anxiety about taking…

The teenage market for apps is a tough nut to crack and stay relevant in. Just ask Snapchat. Equally, teens are going through a stage in life where almost every…

A popular anonymous social app that was misleading its users with fake messages has been forced to change. The top-ranked app NGL, which became the No. 1 app on the…

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. Global app spending reached…

The anonymous Q&A app NGL climbed to the top of the App Store by tricking its users with questions it claims are sent in by their friends and by charging…

A popular anonymous social app called NGL has now topped 15 million global installs, according to new data from app intelligence firm Sensor Tower, released today. The app, which is…

TikTok users regularly complain of hours lost on the platform, thanks to the video app’s unmatched ability to distract, entertain and engage users by way of its advanced recommendation technology.…

A small handful of Snap Kit platform developers have not yet complied with the new guidelines around anonymous messaging and friend-finding apps announced in March. The Snapchat maker revamped its…

After a bullied teen died by suicide, a grieving mother last year sued the platform where the abuse had taken place — Snapchat — for not doing enough to protect…

Months after TikTok was hauled into its first-ever major congressional hearing over platform safety, the company is today announcing a series of policy updates and plans for new features and…

Snapchat is rolling out new tools and educational resources to prevent younger users from buying counterfeit pills and illicit drugs via the platform. The company said on Thursday that the…

Facebook is in the hot seat again. The Wall Street Journal published a powerful multi-part series on the company this week, drawing from internal documents on everything from the company’s…

TikTok is expanding its in-app parental controls feature, Family Pairing, with educational resources designed to help parents better support their teenage users, the company announced this morning. The pairing feature,…

Instagram will begin prodding users to share their birthday with the service, if they haven’t already done so. The company today announced it will now start popping up a notification…

In May of this year, Snap suspended two Snapchat-integrated apps that allowed users to send anonymous messages, Yolo and LMK, following a lawsuit filed on behalf of a mother whose…

Earlier this year, TikTok made an update to its privacy settings and defaults to further lock down the app for its teenage users. This morning, Instagram followed suit with teen-focused…

Before kids graduate to the expansive virtual worlds in games like Roblox, Minecraft and Fortnite, they often get their start in online social gaming with a game like Animal Jam.…