#61 Is Marco Polo App Safe For Teens? Learn from Scott Paul - Smart Social Podcast with Josh Ochs

Subscribe to our podcast on: iTunes – Google Play – Stitcher Radio – Spotify – Web Player

Hire Josh Ochs to speak at your organization.

Key Takeaways:

Students love quantity sometimes more than quality.
There are so many things that are keeping you from succeeding when you're creating an app. You're not thinking about how to protect families or kids.
Let's opt out of this for a while. I think parents need to have a little more courage and talk to their kids directly.

Is it okay for Marco Polo to get our phone contacts

You are not wrong to worry about this app. I can think of many apps that are developed in a different country. They always gained contacts from you then give you a little bit of a reward for information. I think the next question you ask yourself is what do I know about this company?

Your data is exchanged for an experience. It is like a game, walkie-talkie video. It allows you to leave video messages to friends and family. Think of the intent of the app. You have to understand the founder's theory. I believe that the exchange is well worth your phone number. With Marco Polo, I'll have hours of great experiences and product in exchange for very little that I am giving away.

The Danger of Data Sharing

There is no way a private company can assure you–other than show user privacy policies– that their mission is to do something else with your data.

Positive Attributes of Marco Polo App

As a parent who knows the app, I love Marco Polo. Because of its close network, it's used primarily as a telephone. It's not meant to go find new connections that you don't know. Inherently, there's no shareable content made in Marco Polo that you're trying to go get followers with. It creates a closed loop system that imports convenience.

If I'm buying my kid a phone, out of all the apps that exist it would probably be one of the few that I would install and let them use to communicate with me (before Instagram and Facebook). It would be a core app that's like iMessage. Since I've watched and seen how it works as a parent, I trust this company enough that I'm not worried about the 12 contacts in my kid's phone getting shared. I think the app encourages a lot of good behavior.

I've been around enough bad apps in my life. Working and building that model for them, I know the conversations and the intent and the kind of features that are used by apps that have a more malicious growth hacking mechanism. I've seen both sides that have a good intuition of what apps are after and what they're trying to accomplish.

What is one thing you want parents to know to keep their kids safe online

I'm a bigger advocate of abstinence than I am of safe social. I hear so many parents today going through this dilemma when their kid are preteens. "I don't want to give them a phone or I don't want them to have Instagram but everybody has it." Kids keep insisting and many parents don't have the power to fight through that and say, "stay free of either getting a phone or getting social media like Instagram and SnapChat."

We're letting the kids rule at this point. I'm abstaining from the technology for my kids and find things that are positive replacements. Try to find other communities where parents have chosen to opt out of the phone race of getting kids more stuff sooner and sooner.

Let's opt out of this for a while. I think parents need to have a little more courage and do the same and talk to their kids directly.

Resources

Wait Until 8th

Scott on LinkedIn

Next Steps for Podcast Listeners:

Join Parent University to get videos to watch with your kids so they can better understand WHY they need to be smart online.

Please share this episode with a friend and subscribe so we can help more parents. Thanks for all your support.

Read more here: https://smartsocial.com/blog/

Join our next webinar to learn the 30 worst apps your students should never use: https://smartsocial.com/#webinars

Join Parent University to get videos to watch with your kids so they can better understand WHY they need to be smart online.

View the top 50+ good and bad teen apps in our Popular App Guide page for Parents and Educators.

Learn more at https://smartsocial.com