If you haven’t heard of ‘Momo’ or ‘The Momo Challenge’, you’ve probably been living under a rock for the last few months. While most people in the UK will have heard of it, knowledge of what it ‘actually is’ will be sparse due (more…)
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If you haven’t heard of ‘Momo’ or ‘The Momo Challenge’, you’ve probably been living under a rock for the last few months. While most people in the UK will have heard of it, knowledge of what it ‘actually is’ will be sparse due (more…)
Posted by Darren Jamieson
According to a report from Ofcom, the UK’s media regulating body, social media site Facebook experienced a dip in popularity among the nation’s youth during the (more…)
Posted by Alan Littler
The world’s largest social media site, Facebook, has recently revealed that it plans to integrate its messaging tools into a number of other popular social sites it controls.
Facebook intends to (more…)
Posted by Alan Littler
The stories feature has become a permanent feature for many social media platforms in recent years, following its initial creation by picture messaging platform Snapchat back in 2013. It took off in (more…)
Posted by Alan Littler
Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp has recently revealed radical plans to stop users under the age of 16 from accessing the app as of next month.
The company is raising the minimum age of joining the app to 16, an increase of three years. Furthermore, this change is only for users within the European Union because of the changes to rules regarding data protection and the introduction of GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), which comes into effect on May 25 and changes the way business can use data they have on their customers.
One of the new rules is that those under the age of 16 will not be allowed to join any online service without the consent of their parents and guardians.
Currently, WhatsApp has over 1.3 billion users on a monthly basis all over the world. A report by OfCom last year showed that 83% of UK children aged 12-15 owned a smartphone, with the stat being 39% for British youngsters in the 8-11 age category. Of those in the 12-15 category, 74% had set up an account on some form of social media (23% of 8-11s, even though they are not permitted to due to age restrictions). This would suggest that there are a lot of British kids who use WhatsApp already.
As the above statistics would suggest, this is something of an ambitious mission for WhatsApp, as it could prove tricky to make sure the younger generation does not get on, or back on, to the service. The company’s methodology behind this plan will either see it be a massive success or a tremendous failure. WhatsApp has not yet said how it plans to maintain its new age control.
If it is to set up a rigorous signup process that demands proof of age, this could put off people from joining the site altogether, plus what will it do to those who lie about their age to gain access, in a similar way to what they appear to do already?
GDPR remains a subject that many companies in the European Union are unsure about. The legislation will state that fine will either be up to €20m (£17.5m) or 4% of a company’s annual turnover. So for huge companies with many users, such as WhatsApp and parent company Facebook, these fines could be astronomical. Therefore, with the financial implications looming large over these companies, they will need to take GDPR seriously and think of ways to ensure they are compliant when it comes to these new age limits.
Posted by Alan Littler
Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp has recently launched a new app aimed at small business owners.
The app is called WhatsApp Business and is (more…)
Posted by Alan Littler
Messaging platform WhatsApp has recently announced that it will be rolling out a new feature that will allow users of the platform to share their location with (more…)
Posted by Alan Littler
Social networking giant Facebook has recently revealed that it plans to change to way Facebook Stories works, in the hope that it will encourage more people to use it.
Since it was introduced to (more…)
Posted by Alan Littler
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