Pinterest

Pinterest (Rated 12+, Social Networking)

Pinterest is a visual discovery engine for finding ideas like recipes, home and style inspiration, and more. With billions of Pins on Pinterest, you’ll always find ideas to spark inspiration. When you discover Pins you love, save them to boards to keep your ideas organized and easy to find. When you share something on Pinterest, each bookmark is called a pin. When you share someone else’s pin on Pinterest, it’s called a repin. You group pins together by topic onto various boards or pinboards in your profile. Each board mimics a real-life pinboard.⁸ Pinterest has always been considered a social media site for grownups. Still, recently more and more teens are opening accounts on Pinterest to get inspiration for their crafting hobby or share their artwork.

Potential Problems

Like all image-sharing social media platforms, you can find pornography. I recently had a parent contact me because his teenage son, who had been battling porn addiction, was going on Pinterest to find explicit images. You can send private messages on Pinterest. Pinterest messages can only be sent to someone who is following you. And, likewise, someone can only send you a message if you are following them.

Parental Controls

None.

Recommendations

Safe for children aged 13 years and older with parental supervision. If you allow your teen to have Pinterest, I suggest you check up on their activity by logging into their Pinterest account with their username and password. By logging in as your child, you can see the pins they have saved what they are sharing as well as their conversations.

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About the Author

Clayton Cranford
Clayton Cranford is a retired Sergeant from Orange County Sheriff's Department in California and owner of Total Safety Solutions LLC. Clayton is one of the nation’s leading law enforcement educators on social media, child safety, and behavioral threat assessments. Clayton is the author of the definitive book on cyber safety for families, “Parenting in the Digital World.” Clayton has more than 20 years of teaching experience and was awarded the 2015 National Bullying Prevention Award from the School Safety Advocacy Council, and the 2015 American Legion Medal of Merit. Clayton was a member of the County's Behavioral Threat Assessment Team, Crisis Negotiation Team, School Resource Officer program, and Juvenile Bureau.