Kik Messaging App is a ‘Predator’s Paradise,’ Child Safety Advocates Warn

The messaging app Kik maintains it has put safeguards in place to protect minors — but child safety advocates warn the platform is actually a “predator’s paradise” that allows adults to send anonymous, sexually explicit messages to young users.

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Kik was launched in 2010 and quickly gained popularity, specifically among young people, because it allows users to chat without revealing their personal phone numbers or email addresses.

Facing scrutiny over lackluster safety guardrails for underaged users, Kik recently implemented new measures in an effort to keep minors safe. Those new efforts include requiring users to be at least 18 years old and to use a verified email address for sign up. The app has also begun using bots to filter out inappropriate content.

But, according to the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), the app remains an extremely dangerous environment for minors.

The NCOSE executed a test by creating two accounts, one with an innocuous name and one with a name that suggests the user is a minor. Both accounts checked off the option to allow messages from strangers.

The first account, under a typical female first and last name, did not receive any messages in the first 24 hours, Lily Moric, a communications and content strategist at NCOSE, told National Review.

But the account posing as a minor yielded a very different — and concerning — result.

The account with the username “Im12BeNice” received countless messages that were “exclusively sexual in nature.”

From nude photographs to requests to “do a live call masturbating,” Kik users, strangers who are ostensibly adults, directed inappropriate and sexual messages toward a user they apparently believed to be a minor, according to the NCOSE’s research. Moric is still receiving inappropriate messages on the account to this day.

“This only started happening once I advertised that I was a minor, so it really seems like on Kik, minors who aren’t supposed to be in the process to begin with are specifically being targeted for sexual propositioning,” Moric said. “In other words, grooming for sexual abuse.”

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Moric also noted that she tried several usernames that indicated she was a minor before landing on “Im12BeNice,” but Kik rejected her earlier sign-up attempts because the usernames were already taken. “Remember that Kik is an 18-plus app, so they should not be allowing minors on their app, right? I tried several usernames that advertise as a minor, and I couldn’t use those names because they were already in use.”

NCOSE officials voiced concern over the app’s apparent inability to seriously restrict underage users through a more stringent application of an age verification system.

“They say it’s an 18-plus platform, but first of all, they don’t use any age verification, even though they clearly know how to use age verification, because they are doing it in the UK, where it’s required by law, so they know how to do it,” Moric said. “They’re already doing it in markets where they’re forced to, but they’re choosing not to do it in every other market, including the US, where the law doesn’t strictly require that.”

Because the app claims to only serve adults, it is not required or motivated to implement any parental controls, Moric says, because doing so would create “more friction” for the company as strong safety features are a significant financial investment.

Kik did not immediately respond to National Review‘s request for comment regarding these concerns and NCOSE’s research.

“Our pressure test of Kik’s proclaimed safety changes indicates that the platform fails to protect children and remains a ‘predator’s paradise.’ In fact, this failure reveals that Kik is misleading the public to the direct detriment of children who will inevitably be sexually abused by strangers,” said Haley McNamara, executive director and chief strategy officer at the NCOSE. “This cannot stand, and Kik must urgently address this issue.”

The app has dominated the news cycle recently, following revelations that Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner had an active account that he apparently first created in 2016. His campaign told the Wall Street Journal he previously deleted the app from his phone, but never deactivated the account.

The bottom line, according to Moric, is that kids should not be on Kik.

“With Kik, just the experience I’ve had on it, what the research shows, it’s just so rife with sexual exploitation, and not a single message that I received was not sexual in some way,” Moric said. “It’s just not an experience you want your kids to have.”

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