A lot of our children, especially teenagers, are jumping over to Telegram as their messaging app of choice. When their friends join another chat app, they know that they may be left out unless they use that app too.

We tested using Telegram to explore what our teenagers will experience and to determine if there are any risks we should know about. We only needed 5 minutes to know that this app is not for children!

Our experience was as follows:

Firstly, we downloaded the app and registered our phone number

Immediately, we got more than 15 messages from our contacts welcoming us to Telegram. When you’ve joined Telegram before, and someone in your contacts joins, Telegram notifies you about this. Needless to say, all the people reaching out made us feel very welcome.

We started exploring the app and went to “Contacts”. Right at the top of this screen is a “find people nearby” button, which had us curious so we went there.

After giving the app access to our location, we had 5 groups nearby which were very inappropriate for even older children. Examples of these include “Escort service”, “Horny H_’s”, “Bi couples exploring”… Do we even have to go further?

Lastly, we clicked on the group that seemed the most above-board, and before we could send a message, the most explicit pornographic photo appeared.

Less than 5 minutes…

To conclude, a call to all parents – if your child is using Telegram, please make sure the setting for their location services is always off and that they cannot switch it on themselves.

FYI play it safe is the only app that monitors all the content on Telegram that your child is exposed to. Go to www.fyiplayitsafe.com and start your 7-day free trial.