Youth Voice: Advice for Parents About the VSCO App

If you are a parent wondering if you should allow your child to download VSCO, I would recommend setting boundaries with your child. VSCO is a good gateway app for introducing social media to your child. You can monitor who your child follows and the pictures they post which will allow them to be shielded from any inappropriate content. By doing this you are allowing your child to still have the freedom of having social media and posting their own pictures, but you are still making sure they are doing it in a safe way. Your child will not have to interact with comments and they will also not be able to comment on other posts. This allows your child to not have to worry about people being mean online. Overall I believe that if you are thinking about introducing your child to the social media world, VSCO is a great way to start with just a little monitoring. 

Quick Facts: 

• VSCO is an app designed to post pictures online 
• All public accounts, there is no setting for private accounts 
• Anyone can see your post 
• You can like, repost, and favorite other pictures you see on the app 
• You can edit your pictures 
• Compared to an online photo album 

Pros: 

• A place to hold all of your photos 
• Easy way to introduce kids to photo 
  editing by using the different tools provided on the app
• Can see your friends post
• Cyber bullying is limited due to the 
  fact you are not able to comment 
• Can only see pictures of the people 
  you follow 
• Restricts kids from running 
  into inappropriate content 
  -No counting “likes” so there is
  no need to produce content to gain “likes”

Cons: 

• There is no private account setting, so 
  anyone can see your post 
• Content is not strictly monitored 
• Can run into inappropriate 
  content relating to sex, drugs, alcohol, etc.

Recommend Age: I would recommend this app to anyone over the age of 13.

~ Sadie (high school student)