A New App That Makes iPhones Messages Disappear & More
Red Flag if your child has an iPhone, iPad or AppleWatch!!
3 weeks into 2025 and there is ALOT going on. In this week’s post I am warning parents about a new app for disappearing messages, a new social media platform that could replace TikTok plus the latest on the TikTok drama and a shameless plug for you to listen to my interview on the Healthy Screen Habits Podcast.
Let’s dive in!
Explode
What it is
This is a new app that allows Apple users to send disappearing messages. It's basically Snapchat for iMessage. And, your child’s friends don’t even need to download the app for it to work.
In an announcement on Twitter, the developer calls it a “spite app”– I guess they have some beef with Snapchat. And our kids’ safety is the collateral damage. Ugh.
What Parents Need to Know
Parents of children with access to any Apple Device need to make sure their kids do NOT download this app. Like now. Its your Snapchat nightmare now available for Text Messages.
What to do
Go into your Apple Parental Control settings and make sure that the app store setting are either set to “not allowed” or to “always require password” for installing apps, deleting apps and in-app purchases. (Paid Subscribers will find a refresher on where to find this setting at the bottom of this post)
Xiaohongshu / RedNote
What it is
In response to feelings about the TikTok drama, U.S. social media users are downloading a a new platform called Red Note as a back up. Red Note is a Chinese social media platform and as of this writing its currently #1 in the Apple Store.
Many believe its an even greater national security risk than TikTok.
What Parents Need to Know
I am not a data security expert but I can tell you that this app has no parental controls. It does have a Teen Enabled Setting that a user could set for themself… but the details of what that does are in Mandarin so I have no idea what a Teen Enabled Experience entails.
What to do
There are more questions than answers. I would hold off on allowing kids on this one until we can learn more.
Worth Flagging
The Latest on TikTok
The fate of TikTok is playing out in real time. TikTok was offline for about 12 hours from late Saturday night
until Sunday morning.
President Trump is expected to sign an executive order today evoking the 90 day extension and has pledged to find a U.S. buyer. So TikTok is back at least for the next 90 days.
I was on a Podcast
For those who aren’t familiar, Healthy Screen Habits is a non-profit with a mission of educating and empowering families to create healthy habits for screen use. On their podcast, I spoke with host Hillary Wilkinson about Snapchat Parental Controls, some of the ways that kids sneak around rules & more. Listen here, on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Play or wherever you listen to podcasts.
BONUS Section for Paid subscribers
Paid Subscribers get a video tutorial on where to find the in-app purchase settings in Apple Parental Controls so you can make sure you have oversight of the apps kids want to download.
How To Check Your App Store Settings
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