What is the Yubo App?

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Description: Yubo (formerly Yellow – corporate website: www.yubo.live) is designed to do one thing – allow teens to connect and flirt with each other in a “Tinder” atmosphere (swipe right or left). Think of it as Snapchat and Tinder rolled into one, which is what makes it easy for teens to use because they’re already so comfortable with Snapchat and all of its fun filters. 

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What do parents need to know about Yubo? 

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Yubo is a flirting app for teens: that’s it. Called “Tinder for Teens.” It’s Parisian creators even go as far as to limit the age you can self-select in the app to the range 13-17, which proves their purpose.

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When I tap “Discover” at the bottom, I can swipe left to dismiss a picture, tap on the picture numerous times to see what other photos or videos were uploaded by the user, or swipe right to let the user know I “heart” their profile and if they reciprocate, then a friend is made who I can connect with through the app.  

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The rating was too low: based on the Tinder-like culture of the app, no 12-16 year old should be using it. 

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Age Verification for iPhone Users: Those using Apple devices will have to verify their age using Yoti’s age estimation technology. Users must take a selfie and a short video of their face. It is 98.9% accurate and if the verification doesn’t match the age listed, the user is prompted to go through a full ID check.

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What Can I Enable or Disable In Yubo? Yubo’s settings allow parents to disable location services, hide profiles from the “swipe” section of the app, and hide your phone number if you provide it to the app. It’s worth doing all of these for teens who are using the app.

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Are there predators on Yubo? Wherever the kids are, that’s where the predators are, and they (predators) especially congregate around apps whose purpose is hooking up because they can play along with fake accounts. Various news sources are warning about the predator risk.

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Also, note that the default privacy settings are to show our city and phone number to friends. To the app’s credit, when I created a profile without a real picture (it was a Ferrari), I was blocked within a week because that violates Community Guidelines. So, it seems someone might be watching, but faking a profile picture isn’t difficult.

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Yubo encourages using Snapchat: Yellow is linked to photo-sharing app Snapchat. As soon as two users swipe to accept each other, they are automatically added as “friends” on Snapchat, meaning they can begin sending each other photos right away — even if they don’t know each other.

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Bottom Line – Is Yubo Safe?

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Parents, please keep your kids away from this app. There’s no reason for it. Which means monitoring App Store access. The app is rated 17+ for really good reasons, so make sure teens aren’t able to download 17+ apps or you have Family Sharing (Apple) or Family Link (Android) set up in order to monitor apps.

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Related article: 3 Reasons to Disable the App Store

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What if I have more questions? How can I stay up to date?

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Two actions you can take!

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1. Subscribe to our tech trends newsletter, the PYE Download. About every 3 weeks, we’ll share what’s new, what the PYE team is up to, and a message from Chris.
2. Ask your questions in our private parent community called The Table! It’s not another Facebook group. No ads, no algorithms, no asterisks. Just honest, critical conversations and deep learning! For parents who want to “go slow” together. Become a member today!

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