Tikatok (http://www.tikatok.com)
common sense media says
Kids write and share stories safely on super-creative site.
parents & educators say
- 40% say safety or privacy is an issue
What parents need to know
Parents need to know that this site includes strong safety measures. Parents have to register -- providing email, home address, and phone number "as a means of verifying parental identity and consent" -- and approve their kids' accounts, and are notified when kids add a friend, submit a comment, or do any other public activity. Younger kids who find the publishing tools challenging may want to work with a parent to create a book.
Educational value:
Promotes reading and creative expression.
Violence:
Not applicable.
Sex:
Not applicable.
Language:
There doesn't seem to be a language filter, but the terms of use prohibit profanity and content that's not appropriate for kids. Users seem to respect these rules.
Consumerism:
Users can buy books and gift cards. A hardcover book costs $18.66 plus shipping and softcover is $15.92 plus shipping. The site partners with the Build-A-Bear toy company. No ads.
Drinking, drugs, & smoking:
Not applicable.
More on Tikatok
Review It
Most useful reviews by all members
dadsafety
adult
adult
PARENTS AND TEACHERS BEWARE!!!!
Our daughter, age 12, registered without our knowledge. She very easily put in bogus age information and put her email rather than ours, also very easy to do. After writing several short books, several "friends" commented on them. One in particular began chatting (which is allowed in their "clubs") and claimed to be a 10 year old girl but proceeded to ask a series of leading questions including requesting a cell phone number, her age, if she had a nick name, where she lived, etc. Fortunately my wife monitors her email and saw that they had began exchanging emails. This person turned out not to be a girl at all. We contacted the authorities after printing pages of chat exchanges. BEWARE PARENTS AND TEACHERS!!! This is NOT a safe place for children. In my opinion, any site that allows chats is a haven for preying upon the vulnerabilities of children. Also, beware that the books that are written don't contain any personal information. I was amazed that such an innocent site such as Build A Bear would be a gateway to this type of behavior. Parents, the authorities advised us to not allow children to have an email address and to lock their computers to access only those web sites that you explicitly allow.
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Avalone
parent of and 12 , 15 , 18 year old
parent of and 12 , 15 , 18 year old
gone
the website expired in june 2008 :(
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horrorlova345
kid, 13 years old
kid, 13 years old
safety is an issue
I used this site a few years ago and had problems with someone sending me a ' note' asking where i live. my mom never let me back on that site, which bummed me because it is REALLY fun for those who would like to be a writer one day. You can make your own book, save it, and then other people can click on something they enjoyed about it! ;)
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DEPDEP
parent of 11 year old
parent of 11 year old
Defective product. Bad customer service.
This is a defective product. After setting up and using this service for many hours to create a book, we suddenly started to see somebody's else's content being inserted. Even though we had saved our book multiple times, suddenly all our content was replaced by somebody else's content. We were using a non-trivial password, so the only possible explanation is that the product mixed up two accounts. Customer service was non-existant and unable to fix the problem.
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