Parents' Guide to Ask.fm

While the concept of this site -- encouraging people to learn more about their friends and foster a curiosity in others -- is a good one, not all users embrace that line of thinking. There are friendly interactions on Ask.fm -- Q&As about favorite foods or crushes, for example -- but you can't guarantee what kind of response you'll get when you post a question. The social media site has made some moves recently to give users a safer experience, such as offering a site with online safety advice -- but it unfortunately hasn't been able to stop some users from posting negative, inappropriate, and downright mean comments. Kids can turn off anonymous answers and keep themselves out of the live stream, but syncing with Facebook or Twitter means that a much wider audience can see those Q&As, so kids and parents should be mindful of that, too.

The app is unmoderated, which makes it a Wild West-like environment. Within five minutes, we encountered hate speech, obscenities, people singing the praises of illegal drugs, and graphic nudity (with many sexual references). There doesn't appear to be a way to report users directly -- which was particularly disturbing when we found a user whose screen name and avatar image seemed to promote child pornography. We reported it to company officials -- who still did not remove the profile for several days and said they would not alert law enforcement authorities about the user. Though users can report questions and answers they find objectionable, there's also bullying in some answers. This isn't an app kids should be allowed near.