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Parents' Guide to

TalkLife

By Dana Anderson, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 17+

Instead of help, might find misery in mental health chat.

TalkLife Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this app.

Community Reviews

age 17+

Based on 16 parent reviews

age 17+

No good

This app is crap the autohawk on there is a snowflake who cencores everybody and everybody's posts and kicks people or bans people on there for no reason you can't actually express how your actually feeling or an actual real opinion of how you are actually feeling even saying you have a crush on somebody will get you banned your device gets banned for no reason
age 18+

Very misleading

It’s very toxic I’d advice anyone to stay way from this, it does more damage than good, there manipulation and bullying on here and you end up feeling worse there’s people who even hack your account because they call it revenge, it’s rather common on here. The people on here have mostly bad intentions it’s ironic that an app like this has attracted bullies

Privacy Rating Warning

  • Unclear whether personal information is sold or rented to third parties.
  • Personal information is shared for third-party marketing.
  • Personalised advertising is displayed.
  • Data are collected by third-parties for their own purposes.
  • User's information is used to track and target advertisements on other third-party websites or services.
  • Unclear whether this product creates and uses data profiles for personalised advertisements.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (16 ):
Kids say (2 ):

The number of posts about deep and troubling feelings on this app outweigh the voices of support, and that imbalance damages the experience. Indeed, there's so much sadness on TalkLife ("I haven't been sleeping for weeks...," "I'm sick of being ugly," and a lot of posts about rocky romantic relationships and rejection) that even the messages that do lend support seem overshadowed by the general negative vibe on this app. Of course, part of the point is that people can share about difficult topics openly with people who can relate, but the misaligned ratio of sharing to support makes it feel more self-perpetuating and dark. Some people may feel relief just being able to share, so there's definitely potential worth for some, but since some people are coming from a very vulnerable and precarious place, it seems risky to have so little professional mental health oversight and intervention. Also, though people aren't supposed to describe specific suicide attempts or self harm, those types of posts existed at the time of review. And there was also a post about a woman being harassed and another about a user receiving unsolicited nude photos. Perhaps if the app offered some helpful ideas for coping, moderators moved conversations in a useful direction, and there was a bit more oversight around posts and harassment, TalkLife would be a more universally positive tool for peer-to-peer support. As it stands, it feels like there's a real risk of getting stuck in a mire of negativity.

App Details

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