• The IIE has banned the use of the Whisper social media platform across its school networks.
• It issued a letter urging parents to monitor the online usage of their children following the ban.
• The IIE believes that the app exposes children to predators, inappropriate content and promotes cyberbullying.

Education group the Independent Institute of Education (IIE), owners of Varsity College and private high schools like Crawford, Trinityhouse, Pinnacle, and Abbots College, have banned the popular anonymous social media platform Whisper across networks at its schools.

The IIE is also urging parents to use monitoring software to ensure that their children are not using the platform and similar at home. According to a report from the Sunday Times, the IIE has grown concerned about the safety of its learners who use the Whisper app.

In a letter the institute issued to parents across their private schools, the IIE’s main psychologist Nasrin Kirsten said that while the Whisper app ensured the anonymity of users, it does expose them to discussions and content inappropriate for minors.

What’s worse, Kirsten says, is that the app opens the possibility that they may face solicitation from adults or be exposed to sexual content. The Whisper app has a history of controversy, having been removed and then re-added to the Apple App Store several times over concerns about user data privacy.

The app allows any user to post messages anonymously. These messages are pictures with text placed on top of them. But users can share these images with each other and users can engage in chatting, despite them being anonymous.

This means that predators can gain access to young people by masquerading as minors themselves. This is a common practice on social media, especially videogames with social aspects, like Roblox and Fortnite, according to reports.

Apart from inappropriate content for minors, groups of users can share anonymous messages with others meaning that it is easier to talk openly about others. This is according to Klikd app founders Pam Tudin and Sarah Hoffman, who are supporting the ban of the app for teens at the private schools.

Whisper allows users to share messages about who has the ugliest nose, or who looks better in a bikini, or worse, without any consequences because the messages are made anonymously and then reshared. In this sense, Whisper can be used for cyberbullying.

There have been increasing calls for smartphones to be banned at schools. Last month, the New York State governor announced that they would be signing a bill to ban the devices across the state’s schools, fearing mental and emotional damage caused by social media.

In 2023, the government of South Australia also banned smartphones, and soon found that physical altercations were becoming less common at its schools following the ban.

Multiple reports indicate that young people, from eight to 12, are spending around five and a half hours looking at screens on average per day. Meanwhile, people aged 18 to 26 look at their smartphones more than 30 times every hour.

The impact of social media on young people is usually negative, and institutions like UNESCO, which urged countries around the world to insist on school smartphone bans in 2023, say that the technology does more to dissuade teens from learning than to aid them.

[Image – Photo by Kristina Flour on Unsplash]