What Is Yubo? Spoiler: Dating App Not Safe for Your Kids

Is Yubo a dating app? Well, in fact, it is a social networking app that’s pretty popular among teens and young adults. It’s designed for making new friends and joining live streams. While it has some seemingly cool features, there are real safety concerns, especially for younger users. In this article, we’ll break down what Yubo app is, how it works, and why it might not be safe for your kids.

What Is Yubo?

Yubo, once called Yellow (courtesy of a bright yellow logo), popped up in 2015 as a social media platform for teens and young adults (aged 13 to 25) to connect online. It lets users do all sorts of things like chatting, playing games, and watching live streams with people from all over. And teen dating isn’t advertised as the only thing it can be used for! With over 60 million Yubo users in 140 countries, it has become a huge community where you can meet new people and feel safe doing it.

How Does Yubo Work?

If you’re wondering, “Is Yubo like Tinder?”, the answer is – yes and no. Basically, instead of just dating, as Tinder offers, it’s all about making friends. Controversial for an app that is advertised as a teen-dating platform, right? Anyway, you swipe left or right on profiles to add friends, and if you both swipe right, you’re a match and can start chatting and sharing photos. It’s mainly for people 17 and up, and you can even share your location to find friends nearby. There are some cool extra features you can get with a subscription or virtual currency, like seeing who liked your profile.

The best part is the live streaming. You can hang out with people in real-time, play games, and join a chat room or two. It’s a great way to meet people who are into the same things as you, and you can make friends from all over the world.

What Features Does Yubo Offer?

Yubo offers many features. Among the main ones we can name:

• Two separate communities, one for teens aged 13–17 and another for the 18-and-over crowd. They’re like two worlds in one app, keeping the interactions within each age group.
• Live streaming is huge here, with no limit on viewers. It’s all about sharing your life in real-time without any of that ‘like’ button or follower obsession.
• Inclusivity offers a bunch of gender options and pronouns so everyone feels seen and respected.
• Pixels collection, where you can buy digital art to kickstart your collection.
• Virtual currency (YuBucks), which you can buy with real money.

Safety Features of the Yubo App

As with any app out there, Yubo has its own safety tools and features that should be enough to keep you and/or your kid out of danger, so the question “Is Yubo safe for 13-year-olds?” should be answered fairly quickly. Whether they’re enough or not, check out below.

Verification at Sign-Up

When you sign up for Yubo, they take several steps to make sure everyone on the app is real and safe. Apart from getting a yellow ‘verified’ badge by verifying your identity with an ID (which can take up to 24 hours), you should provide your:

• Date of birth: You need to be at least 13 years old to join. Yubo separates users into different age groups to keep things appropriate.
• Age check: You’ll take a real-time photo in the app, which this teen dating app uses to confirm your age matches what you provided. If your age or identity info doesn’t match up or gets reported, you’ll need to verify with an ID.
• Photos: You need a clear profile picture showing your face. It can’t be a cartoon, pet, or someone else. The app uses Google image search to make sure profile photos aren’t fake. Still, fake profiles exist.
• Phone number: You’ll enter your mobile number and verify it with a code they send you.  The app detects and deals with fake phone numbers.
• Email and password: An email is required, and the app can help you create a strong password.

Community Guidelines

Yubo’s Community Guidelines are designed to make sure everyone treats each other with respect, just like in real life. They don’t allow things like sexual or inappropriate content, harassment, nudity, violence, drugs, hate speech, or animal abuse – which they remind you about before every livestream.

To keep things safe, they use a combination of AI, technology, and real human moderators to watch what’s happening on the platform. For minor slip-ups, they prefer to talk to users about what went wrong rather than straight-up ban them.

Content Monitoring

Yubo employs AI and human moderation to ensure safety and reduce inappropriate content. Their AI scans text, images, videos, and live streams for guideline violations, while human moderators review flagged content for accuracy:

• Checking profiles: They take a look at everyone’s profiles to make sure there’s nothing dodgy going on, like inappropriate pics or violent things in bios. If they spot anything off, they’ll give users a heads-up. 
• Watching livestreams: Yubo’s on the lookout for anything like hate speech, drug use, or sexual content. Also, they make sure nobody can harass you. And if they see something wrong, they’ll jump in right away.
• Keeping an eye on messages: Even private messages get a once-over to catch any risky behavior or shady stuff going on.
• Alerts for privacy: They’ll shoot users a quick alert if they’re about to share too much personal info in private chats, just to make sure they’re being careful.
• Real-time help: If someone’s breaking the rules during a livestream, Yubo will send them a message explaining what they did wrong and how to fix it.
• Getting rid of harmful content: Especially when it comes to things like child abuse, they make sure any harmful content is taken down ASAP and the people responsible are reported to the authorities.

What Parents Need to Know About Yubo

It’s crucial to keep an eye on your kid’s use of Yubo since this social media app is aimed at teens aged 13-17. It’s supposed to be a way for them to connect, but there are some real issues you need to know about:

• Watch out for online predators: Unfortunately, age verification at Yubo doesn’t quite work as advertised, so there are creeps there pretending to be teens. They can easily chat up with your kid, and with the live streaming feature, they might even see things from your kid’s room. Scary, right?
• Moderation problems: There’s a ton of inappropriate things floating around because Yubo’s moderators aren’t on top of things and lack of content filtering is obvious. They’ve got reporting and blocking options, but honestly, you should be keeping tabs on what your kid is up to.
• Privacy’s a problem: By default, the app spills the beans on your kid’s city and phone number to Yubo friends. So, learning how you can block any unwanted incoming calls is important.
• Location sharing risks: Even though Yubo turns off location sharing for under-18s, your kid can still turn it on, which can show strangers where they are.
• Grooming, bullying, etc.: Despite trying to keep things safe, there’s still a risk of grooming or cyberbullying happening.
• Scams galore: Yubo isn’t immune to any type of scam, so make sure your kid knows not to fall for any shady links or give out personal info.
• Snapchat temptations: Yubo’s hooked up with Snapchat, making it easy to connect and share pics.

How Can You Keep Your Child Safe?

When it comes to keeping your child safe on Yubo, there are a few things you can do:

• Enable parental controls: Use uMobix parental controls to manage your child’s access to the app and set limits on usage time.
• Set up privacy controls: Work together with your child to set limits in the app. This not only helps keep them safe but also teaches them about responsible online behavior.
• Regular conversations: Make sure to talk with your child often about what they’re doing on Yubo. It’s important to show interest and create an environment where they feel comfortable talking to you about anything that might come up.
• Explore the app together: Take some time to create your own Yubo account. This way, you’ll have a better understanding of how it works and can offer better support to your child.
• Address tough topics: Don’t shy away from discussing the tricky things, like online safety risks and inappropriate content. Having these conversations early on helps prepare your child for any challenges they might face.
• Promote respectful behavior: Remind your child to always treat others with respect online and to think before they post or comment.
• Ensure comfortable communication: Let your child know that they can always come to you with any concerns or questions they have about their Yubo experience.
• Verify identities: Encourage your child to verify the identities of people they talk to online, especially if they’re unsure.
• Enable privacy settings: Take advantage of the app’s privacy settings to control who can see your child’s profile and location information. Teach your kid to hide their location in case something inappropriate pops up.
• Maintain open communication: Keep the lines of communication open with your child. Let them know that you’re there to support them no matter what.

Conclusion

Yubo is a live social discovery app designed for teens and young adults to connect and make new friends. It is also used as a dating app popular with Generation Z, but it’s not always safe. It offers features like live streaming and a focus on genuine interactions without the pressure of likes or follows. Despite its safety measures, such as age verification and live moderation, there are still significant concerns. Predators, privacy issues, and inappropriate content are real threats on Yubo. Hence, using a reliable parental control app wouldn’t be amiss.As a parent, it’s crucial to be involved in your child’s online activities. Work together to set up privacy controls, have regular conversations about their experiences on Yubo, and ensure they understand the risks and how to handle them. Stay safe!