Digital Smarts - Bot Scans Kids’ Posts

In keeping with that oft-repeated phrase “there’s an app for that,” now comes Oyoty. Oyoty is a chatbot is designed for children aged up to 12 who are active on social media (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter). It acts as a personal assistant of sorts via a smartphone or tablet, and automatically scans what kids are posting publicly. It will intervene by flagging problem posts to children themselves to help them understand why it’s not a good idea to share - whether it be an overly provocative selfie or posting personal information. The interventions are also structured so the child is guided to edit or delete the content themselves, keeping them involved in the process of their own moderation – again with the aim of helping them understand what is and is not appropriate to share online. If the child refuses to moderate their own content, the bot can and will escalate issues directly to parents via an alert — the default setting being three days after no action has been taken by the child to resolve a problem. The hope is clearly that kids will agree to rethink any problems before the bot has to get parents directly involved. This app is so new that there is no feedback yet on how well it works, but this use of Artificial Intelligence is an interesting new tool for parents who are trying to “trust but monitor”.