Mom Discovers 'Innocent' Phone App Has Far More To Fear Than She Ever Imagined

When Anastasia Basil's 10-year-old daughter begged for permission to download an app called Musical.ly, the mom carefully checked it out first. Horrified by what she found, she's warning everyone about the hidden dangers of popular music app Musical.ly! Anastasia Basil jokingly calls herself the town prude. She believes her kids should be kids. So, she doesn't just let them have all of the cool, new gadgets with unlimited access to the world wide web. Instead, she takes measures to make sure they only have access to what's appropriate for their age. And these days, that's a lot harder than it should be. So, she blogs about it. One of Anastasia's blog posts is getting a lot of attention because it unveils the hidden dangers of popular music app Musical.ly. She's not the first to speak out against the popular music video app. Another dad alerted folks after finding suggestive messages sent to his 7-year-old daughter through the app. RELATED: Father Warns Against Phone App When He Discovers Horrifying Messages But as Anastasia dug deeper, she found there was even more to fear!

Mom Uncovers Hidden Dangers Of Popular Music App

Anastasia's 10-year-old daughter asked her mom to download the Musical.ly app onto her phone so she could make silly lip-synch videos with her friends. It's this feature that makes the music app so popular with young audiences. It's also what makes the app seem so innocent to parents. But Anastasia wasn't about to say yes so easily. While her kids were at school, the mommy blogger downloaded the app and created an account so she could explore. And what she found is absolutely terrifying. Like most parents, Anastasia was concerned Musical.ly could expose her child to pornography and predators. As a hub for user-generated content and live stream videos from millions of people, it took no time before Anastasia happened upon sexually explicit content. But that's not all.

"Porn is not the worst thing on Musical.ly," she wrote in the blog post, then outlined the hidden dangers of popular music app Musical.ly.

Many think parental controls against sexual content is enough. But Anastasia found that's just the tip of the iceberg!

"My name is Social Media. Feel free to browse the personal photos, videos, and mouth diarrhea — I mean comments — of my two billion users,” she sarcastically wrote in her post.

Plenty More To Fear

As Anastasia dove deeper into the app, she found kids seeking online acceptance by any means necessary. She found kids objectifying themselves in the hopes of gaining likes and followers. But many just found themselves subject to hateful ridicule and bullying. Those silly lip-synch videos kids are making for fun can easily get pulled into “Musical.ly Cringe Compilation” videos on YouTube. The whole point of these videos is to ruthlessly mock the people in them, with users endlessly hurling cruel words at the "stars" of the videos. Can you imagine what that would do to a child's self-esteem? She also found plenty of kids lip-synching to incredibly inappropriate songs. One boy, not even old enough to be called a teen, had created a username so sexually graphic it completely shocked and stunned Anastasia.

But the hidden dangers of popular music app Musical.ly just got darker and darker.

She found violent videos of boys putting knives to girls' throats. There were loads of deeply disturbing self-harm videos and suicidal musings. She found pro-anorexia videos -- young girls literally starving to death and celebrating it as an accomplishment. Credit: screenshot from Musical.ly In the midst of it all, her heart broke to find kids trying to help the troubled users. “u r beautiful plz dont kill urself im only 10 but i will b ur friend,” one child wrote in response to a suicide video. As sweet as her compassionate response it, Anastasia points out she's only 10, far too young to feel responsible for saving a life!

"Kids should be watching witty cartoons, riding bikes, making slime, doing art, playing Minecraft, learning chess, and boring us with bad magic tricks. They shouldn’t be stopping other kids from killing themselves," she writes.

RELATED: Internet’s New ‘Blue Whale’ Challenge Claiming Lives Of Teens Read Anastasia's full blog post about the hidden dangers of popular music app Musical.ly by clicking here.

What You Can Do

It's important to remember -- kids should be kids. They will complain, but restricting their access to the internet and social media is in their best interest. Being constantly connected isn't necessarily a good thing. Kids are probably going to encounter bullying, foul language, and other tough situations at school. It's important to be able to come home and disconnect, giving them a chance to process and recharge. Constantly connected devices and apps rob them of this opportunity. But now there are lots of resources to help parents tackle this challenge. With technology changing so rapidly, protecting children in the digital age is tricky, even for the best parents. Thankfully, though, there are now parental control tools like Forcefield, which enables parents to monitor and manage their child’s access to apps and the Internet. (Learn more about Forcefield HERE)

WATCH: Quick Tour Of Forcefield Parental Control Software

h/t: Medium YOU MAY ALSO LIKE: Dad’s ‘X-Plan’ Is A Brilliant Way To Help Keep Kids Safe