A dad named Jack R. says just about every week, his 9-year-old son asks if he can use the app Musical.ly. His son’s best friend has been telling him that everyone at school has an account. After hearing the kid beg all summer, Jack finally decided to download it onto his own phone and sign up himself so that he could look into the privacy settings and “see how stranger-danger it was.” When he entered his gender (male) and birthday (he’s 32), Jack says he was bombarded with content he never expected.
Musical.ly is a social media platform that lets users make and share 15-second videos of themselves lip syncing to various sound clips, from the latest Cardi B hit to comedy bits to the voices of other users. Gary Vaynerchuk described the app as a “a mashup of Vine, Snapchat, and Dubsmash,” which is accurate. With tools such…