DELMARVA – It’s back to school time, which means students are buying supplies and building their schedules, and a new app, Saturn, is promising to help them share their schedules, manage their time and talk with friends.
But Worcester County Sheriff Matt Crisafulli is raising the alarm citing serious safety concerns.
“If you are a member on this app, you can see other high school students from different schools, they can share photos, they’re sharing information,” Sheriff Crisafuli said adding “Anyone can go on to this app, act as a high school student, and then have access to hundreds and hundreds of photos of students there, schedules, schedules for their sporting events, and a predator can take that type of information and maybe even go to the school or start stalking someone, that’s my major concern about this app.”
Psychologist Dr. Kathy Siefert says kids on these apps have a tendency to over-share, over-trusting new people something predators count on.
“Teenagers whose brains are not fully developed may not have the brain development to hold back on information, and they fully share they share their address, their phone number, maybe even their birth date,” Dr. Siefert said.
Sheriff Crisafuli says he understands teens and parents need to share this information, however, he says making it public is a greater risk than the benefits the app could offer.
“Sharing your sporting events and the times and the locations for those, you know, high school students can do that peer to peer, they can do that phone to phone, they can do that by meeting together in small groups, they don’t have to put that information out onto the Internet,” he said.
Crisafulli says his department is calling on parents to talk with their teens about the app, and what kind of information to withhold when engaging with strangers online.
“If your child’s going to have this app, I would implore parents to also download the app so that they can monitor what their children are doing, that’s the key here,” he said.
Sheriff Crisafulli tells 47ABC if his two daughters were of age to be using the app, he would not have allowed them to do so.
47ABC reached out to Saturn for comment and did not hear back.
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