Tellonym

[WhatTimeIsItCuckoo]

Hi there, has anyone had experience of the above app at all? My year 8 daughter had a very unkind message sent to her anonymously, which I gather is what it's all about, last night. She was at a friends house and forwarded it to me, upset. I googled it as I had never heard of it before, it sounds awful

Anonymous messaging apps are never a good idea, particularly for children & adolescents. I'm sorry that she had to learn this from experience.

I would advise her to uninstall the app and not download any others like it.

TheFirst she hasn't downloaded it, it's the sender who has. She just received the message but doesn't know who from, but it's clearly someone in her friendship group because of what they'd said. From what I can gather the user downloads it and links it to their contacts, then uses it to send 'truths' anonymously

Which platform did she receive the message on (text, WhatsApp etc?)

I'm not sure, she's still at her friend's house and didn't want to keep on questioning her as don't want to spoil her time there, it's definitely not anything to do with this particular friend who is lovely, I'll have a chat with her later though when she's home. The sender had scrubbed out their previous sent messages presumably so she couldn't identify them. My year 9 son hasn't heard of the app either. Apparently you need parental permission to download it but I know that's not any guarantee.

If anyone else has experienced this I'd be interested to know how they dealt with it. The info was personal to our family too so that's another reason I'm upset ,

I have just looked at the app. Messages are sent via the app itself, in which case the app must have been downloaded to her phone in order for her to be able to read them. She needs to delete it.

If the messages have been sent via another platform, she can just block the number they were sent from.

If you want to, you could report it to the school on Monday (with a screenshot as evidence). They might be able to give a general message to Y8 about not using anonymous messaging apps.

In the meantime, all you can do is reassure her and encourage her to try to ignore the message she received.

Thanks TheFirst, yes I told her last night to ignore and delete it, I know she'd asked at least one friend if it was them who'd denied it and she believed her, but I told her not to ask anyone else and to simply ignore and not engage. At a time of immense stress within our family though it's particularly unwelcome. I'll have a look at blocking the number and speak to the school if it continues. Thank again.

I told her not to ask anyone else and to simply ignore and not engage

This is exactly the right advice. Sorry to hear that someone has decided to be unkind to her at a time when your family already has other stuff to cope with.

Thanks again, it was especially the fact that they'd been mean about our current difficulties (her very poorly Gramps, my dad) that stung. Honestly, how can 12/13 year olds be so mean? What an unhealthy app though