The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) named Kik on their 2022 Dirty Dozen List, a list of mainstream companies that are major facilitators of sexual exploitation in the United States.
Kik is a free messaging app, designed to look like SMS messaging, that is popular among young people-70% of all Kik users are between the ages of 13-24 years old. About a third of American teens use Kik to communicate with friends, play games and connect with brands. However, Kik also allows a user to connect with anonymous strangers easily. This makes it extremely dangerous for all users.
One study found that 23% of users ages 9-17 had a sexually explicit interaction on the platform, with 14% of users experiencing such an interaction with someone they believed to be an adult. Further, sexually explicit content is rampant on the platform via public chat. Due to Kik's extreme policies keeping all users anonymous, law enforcement is not able to trace abusive and illegal content to the origin.
To learn more about what actions you can take against Kik, click here.