Chapter Nine: Safe Sex?

What can we say definitively about Wattpad? It is popular with youths. When I mentioned Common Sense Media before, I had quoted a 2/5 rating by 25 parents. In contrast, the averaged rating for 12+ members is 5/5 from 45 reviews. Terrific! Wattpad is a hit with young readers and writers. Here’s a review from one:

Uh-oh. An 11-year old with his underage posse. With access to “curse words, sex, kinkiness, sexuality, drinking”.

So how did this happen? For a start, the sign-up process for 13 to 16-year olds (and apparently 11-year olds) is identical to that for over 17-year olds. Although Wattpad says that parental permission is required, there are no prompts regarding this during the sign-up process. Create your username, confirm your email and your virgin Wattpad tush is good to go. Oddly, Wattpad does not bother to ask for a parental email, which to me, seems to be a basic step. After all, a 13-year old is a minor, and in my mind, should not be expected to ‘sign’ a contract. Parental emails also give opportunities for reassurances and avenues for feedback, especially if issues such as inappropriateness such as bullying or sexual contact should arise. Implementation of a parental contact would be a win-win-win situation and would make circumvention of Wattpad’s TOS even harder.

In any case, imagine yourself as a 13-year old with a brand new WP account.

You begin searching for books. Yes, Wattpad’s search engine restricts you from viewing mature books in the results. Well done. However, what did that 11-year old say again?

“Some stories include curse words, sex, kinkiness, sexuality, drinking, and pretty much everything in that genre, but you should be able to tell of something like that based on 1. information from the title and 2. information from the book’s summary.”

How did this 11-year old access this material? The truth is, there is a glaring loophole that allows under-17 year to access and open any Mature book. The 13-year old, for example, was able to read this book:

So how did this happen? Did the child lie about her age? No. Was hacking involved? No. Is it part of a normal Wattpad user’s navigation around the site? Yes.

The truth is, Wattpad will allow any child to open any Mature book. Its architecture has no restrictions whatsoever, apart from the search results. This really troubles me for several reasons. The first is for potential for abuse or exposure to explicit material. Consider the scenario below:

An author may have two fanfiction books about One Direction. Both are rated correctly. The first book has Everybody access and is popular with teens. The second book is Mature and focuses on sex scenes with a band member. The author thinks that the second book is safe from underage eyes. In fact, anyone can open that book. Even worse, every adolescent who was drawn to the Everyone book and enjoyed it will very likely click on the Mature book and read it, thinking it is another fun book about One Direction. So who is responsible for the child being exposed to explicit material? Wattpad is.

The second issue that bothers me is — why do we have WP staff labouring to reclassify books left, right and centre? It seems to be a waste of effort for the toiling staff. In terms of safety, there is no difference between Everyone and Mature. The Content Guideline is a smokescreen. Even the 11-year old recognised that reading the book synopsis is enough. So why bother? There are so many ways to find your way to Mature books apart from the search engine. As far as I can tell, this includes:
1. Links from within Wattpad, either via conversations or noticeboards.
2. Seeing what other users are voting or posting in the news feed.
3. Browsing an author’s books.

Oddly, this chapter will be the reason why I am moving this book to ‘Mature’. Flimsy as the separation is, it is the only defense that Wattpad has to offer against children accessing explicit material.

In truth, I debated with myself whether I should have exposed this loophole. But then I realised that it is not a single loophole, but Wattpad is actually a Swiss cheese that is full of them. Children are more likely to fall into any of the site navigation pathways that I described above without even realising it than by reading about it in this book.

Every parent that allows their under-17 children to access Wattpad needs to consider their safety. The example that I gave above regarding the ‘One Direction’ author was doing the right thing. Now imagine if the writer was a sexual predator.

I have spoken to several ambassadors about this. They were very helpful and asked me to submit a support ticket, with the intent for the ‘main team’ at WP to consider. I will link this chapter will for their consideration.

Despite my investigation and checks, part of me hopes that it is a glitch. Surely Wattpad cannot be this vulnerable. Please let it be a glitch.