Tumblr for kids....?

October 12, 2011 10:16 PM

I'm considering setting up a tumblr (or wordpress) site for my 9 year old son. Is this a crazy idea?

My son takes interesting photographs and I thought it might be fun to let him publish his photos on a website... I've not used tumblr (and I'm actually kind of curious about it). Or is there something like flickr, but for kids...?

posted by l'esprit de l'escalier to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

My tumblr gets followed (and favourited) mostly by porn spambots but YMMV.

I'd just go with Flickr.
posted by bonobothegreat at 10:25 PM on October 12, 2011

Tumblr is super easy to use, so it's probably better than Flickr for a kid. You might want to set it up to not allow comments, though, in order to prevent the porn spambots and such (though, I can't say that I've ever had issues with these on my Tumblr).
posted by asnider at 10:34 PM on October 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

I also haven't had a problem with porn spambots on Tumblr, but will point out that if he's interested in exploring at all, that's not a great place for him--the photography, photos, and portraits tags are often NSFW, with photos that range from artistic nudes to photos of full-on, sometimes rather kinky, sex.

Flickr is harder to use, but their terms of use are much less porn-and-nude friendly than Tumblr's are, and the site as a whole is considerably closer to childsafe. Flickr is also an easier site for feedback--to respond to someone on Tumblr, you have to jump through a hoop or two, whereas on Flickr, the comment box is right there.
posted by MeghanC at 10:57 PM on October 12, 2011

In addition to @MeghanC's comment, Flikr is pretty easy to embed into a WP blog.
posted by chrisfromthelc at 11:17 PM on October 12, 2011

I also haven't had a problem with porn spambots on Tumblr, but will point out that if he's interested in exploring at all, that's not a great place for him--the photography, photos, and portraits tags are often NSFW, with photos that range from artistic nudes to photos of full-on, sometimes rather kinky, sex.

Yeah, I never got the point of Tumblr until I realized that it's an amazing way for people to view and spread high quality, artistic porn.

Use Flickr. Maybe DeviantArt? Despite the name and the weirdos on the site it seems like it would be closer to what you're looking for.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 11:19 PM on October 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

I think Flickr might be a better option. It has a built-in content filter, where user accounts are rated (by some sort of admin or moderator) as Safe, Moderate, or Restricted (any nudity is Moderate or Restricted). You can then set up the search safety level, so e.g. if you set the search level to Safe, your searches on Flickr should in theory never return any nudity. There's more info at that link.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 2:40 AM on October 13, 2011

PicasWeb is another option, and with it's nice integration with the Picasa desktop client, it might be easier for a 9 year old to manage.
posted by COD at 5:43 AM on October 13, 2011

Tumblr isn't appropriate for 9-year-olds. It just isn't. It's less appropriate than Flickr.
posted by John Cohen at 6:33 AM on October 13, 2011

Yeah, Tumblr is not a child-friendly environment at all. I'd go with Wordpress and Flickr.
posted by SMPA at 7:08 AM on October 13, 2011

Most of these sites will explicitly forbid under-13s from using their service, because complying with COPPA is a pain in the ass. So you (he) will be breaking the terms of service from the get-go, which means someday it might catch up to him and his account will be gone just like that.

I don't know of a child-oriented photo site offhand, but I would explicitly look for one of those.
posted by mendel at 12:30 PM on October 13, 2011

Response by poster: Thanks all, I'll look into flickr a little more, seems like tumblr is not really the right solution here. I'm glad I asked!
posted by l'esprit de l'escalier at 6:29 AM on October 14, 2011