Gaming
Is BitLife Safe? A BitLife App Review for Parents
Overview
BitLife is a popular “life simulator” game where players are assigned a character to control from birth to death. The goal is to live as long as possible by improving your character’s stats, which are: happiness, health, smarts, and looks.
Players can age their character quickly or take their time participating in various activities like having conversations or going to school. Sometimes obstacles will appear, like a disease or the death of a pet, which affect your character’s happiness. As your character grows older, all of their activities and tasks appear sequentially in their log. Here’s everything else you should know about BitLife.
Harmful Content 😲
While some aspects of BitLife are innocent, like going to school and making friends, the game features lots of adult themes and concepts that are not suitable for children. For example, there’s an option to hook up with another character and players are asked if they want to use birth control. As the game progresses, players are given the opportunity to have a threesome.
Apart from sexual themes, the game lets players attack and insult other characters, and it often makes light of grief and mental health. A player’s family members can die unexpectedly, and it’s common for players to be diagnosed with anxiety or depression. It’s also possible for players to upload the names of personal contacts to use in the game, which can lead to objectification and unrealistic ideas about personal relationships.
BitLife offers links to other social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, which can lead to harmful and explicit content and put your child at a greater risk of predation.
Predation 🚨
There’s no chat feature on BitLife, so players can’t connect with other players. There are leaderboards with the world’s top ranking players but the only visible information is the player’s name and country. However, if your child logs into a social media platform using one of the BitLife links, they’ll be able to chat with strangers and are at a greater risk for predation.
Positive Value 💙
BitLife offers little to no positive value. Although it’s advertised as a life simulator, it doesn’t offer any real-world knowledge and can give kids a false idea of what relationships, jobs, and mental health should look like.
Privacy 🔒
BitLife profiles aren’t public and there’s no way to interact with other players. If a player’s game stats are high enough, they could be featured on a leaderboard, but no personal information is available beyond their name and general location, like state or country.
Parental Controls ✅
BitLife doesn’t offer any parental control features or content restrictions, so it’s impossible to know what your child is seeing on the app. This also means they could follow the social media links and start interacting on other platforms without your knowledge. Luckily, Bark can help you stay in control by letting you:
- Block BitLife completely, if needed.
- Manage when your child can use BitLife throughout the day.
So, should my kid download it?
Definitely not. BitLife is not suitable for kids and deals with many adult themes. Your child will likely encounter content about sex, death, mental health, physical injuries, and more. These subjects are not taken seriously and can lead to unrealistic ideas about relationships and the world.
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