Is Goodreads Safe? A Goodreads App Review for Parents

Harmful Content 😲

With Goodreads’ powerful search feature, users can find books with explicit content like sexual themes and intense language. Users can’t actually read books on Goodreads, but the descriptions often contain adult themes and cussing. Some book covers are also inappropriate and not fit for children.

The Goodreads help center outlines community guidelines and lets users report content, but there’s still the chance your child will encounter inappropriate comments in a group if they haven’t been reported yet. Some groups are restricted to adults only but it’s easy to add a false birthdate and gain access to them.

Predation 🚨

Unfortunately, Goodreads may have a high risk of predation because of the public community groups and discussions. Once your child becomes friends with someone on Goodreads, they can message privately or even move to a different platform to chat.

Privacy 🔒

Goodreads offers a few different privacy settings. These include the ability to make a profile only visible to friends, and adding a friend request challenge question, so users have to explain why they’re sending a friend request. However, these settings don’t restrict access to community groups.

Parental Controls ✅

Goodreads doesn’t give parents any options to monitor their child’s account or restrict access to community groups. However, Bark can help you stay in control by letting you:

• Block the Goodreads app completely, if needed.
• Manage when your child can use the Goodreads app throughout the day.

So, should my kid download it?

Not until they’re older. Goodreads can be a fun app for tracking reading goals and reviewing books, but it also comes with safety risks because of the online community and messaging features. Before giving your child access to Goodreads, we suggest having them use a private account and talking to them about the app’s potential dangers.