We created this Wishbone and Slingshot Parent Guide to bring you up to speed on these apps your teens may be using.

Parent & educator training video

What are the Wishbone & Slingshot apps?

Wishbone and Slingshot are both owned by Science Inc. These two apps are very similar, but they target different audiences:

• Wishbone targets girls
• Slingshot targets boys

What is the Wishbone app?

Wishbone is a comparison app that lets users vote for their favorite choice.

• Wishbone is an app that allows users to compare two images and vote on their favorite
• Users can create their own polls and get feedback from the community and friends
       
• Wishbone topics cover fashion, movies, celebrities, animals, music, travel and much more

What is the Slingshot app?

Slingshot is an app that allow users to compare anything and vote for their favorite option.

• Slingshot is an app that allows users to compare anything and everything and vote on their favorite
       
• Users can create their own polls and get feedback from the community and friends
• Slingshot covers topics from sports, video games, celebrities, humor, music, travel and pretty much anything else

What is similar between Wishbone & Slingshot?

• These apps allow users to compare two things and vote on their favorite
• Both apps allow users to create new polls
• These apps have two types of polls: Daily Dozen and Community

What is the Daily Dozen?

The Daily Dozen is 12 of the most popular polls. Sometimes these polls are not family friendly.

What is the Community?

• The Community is a group of popular polls created by users.
• There are 100 new polls at the beginning of each day, and 50 new polls appear every few minutes.

What are the most popular polls on Wishbone?

• Fashion
• Boys
• Movies
• Food
• Celebrities
• Relationships

What are the most popular polls on Slingshot?

• Sports
• Cars
• Games
• Tech
• Cartoons
• Girls
• Politics

How do Wishbone & Slingshot make money?

They sell services to brands:

• Promoting products to users
• Collecting consumer preferences
• Offering incentives and exclusive offers to their community

What should parents know about the Wishbone & Slingshot apps?

Some ads on the Wishbone & Slingshot apps are inappropriate for younger teens.

• These apps are very popular with students
• Polls get hundreds of thousands of votes
• These apps may allow your student to view inappropriate content
• Ads on these apps appear every 30-60 sec and there’s no way to skip them before they end
• Some of the ads are not appropriate for younger teens
• Teens can compare their classmates, ask adult questions, or make fun of other teens
• These polls can be shared with their friends and published publicly online
• Bullying can happen in the comments once someone has voted

Wishbone & Slingshot in the news

Wishbone offers no explicit parental controls. - LifeZette

• “Wishbone offers no explicit parental controls” - Lifezette
• “Wishbone is not a great app for young kids” - Kid’s Privacy
• “On Slingshot a child can compare photos of their friends, which is a form of bullying” - Safer Kid

Why should parents care?

The Wishbone & Slingshot apps can be used to bully others.

• These apps are very popular and your teen may have them
• Users can create their own polls, which usually are not appropriate for younger students
• These apps can be used to bully others

What can parents do?

If your student has Wishbone or Slingshot consider deleting them.

• Start a dialog with your students about bullying
• Teach your students not to judge based on image or appearance
• If your student has Wishbone or Slingshot, we suggest your family have a serious discussion and consider deleting them

Comment below if you have any questions or tell us which app we should create our next safety guide for.