Musical.ly is a lip-syncing app for all ages that has been spreading around Instagram, Facebook and other social media apps. This app could be dangerous. .

Users can choose any song to lip sync and dance to.  Many people choose popular songs. There are also dance trends that go viral. Users who make many videos daily can get famous on musical.ly and are soon noticed and found on other social media sites.

I have a musical.ly account with about 96 followers. Out of those, I personally know only about ten. Whenever I used to post something, half of my likes are from people I do not know.

The app allows users to see people who post near them. I sometimes recognize people that I see at the mall or even at school. Almost all of the musical.ly posts I see have cuss words, hidden vulgar terms and phrases or degrading motions and dance moves. Most of them have all of the above. This is serious and threatening to the children and teens that make these kind of videos. The first reason is that it can cause bullying or gossip. I hear conversations at school about people I know. People can save a musical.ly video from the person who created it and the creator does not have to know. A lot of gossip I hear is related to the app.

Freshman Autumn Arcangel said that she doesn’t think the app is inappropriate unless it is used in a “bad” way, like making fun of a girl who posts a video with vulgar content. About 20 of her friends use the app which she uses too. She also said the app can harm people if someone posts a sexualized video that gets shared around social media.

The thing that really disturbs me is that if the girl making the video isn’t considered “pretty” in today’s society, maybe she doesn’t have the ideal body or she isn’t popular, she would be looked down upon. If the video creator was someone popular with the ideal body type and pretty face, that would be accepted. She wouldn’t be called a slut for making the same video the other girl made. It would be considered cute, hot or beautiful.

Freshman Meisha Diwa is familiar with the app and does not think it is dangerous in any way.

Think before you post a video that you may think is only shared to your followers, but the whole world can see. Also, think before you share a video of another person. What would you get out of it? Let’s not make musical.ly a negative thing.

This article was originally published on April 12,2016  These factual errors were  corrected on April 26, 2016.