The Dangers of the Cartel TikTok

February 10, 2021
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Our PureSight analysts report a huge uptick in a new trend, especially on TikTok: cartel showcasing.

Although it’s not so much a challenge, the worrying surge in glamorizing cartel life (known as ‘Cartel TikTok’) racks up thousands of views daily. 

This type of ‘cartel marketing’ is at best, unsettling and disturbing, and at worst, normalizes a violent, criminal organization – in the hopes of getting some new recruits.

The Dangers of Cartel TikTok

There are two main dangers to children being exposed to Cartel TikTok activities. 

The first, lowest-touch form of danger comes from the way the TikTok algorithm works. Since most TikTok users’ first exposure, and possibly interaction, would be from a Cartel boat chase that went viral, the TikTok algorithm would then show further Cartel-related content. 

This is just how the algorithm works: it sees something a user likes, and strives to show them the most relevant (and closest) content to that possible, to promote user engagement and in-app time. 

At worst, Cartel Tiktok fails to show a truthful and honest depiction of cartel life, seeking to attract new, impressionable recruits thanks to the ‘fun’ displayed in the videos: a young man, grinning and ‘flossing’ while carrying an AK47, rather than the bloodshed and death that’s more of a realistic feature of cartel life.

How to Protect Your Kids from Cartel TikTok

There are several strategies you can use to keep your kids safe and informed from Cartel TikTok, while working on their understanding.

Practical strategies include –

Blocking all Cartel-related content from your child’s TikTok feed, and actively reporting it to TikTok (for what it’s worth, TikTok has said it’s working to remove any content and accounts promoting illegal activity).Educating your children about the reality of the cartels. Showing them documentaries, or even TV series such as Netflix’s Narcos (which still doesn’t go far enough to show the reality of the dangers of Cartel life) can go a long way in explaining why what they are seeing is only a small, deeply fabricated part of a larger picture. Teach your children how to interrogate and fact-check content. Explaining about propaganda and appearances, and how to identify it, can help them develop these skills for themselves. Being aware of any popular content that could potentially be dangerous: the aforementioned boat chase went viral, appearing on TikTok’s ‘For You’ main page feed, where it continued growing in popularity. Explain the way a cartel works, emphasizing the victims at the end of the chain. For example, one viral video showed a Mexican farmer in a field, peeling seeds to be crushed down for heroin use. Explaining how this seemingly-innocuous video could ruin someone else’s life – a heroin user and their family, for example – puts this situation into more context.
There are even easier ways to ensure your kids are protected and informed about the likes of the Cartel TikTok – and beyond: PureSight’s range of parental controls and filters.

Protect Your Kids from the Cartel TikTok with PureSight

Get near total peace of mind (well, online anyway!) with what your kids digitally consume with PureSight. 

You’ll be able to easily allow your kids the online freedom to browse, while receiving notifications to your own device should something be inappropriate or crossed a line you’ve set. 

You’ll be able to set your own advanced content monitors, social media monitoring and app monitoring – such as TikTok. You’ll then receive real-time updates of your child’s online activity posing some kind of threat, and be able to decide your course of action – block, restrict, or take it offline with your child.

Advanced Internet Content Filtering

Block or restrict access to whatever you deem inappropriate for your children. You can block cartel hashtags, or anything related to these. Should your child access these still, you’ll get a notification, and then it’s up to you to block or restrict the offending content.

Social Media Monitoring

Part of TikTok’s danger to children is that the app makes it super easy to share content across other channels and platforms, meaning you need to keep an eye on anything and everything, all at once.

Luckily, PureSight’s social media monitoring helps you to track topics of conversation across all popular messaging and social platforms (including WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook messenger and so on), meaning you’ll receive a notification…so you don’t have to ‘snoop’ on your kids’ conversations yourself.

Apps and Games Monitoring

If you’d prefer a more holistic method of monitoring, you can easily restrict the amount of time spent per app or game: easily limit your child’s TikTok time per day, or set blackout times where they won’t be able to access the app. You could also choose to block those apps altogether on your child’s devices.

The Bottom Line: Keep Your Kids Safe From the Cartel TikTok

Although TikTok will always come up with questionable viral content (so is the inevitability of an unregulated app), it’s something as seemingly innocuous as Cartel TikTok that is altogether far more insidious and dangerous to our children. 

The added danger of Cartel TikTok is how out of context the situations it depicts are, and therefore how easily impressionable our children can be in the face of this type of content. 

Keeping your kids safe from the dangers and propaganda of the Cartel TikTok starts with PureSight’s monitoring tools. Since your kids have a right to their own private life online, you need to walk the fine line between being an aware and digital parent, and allowing them enough freedom to not feel hampered by you. 

In either case, your kids need you to contextualize, explain and keep them safe – and that all begins with PureSight.

Keep your kids safe online – get the parental controls app now >

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