Streaming
Spotify Is More Than Music Now
Spotify looks like just the music app, but it has messages and group chats now, a live chat during artist listening parties, and explicit videos and podcasts that get past its filter. Wrapped and the feed of what friends are listening to also make it one more place kids compare themselves.
Why this matters for your kid
Spotify Wrapped at the end of the year is one of the biggest social moments teens have. Your kid is going to see what their friends listened to all year, and they know their friends are seeing theirs. Artists use the app to talk straight to fans, too, and that connection feels completely real to a twelve year old listening to a pop star in her twenties at night.
What you might notice
The same song on repeat twenty times in a row is worth asking about, and so is listening that's still going past midnight. The friend activity feed is worth knowing about too, because it turns music into one more thing they get compared on, and nobody ever really talks about that part.
The parts that aren't just music
Since 2025 Spotify has messages, so people can chat right inside the app, and group chats of up to ten people, and artists run listening parties with a live chat going the whole time. Messages are supposed to be for 16 and up, but a lot of kids put in an older birthday when they sign up. There's also explicit stuff on it. In 2025 video podcasts with sexual content showed up in search and even in the charts before Spotify took them down, and the explicit filter doesn't catch all of it, especially album covers and podcasts. Anything with a live chat is a place I'd be really careful with, and the explicit content is a real problem, so I wouldn't treat Spotify as harmless just because it's the music app.
What I'd set up
If your kid is under 13, a managed account inside your Spotify plan lets you turn off video, filter out explicit songs and block specific artists, where it's available. For an older kid, turn on the explicit content filter in Settings, make sure the birthday on the account is their real one so messages stay off until 16, and ask them to show you who they're talking to on it every so often.
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