My Talking Angela app: 5 things you need to know as parents

Talking Angela is on a lot of parents’ minds this week, and not for good reasons. Facebook status updates claiming that the game is a front for paedophiles – although shown to be a hoax a year ago when they first appeared – have been spreading like wildfire.

It seems a lot of parents have a.) been understandably been spooked by the claims, and b.) realised that although Talking Angela is installed on their devices and being used by their children, they don’t know that much about it.

It’s important that parents can take informed decisions about what apps their children use. With that in mind, here is our 10-point guide to the Talking Angela app, so that you can understand how it works, and whether it’s suitable for your kids.

1. There isn’t a paedophile ring. We can’t stress this enough: if your children use Talking Angela, they’re chatting to and interacting with a virtual cartoon cat, not a real-world childcatcher. This may seem like an obvious thing to say, but some of the more hysterical Facebook hoax updates portray the app in that way.

2. Talking Angela is mostly like the other Talking Tom and Friends apps. The app is the work of a developer called Outfit7, which makes Talking Tom Cat, Talking Ginger and a succession of other talking-animal apps. They’re hugely popular, with 1.5bn downloads to smartphones and tablets so far, and 230m people using them every month.

Like most of them, Talking Angela involves tapping and swiping to interact with the main character, while also customising her appearance with items and clothing, and talking into the microphone to have her repeat your words, squeakily.

3. Yes, it does use the camera. There’s a feature that encourages the user to make faces and gestures at the screen: nod or shake their head, smile, yawn or poke their tongue out. The app detects the motion, and gets Angela to copy the expression. It’s intended as a fun feature, rather than as a way for the app to capture photos of your child for nefarious purposes.

4. There is a text-chat feature that isn’t for children. Talking Angela actually has a ‘Child Mode’ which you’ll be asked whether you want to turn on the first time you load up the app. If it’s turned off, a box appears near the bottom of the screen inviting you to text-chat to Angela, asking and answering questions. Even parents who don’t believe the paedophile-ring rumour are concerned about the text-chat feature, and we understand why.

Angela DOES ask how old you are, what your name is, how long you’ve been friends with your best friend, what you’re planning to do today, and other questions that when asked to a child – even by a virtual cartoon cat – can seem inappropriately personal. She tells an anecdote about going to a “clothing swap party” with her boyfriend Talking Tom – a silly, innocent story for adults, but not something you’d expect an app character to be asking a child

5. The Child Mode is easy to turn off. It just involves tapping on a smiley face at the top of the screen, then moving the toggle from on to off. It won’t stump the average six year-old for long. So while it’s possible to say that the text-chat issues above aren’t a problem, because children won’t be encountering that feature… Well, they quite possibly will.

As a parent, if you’re allowing your child to use the app, you should a.) make sure you’ve turned Child Mode on from the start, and b.) talk to your child about why they shouldn’t turn it off (and check that they don’t, regularly).

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