What Parents Need to Know About Trivia Crack

More than nine out of ten American teenagers use social media, and platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat are part of every day life for millions. So whether you’re on the cutting edge yourself, or rely on your kids to keep you up to speed, you’ve more than likely heard of the mobile app, Trivia Crack.

While your initial reaction may be negative because of the drug implication of the name, the truth is the app is “cracking” the Internet-driven civilization focused on “Likes” and followers. That’s right. Trivia Crack is a mobile app that brings Jeopardy, and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? together, and makes kids smarter by making it fun to learn. Finally!

Like Jeopardy, six categories exist, but they are always the same categories: history, geography, science, sports, entertainment and the arts. Each game starts with a spin that lands on one of those categories and that is your question. Once you accept, you are asked a trivia question and given 30 seconds to answer. Users are presented with four possible responses, making it much easier to visually recognize the answer instead of actual recall. If you guess right, you spin again. Guess wrong, the proper answer is displayed, and it is your opponent’s turn. Once you answer three questions in a row correctly, you can opt to get a crown and win a character, or challenge your opponent. If you opt to get a crown, you are presented with another question from the category of your choice. Answer that question, and the crown is yours. Answer incorrectly, and it is your opponent’s turn. In order to challenge your opponent, both players must have a crown. You will first select which crown you are willing to lose, and which crown you want to steal from your opponent. Then, you and your opponent are presented with the same six questions from each category, and whoever answers the most correctly, gets the previously chosen crown. If there is a tie, the second player will be asked a tie breaker question, and if they answer correctly, they will win the previously chosen crown. If they answer incorrectly, the first player gets the crown.

After winning all of the categories, you win the game and can re-challenge your opponent.

Similar to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Trivia Crack has bonus features or ‘power-ups’, such as extra spins, extra time (Phone a Friend), a double chance (Ask the Audience) or removing two of the four possible answers to help make things easier (50/50). These options are obtained by collecting coins, which you earn each time you win a game against an opponent or answering a certain amount of questions in a row correctly.

You can rate each trivia question as boring or interesting. This feedback can presumably weed out these items from the system since the questions themselves can be user-submitted.

If your kids use Trivia Crack:

Parents should know that unlike Facebook, Instagram, and other apps, Trivia Crack does not have age restrictions, meaning anyone can have an account. Users can add friends from Facebook, or strangers (Random opponent).
If your kid uses the app, make sure that they adjust the app’s privacy settings so that their information (name and picture) is not displayed. Currently, there is not a setting to ensure that only friends can find you. The app allows anyone who knows a user’s username to invite them to play, and send messages. You cannot send images over the chat, but users could send hyperlinks that may point to an inappropriate site or image.
There is not a way to delete messages, so besides monitoring the chats, kids who use the app should know to go to an adult if they receive a troublesome message and to block and report the sender.

When used appropriately, Trivia Crack can be a fun app for all ages, however the chat feature may pose a huge risk for some parents. It’s up to parents to decide if their kids are old enough and can be trusted to use the app responsibly.

For more information on talking to your kids about their digital footprint, check out these helpful articles:

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