Bark Brand Ambassador Program

As a mom, I put a great deal of trust in recommendations that come from my son’s school or friends who happen to have children his same age. When it comes to raising and protecting my family, I don’t trust advertising claims. I trust results from real people.

Bark now helps over 5 million children stay safer online and in real life. Through intelligent monitoring, we’ve helped prevent school shootings and suicide attempts and alerted to signs of cyberbullying, adult content, child predators, self-harm, and depression.

Specifically, our goals are to:

 Support other parents who are parenting in this digital age and
Get Bark into as many schools as possible (it’s 100% free for them!) 

What’s in it for you?

Bark is 20% off for life for anyone you refer through your link
You will receive a $50 Amazon gift card for every Bark user you refer
You will receive a $25 Amazon gift card for every Bark Jr user you refer
Access to our private Facebook group

Titania Jordan
CMO + Chief Parent Officer

titania.jordan@bark.us

BAA Events Form

Have an upcoming event? We’d love to hear about it! Fill out this form so we can send custom materials your way!

Flyers

Download and distribute the flyers below to share more information about Bark.

To request the custom flyers with your unique promo code email titania.jordan@bark.us.

Social Media Images

Click here to access the Dropbox folder with social media images for your use.

Social Media Captions

Use the sample social media posts below to help spread the word about Bark! Feel free to adjust these to fit your own family’s experiences and your personal voice.

Videos

We have several videos on our YouTube channel for you to share. Here are some of our most popular videos that explain what Bark is and how it has helped families.

Help Articles + Additional Resources

Below you will find articles with answers to frequently asked questions about Bark.

• What Bark Monitors on the Different Platforms
• How to Monitor an iPhone or iPad/iPod
• How to Monitor an Android Device
• The Bark Difference
• How do Bark check-ins work?
• Frequently Asked Questions

In less than a decade, the number of kids hospitalized for thinking about or attempting suicide has doubled. This startling statistic shows a rising public health concern for America’s children.

But there’s another story if you dig deeper into LGBT suicide. The numbers for suicide break down differently for kids who identify as LGBTQ+, and the drastic divide between them and their heterosexual peers is heartbreaking.

According to the CDC’s 2017 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance study, LGBTQ+ students report much higher rates of mental health concerns and suicidal ideation.

Just how much higher? Let’s break it down.

LGBT Suicide: A Side-by-side Comparison

The CDC surveyed nearly 15,000 students across the U.S., and their report reveals that LGBTQ+ kids are prone to more anxiety, more depression, and higher rates of suicidal ideation.

In fact, in every one of the following categories, LGBTQ+ kids were THREE TIMES more likely (or more!) to report suicidal ideation than heterosexual kids.

• Seriously considered suicide: 13% of heterosexual kids; 48% of LGBTQ+ kids

• Made a suicide plan: 10% of heterosexual kids; 38% of LGBTQ+ kids

• Actually attempted suicide: 5.4% of heterosexual kids; 23% of LGBTQ+ kids

Why is this happening?

The American Academy of Pediatrics explains that — even in 2018 — LGBTQ+ kids struggle with the stigma of being labeled gay. They are more likely to be teased or bullied, and they can even be rejected by their own parents.

This stress can result in struggles with self-image and self-esteem during adolescence, a time when all kids are trying to figure out who they are. In some cases, many sexual minority youth become homeless after coming out to their families.

How Parents Can Support

Bark advocates for parents checking in with their children, providing support no matter what their children are going through. If you’re worried about your child, talk to a medical or psychiatric professional about your concerns. The It Gets Better Project, the Trevor Project, and PFLAG also serve as great resources for parents of LGBTQ+ kids, and provide supportive community.

Keeping Kids Safe

Bark’s intelligent monitoring scans for signs of depression and suicidal ideation, and in 2018 to date, has alerted parents to 43,362 children who
expressed self-harm, cutting, or suicidal thoughts. Oftentimes, parents have no idea that their child is struggling silently. Receiving these alerts can literally be the difference between life and death.

Remember, above all, your child needs you — no matter what. Your support and acceptance are crucial to their well-being, security, and happiness as they grow into adults.  

Even if your child isn’t LGBTQ+, they will probably have a friend or classmate who could be dealing with the overwhelming issues surrounding LGBT suicide. And as a community, we can work together to make sure every child feels safe and accepted.

If you’re interested in Bark, we offer a free, no-strings-attached trial week. 

Good news is coming to families who use iPhones and iPads! With the release of iOS 12 this fall, parents will soon have new tools to control how their children interact with and use their Apple devices. Parents will have the ability to set time limits and turn the phone “off” whenever they feel it’s necessary. While it’s not as feature-rich as third-party products such as Boomerang, unGlue, and Circle, this is a great step for Apple to implement a native solution.

While previous versions of iOS had rudimentary, all-or-nothing parental controls, iOS 12 provides incredibly detailed and granular access, reflecting the varying needs of families with kids of all ages. Bark works seamlessly with this new update, providing a much-needed component of content analysis that is missing from most parental control options.

Easily accessible through Settings, “Screen Time” is the hub for all of the new ways you’ll be able to take control and help your kids learn to be responsible digital citizens. These controls will be a fantastic complement to the monitoring service that Bark provides when they are using their devices, enabling parents to stay on top of what’s happening in their children’s lives.

We’ve compiled a list of the 5 features that parents will love most about the new update:

1). You can control when your kids are online. Full stop.

Arguably the most powerful component of Screen Time, the Downtime settings enable parents to schedule blocks of time when the phone can’t be used, such as bedtime, dinner, or during homework. During Downtime, notifications won’t be displayed, and a special badge will appear on apps to indicate they can’t be used.  

There’s two options for Downtime. With regular Downtime, accessibility is drastically limited, with only approved apps being accessible. However, if you choose “Block at Downtime,” all apps and functions will be stopped, essentially turning the device into a paperweight.

2). Receive detailed reports on exactly how and when your kids use their devices.

This function is absolutely a game-changer for decoding your child’s relationship with their phone. Here, you’ll be able to get daily and weekly reports that will tell you:

• how many times they picked up their phone

• the number of notifications they receive

• the amount of time they spend in each app

• their longest stretch of use

• how long they use their phone at night

The first time you check your child’s report, you’re probably going to be a little surprised. Use this opportunity to talk with them and discuss any concerns that you may have.

3). Set custom time limits for different apps.

Once you learn from the custom reports where your kids are spending their time, you can then get to work and specifically manage and set limits for individual apps. When kids reach the limit of their 20 minutes of Instagram, for instance, they’ll then receive a notification telling them time’s up.

The beauty of the iOS 12 update is that it’s not all black and white. This feature also builds in some flexibility and parental discretion. You can enable the option for kids to request more time, which you can grant from your own iOS device. But don’t worry — there’s only one extra ask allowed, so they can’t keep nudging you until you give in.

4). Ensure certain apps will be Always Available.

We know all apps aren’t created equal. That’s why this functionality can keep kids safe while also allowing them to access more productive apps, like the phone for emergencies and the calculator and ebooks for educational pursuits. Apps marked as Always Available will be available even during Downtime.

Apple marks Phone, Messages, FaceTime, and Maps as Always Available apps, but you can select any apps you like to be Always Available.

5). Decide which notifications kids can receive to their devices, and when.

The upgrades to the notifications in iOS 12 can help change the way your kids interact with their devices. You can even turn off notifications for some apps altogether. This is important because oftentimes it’s the notifications that keep kids opening and reopening apps.  The less bait, the less hooking.  You can also set an app’s notifications to Deliver Quietly — muting their sound and confining them to the Notification Center.

Thankfully, with this release Apple has prioritized making their existing parental controls much more accessible to parents in need of these features. We applaud Apple’s efforts to help parents keep children safer online and look forward to future initiatives from their family safety division.

If you have any questions about how to implement these features (or any other parenting/tech question), don’t hesitate to reach out to us. 

Want to Learn More?

Bark for Families — Bark’s award-winning service proactively monitors your child’s text messages, emails, and social media and sends alerts at signs of danger.

Bark for Schools — We provide free monitoring for G Suite and Outlook 365 accounts for K-12 schools across the country.

Parenting in a Tech World — Join our Facebook community of more than 11,000 parents discussing kids, technology, and everything in between.

Now the second leading cause of death for young people, suicide has become a nationwide epidemic. For National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, we’ve put together resources for parents and young people to raise awareness, encourage dialogue, and identify the warning signs of suicide in youth.

However, these warning signs can be hard to catch, especially when they happen behind the closed doors of young people’s online activity. We created a video to help parents and kids have open conversations about this difficult subject. Watch below.

Signs of suicide in youth video transcript

On the surface, everything might seem perfect.

But the reality is that suicide is on the rise. In fact, it’s now the second leading cause of death for young people. Just last year, one in ten high school girls and one in four LGBT teens attempted suicide. Every day in the U.S., more than 3,000 young people attempt to kill themselves.

It can be hard to talk about. And, hard to know how your child is really feeling.

But there are warning signs to watch for. They include talking about feeling hopeless or worthless, making risky or self-destructive choices, and talking about death or suicide.

But all too often, these warning signs are buried deep in their online activity.

So, what can we do? Learn the warning signs of suicide in youth, start those hard conversations. Even if your child isn’t struggling, they may know someone who is.

Make sure to monitor your child’s online activity so you can catch the first signs of trouble.

Visit bark.us/beyondthescreen to learn more.

For the month of September, if you sign up for Bark with the code BEYONDTHESCREEN, Bark will donate the first $9 of your subscription to the Crisis Text Line.

Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram all month long for updates and new content.

Jami Nesbitt is Bark’s Director of Data Annotation and Reporting, and — along with her team of more than 40 reviewers — is responsible for analyzing all of the potentially harmful messages that Bark’s algorithm escalates. These reviewers are on the front lines of child, tween, and teen communications, seeing messages from kids questioning their will to live through email, in text messages, and on social media. (A note from Bark: 99.96% of all of the messages we scan are processed by our artificial intelligence and are never seen by human eyes. The Data Annotation Team views a small percentage of severe alerts in order to escalate them to parents and schools.) Jami and her team work together reviewing these serious messages, gauging the threat level they pose, and contacting parents if necessary. Because of her experience reading and reviewing tens of thousands of actual conversations flagged as potentially harmful, Jami possesses a unique vantage point into how kids today are talking about suicide and self-harm. In this Q&A, we hope to inform parents about this reality as well as provide resources for support. Let’s start with some numbers. What kind of volume does Bark experience with regards to flagged communications indicating potential self-harm or suicidal ideation? Unfortunately, we experience far too many incidents of potential self-harm or suicidal ideation. As Bark expands, so do our escalations — we now monitor more than 2 million children. When I first started working for Bark we were getting about a dozen a week. Now we get that many in a single day. That’s frightening. What are kids saying in these messages? With instances of suicidal ideation and self-harm, kids talk about how they are so overwhelmed with life that they wish they were dead. They discuss how better everyone else would be if they were not alive. They hold the weight of the world on their shoulders and think the only solution to their problems is death or relief of emotional pain through physical pain. Are there ways your team has learned to discern between more and less serious language? Yes, absolutely. Kids who are joking around about suicide or self-harm tend to not use negative emotional language or absolutist words. One thing to realize is that kids will use common vernacular (“KMS”, short for “kill myself”) that might seem serious — and sometimes it is — but they generally mean it in a benign or sarcastic way, as in “ugh more english homework kms.” [sic] At the other end of the spectrum, negative emotional language is when kids talk about how everyone would be better off if they were dead. Absolutist language includes words like “always,” “nothing,” or “completely.” Profanity along with absolutist language also has a high correlation to true suicidal ideation and self-harm. Basically, kids who are suicidal or who self-harm do not mince words about the topic. It is very real and serious for them, and it should be for us, as well. What’s the process for when Bark determines that a child is in imminent danger of self-harm? Once the algorithm has determined that there may be a child in imminent danger of self-harm or suicide, a Bark team member receives an alert to confirm whether the algorithm is correct. If the Bark team member believes that there is potential for suicide or self-harm they escalate the issue, which immediately pings a team leader. The team leader reviews the information and determines the severity of the issue and then sends a notification to the guardian. Alerts on severe issues cannot be “ignored” or “unchecked” in the dashboard. It is a special urgent alert that is outside of a guardian’s notification settings. What advice do you have for parents who are unaware of the prevalence of children talking about suicide or self-harm on their devices? Reading this article is a good first step! There’s a ton of research online that can help you learn the statistics and teach you how to have those hard conversations with your child. We recommend organizations like the Jason Foundation, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, and the Trevor Project. Talk to your kids, even if you are sure they are not suicidal or self-harming; the likelihood that one of their friends is experiencing those emotions and behaviors is still very high. Visit bark.us/learn/suicide-awareness/ to learn more about the reality of child, tween, and teen suicide, and download resources for you and your child.