NOTE: Saturn is reaching the top charts again! With security updates and the addition of college campuses, we are diving into the updates for the Fall of 2024 and will report any new findings soon. For now, here is our review as it stood at the end of 2023:
Within a few weeks of our initial review from 2023, and after multiple meetings with Saturn leadership, they made significant improvements to their student verification process and gating student names and information. We applaud Saturn for acting swiftly and efficiently. Please watch the Instagram Reel of the update: Saturn App Review Part 3
What is Saturn?
Not just the planet! But also a scheduling app, called Saturn – Time Together. It’s intended to keep high school students organized and connected with classmates. You create an account, find your school, link your schedule, and it helps you stay on track with your classes, assignments, group projects, and more. In reality, it’s school-specific social media masked as a “scheduling” app, with potential for privacy risks.
App Category: Social Networking
App Rating: 12+ Apple’s App Store (not available on Android)
How does Saturn Work?
You create your Saturn account, set your age (must be 13 or older, intended for students 9th-12th), verify your phone number and can link your Snapchat, select your location status (don’t allow), then find your school. Important to note, Saturn won’t list schools unless 20 or more students have requested for their school to be on the app.
After this, you must verify you’re actually a student by connecting your school email to utilize their main features. This is the biggest change they’ve made – previously, unverified users could see a lot more. But now, Saturn has taken multiple steps to ensure the safety of students.
Let’s take a look at some important lines in their Safety Improvements for Students from August 17th:
Locking out real students due to their new verification process – now that’s promising! And worth it for the removal of fake/predatory accounts.
Once your account is verified, Saturn simply has tabs on the bottom that help you navigate your class schedule, while staying in touch with classmates and events happening at your school. At first, it looks like a scheduling app, but with all the posts, friends, and DMs, Saturn quickly becomes more like school-specific social media.
Does Saturn have Privacy Risks?
Yes, but Saturn has made great improvements. This time around, we couldn’t post to the whole school, we couldn’t see previous posts on the school bulletin, and we couldn’t see student’s names and grades. Unverified accounts now have very little access to any information. The most you can really see is how many students use Saturn during the school selection process. After that, you need to verify your school email to unlock access to the rest of the app:
Is there Direct Messaging on Saturn?
Yes, but thankfully, we couldn’t DM any of these students without verifying a school email. And now, we couldn’t even invite others to be our friends, because we couldn’t see any other users without being verified. This was another area of great concern due to potential predatory behavior, and it’s been addressed. Bravo!
External Links on Saturn. But remember, the whole point of the app is to share as much school and student-specific information as possible with other classmates. Additionally, Saturn encourages students to connect all of their social media accounts to Saturn, including TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, and also Venmo. Links that take users to another app or website have risk. But considering all of these users will now have to be verified, it’s still a massive improvement from how it was originally.
Worst Case Scenarios on Saturn:
We hate to go here, but we have to consider worst-case scenarios as a real possibility and ask some difficult questions. What if a shooter or predator got access to a verified Saturn account and knew student’s schedules? While their new security measures make this much more difficult, we still need to consider the potential risks of having so many student’s schedules online. Or what about a student-turned-stalker who knows the precise location of students?
Does Saturn have Parental Controls?
The answer is still no, even with their updates for the Fall of 2024. If your child is using Saturn, please make their account is private. You can do this by going to Profile > Menu > Edit Profile > Private.
Bottom Line: Is Saturn Safe for Kids?
The potential risks still outweigh the benefits.
The app is safer than it was when we wrote our first review. But simply isn’t necessary in the already noisy, chaotic lives of our amazing teens.
Their updated privacy policy still contains the same language around data use. Essentially, if you put it in Saturn, they can see it: “We have access to whatever information you send through Saturn, such as notes on homework assignments and messages to your classmates; and posts you include on Bulletin.”
What if I have more questions? How can I stay up to date?
Two actions you can take!
- Subscribe to our tech trends newsletter, the PYE Download. About every 3 weeks, we’ll share what’s new, what the PYE team is up to, and a message from Chris.
- Ask your questions in our private parent community called The Table! It’s not another Facebook group. No ads, no algorithms, no asterisks. Just honest, critical conversations and deep learning! For parents who want to “go slow” together. Become a member today!
