Middle school students found a creative way to talk with their friends online by using the comment section of a podcast on Spotify. Because many young people are blocked from using popular social media apps, these students turned the quiet comment area under an episode of NPR's podcast Wild Card into a secret group chat.
In an episode of the show This American Life, host Ira Glass investigated how the children ended up chatting there. When Glass asked one of the students why they chose that specific podcast, the child explained that they simply looked for podcasts that did not have many comments.
At first, showrunner Dave Blanchard believed the posts were written by automated bots because the messages were short, strange, and filled with emojis and shorthand. He deleted the comments, but when one account replied asking why their comment was removed, Blanchard shared screenshots with his colleagues on Slack. Producer Hannah Chin quickly recognized that the messages were from kids, remembering how they had used tools like Google Docs to chat with friends when they were young.
The discovery highlights how resourceful children can be when cut off from standard social networks. According to the report, a similar event occurred last year under another show called Ted Radio Hour.