Welcome to Pixalate’s CTV & Mobile App Manual Reviews According to COPPA, a series containing the detailed factors the Trust & Safety Advisory Board educators used to assess an app’s child-directedness.
The educators manually review thousands of mobile apps available in the Google Play & Apple App Stores as well as connected TV (CTV) apps from the Roku Channel Store and Amazon Fire TV App Store using the COPPA Rule factors shown below & make those results available to the public at ratings.pixalate.com.
This post takes a look at a popular mobile app (1 million+ downloads) from the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. Our reviewer discusses how the subjective factors set forth in the COPPA Rule apply to the app and factor into the reviewer's determination as to whether the app is child-directed or general audience (i.e., it is not targeting children).
The teacher will indicate the factors they relied upon in their assessment using the 10 factors shown below that reflect the 10 child-directed factors in the COPPA Rule.
123 Learning Games for kids 2+ is an educational game intended for preschoolers to learn numbers 1 to 20 while playing engaging mini-games. It has a wonderful educational interface that is easy to use without any special skills needed where children can develop essential skills like coordination and memory. The gameplay teaches kids how to identify numbers, write, pronounce, and count them. The visual content and animation have vibrant graphics shown in a child-friendly format where kids can easily trace, count, and add numbers. The music and sounds include narration with interactive number sounds with fun background music that will get a child excited to learn. The subject matter in the About Game section has information that is directed to children such as, “allows boys and girls to learn numbers.”
The app is rated E for Everyone in the Google Play store and rated 4+ in the iOS store. There is no age gate. The app does require parental in-app purchases in order to move past the number 4 in the learning series to continue playing.
Privacy:
The developer’s privacy policy states, ”designed for the use by children..limited collection of personal data from children.”
Screenshots of 123 Learning Games for Kids 2+
Pixalate’s Trust and Safety Advisory Board was created to bring in individuals with experience using child-directed apps in the classroom to review and assess which apps are child-directed. This manual review process serves to quality check Pixalate’s automated review process. See our full methodology for more information.
Disclaimer
This blog post published by Pixalate is available for informational purposes only and is not considered legal advice. By viewing this blog post, the reader understands and agrees that there is no attorney-client relationship between the reader and the blog publisher. The blog should not be used as a substitute for legal advice from a licensed professional attorney in the applicable jurisdiction(s), and readers are urged to consult their own legal counsel on any specific legal questions concerning any specific situation. The content of this blog post reflects Pixalate's opinions with respect to factors that Pixalate believes may be useful to the digital media industry. Pixalate's opinions are just that, opinions, which means that they are neither facts nor guarantees; and this blog post is not intended to impugn the standing or reputation of any entity, person or app, but instead, to report findings pertaining to mobile and Connected TV (CTV) apps.
