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 and Apple App Stores. 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.
Kids party: The cooking game is an engaging educational gameplay where players figure out how to cook sushi and other meals of Japanese cuisine. It starts off with different mini-games such as learning how to make fans out of paper and create flower arrangements. It is a fun and simple game with instructions on how to create dishes as a family for a party. Players drive to the grocery store, search for items to cook, and return to adorn the home with decorations. The visual content is vibrant with high-spirited animations of hippos that capture each character's expressions. The subject matter in the About Game section has information that is directed to children. It states, “Have fun playing our funny and educational games with your kids.” Largely, it can be fun for kids as they learn how to sequence tasks and manage their time.
There is “Ancestry” advertising as a banner directed to a general audience within the game and some ads are shown after completed activities such as, “Going balls and Bridge race,” which is directed to a mixed audience. The game has in-app purchases to avoid the advertisement.
The app is rated E for Everyone in the Google Play store. There is no age gate. A review posted in October 2019 says, “My daughter likes this game.” There was no age specified by the parent.
Privacy:
The developer’s privacy policy states, ”does not knowingly collect any personal information from children or within the child-oriented portion of our services...our services directed to children users, we collect information which includes persistent identifiers..collected solely for the purpose of providing functionality and support for our internal operations.”
Screenshots of Kids party: Cooking Game
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.
