Mobile App Manual Review under COPPA Rule: ‘My Town Hospital - Doctor Game'

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My Town Hospital is a creative, role-playing game, similar to how a child would play and interact with dolls or action figures. App users can navigate around a very cheery hospital, entering different rooms and interacting with the characters and objects in each room. There is minimal text when navigating through the app, allowing children that cannot yet read to navigate the hospital using the symbols on the door to each room.

Each room in the hospital provides a different experience for the player, from feeding a newborn to administering an MRI. Rather than having users move through a pre-made story, this app encourages children to use their imagination and create their own story.

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The animated characters and hospital scenes are bright and cheery. Despite the fact that many of the characters are patients in a hospital, the default facial expression is a big smile. Users can adjust the facial expressions to fit the story they are creating, but even the less-happy looking expressions still have a happy, cartoonish quality that would appeal to children. When a new facial expression is selected, accompanying sounds are played to express the appropriate emotion.

Most of the objects in each room can be interacted with and they each present an accompanying sound when clicked, such as a heart monitor beeping after being attached to a patient or the sound of running water when a sink is turned on. The sounds encourage younger children to continue to interact with the app, and help them learn which objects are able to be manipulated while playing.

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The intention that children are the target audience of this this app is indicated within the app description; “My Town Doctor game for kids aged 4-12. All My Town playhouse games are safe to play even when parents are out of the room.” This targeted audience is also reflected in the reviews. Many of the reviews are from children writing about their own experiences with the app, while other reviews are from parents. The reviews reflect a wide variety of ages of children using this app.

My Town Hospital does contain several different types of advertisements. Banner ads are always present on the top of the screen, advertising general audience products and services, such as wealth management and dentists. Video ads play at regular intervals when switching rooms in the hospital. These video ads appeared to be more child-oriented, advertising other child-directed apps and snacks geared towards children. Finally, on the main screen seen before entering the hospital, there are advertisements along the left hand side and bottom right corner for other games by the same developers.

Privacy

According to the privacy policy , which was last updated on July 18, 2022, My Town Games “acknowledges that our games are meant for young children” and that their app “does not actively collect any information from children.” However, further down in the privacy policy they clarify that they do not collect any personal information from children, but they do indicate that they pass along non-personal information to their advertising and analytics partners.