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.
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The gameplay screenshots for Toca Kitchen 2 include images of child aged animated models. The sounds are that of amusing kid sounds such as those of people eating, burping and so forth. The app store description says, “Free cooking app for kids... empowers kids to be creative, playful, and who they want to be….maybe aspiring chefs.” The language is child directed.
The game requires the player to choose different foods such as fruit, vegetables, meat and seafood to feed the character, and then prepare the meal. The facial and physical expressions from the characters will tell you if they like your cooking or not, which can be very funny, and by getting it right, the players can be proud of what they created.
This game is rated E for Everyone in the Google Play Store and 4+ (made for ages 6-8) in the Apple store. There is no age gate or parental control. The app shows evidence that children use the app. In November of 2022, a reviewer said, “My kids love this game for entertainment in the car on long boring drives.” The review was by a parent but no ages were specified. In January of 2023, a reviewer stated, “This is my favorite game, also I’m a kid and I played this game when I was 6 years old or 7 years old.” The review was from a kid but the actual age was not given just previous age.
Privacy:
The developer’s privacy policy was last updated in February 2023. The policy states, “ Our apps are designed for the entire family including young children with parent supervision. We do not collect anything that is personally identifiable in our apps for children.”
Screenshots of Toca Kitchen 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.
