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 a mobile app that's popular on both the Google Play & Apple App Stores. Popularity is measured by the number of downloads in the Google Play store and the number of user reviews in the Apple 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.
Toca Life World is a game where you can “create your own world and play out any story you like” according to the app store description. The visual content, subject matter and animation would appeal to children under 13. The app includes computer-animated images of children in educational, home, and park environments. The app store description asks, “Want to give grandma a wild hairstyle? Bring a sloth to the Skate Park? Or just hang out with friends?” This Google version of this app is in the Google Teacher Approved program which, according to Google, means that “teachers and children’s education and media specialists recommend” it as a “high-quality app for kids.”
The music and sound effects during the trailer and gameplay in the app are childlike with sounds of kids playing that bolsters imagination.
The incentive of the game is to create your own world. The game allows you to play out any story you like in any location within the game. Kids will love this because it is like a virtual playroom to play make believe while building new environments where they can express their creativity. It is not challenging or frustrating which makes it an attractive game for younger children.
The content rating for this app is E for Everyone in Google Play and 4+ in the Apple store. There are numerous reviews that demonstrate that children under 13 use the app. A review from September of 2022 states “..my daughter loves this game, since she was 3 years old. She is 6 now…..” Another review from November of 2022 said “... my ten year old daughter plays with this app…”
Privacy
The app’s privacy policy contains a “Children’s Privacy” section. The developer states in that section of the policy, “The only third party service providers we use in our apps are to support our internal operations and we do not collect anything that is personally identifiable in our apps for children.”
Screenshots of Toca Life World:
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.
