How To Choose a Safe Mobile Gaming App for Your Kid
When choosing apps for children, whether for educational or entertainment reasons, safety is a top priority at all times. However, there are millions of apps, and also children are quite savvy today and can sometimes download some apps on their own.
It can be difficult to find efficient apps that are both positive and child-friendly. In this post, we look into some tips that will help you choose the proper apps you will want to share with your children.
Kid-Friendly Mobile App – What Is It?
The truth is that many apps, even those created for children, are not really child-friendly. The reason why is that such apps must offer not only fun and/or educational content, but also be age-appropriate.
However, if you take some popular shooters, they are engaging (addictive even), but there is no educational value there, and also the visuals are not very appropriate for minor children. It can be hard sometimes to check whether the app really offers kid-friendly content because, in some games, surprises can turn up later.
It is important to remember that the majority of apps – even educational ones – are created in such a way that they are expected to captivate the users and make them spend as much time in the app as possible.
This is pretty fair because apps must help their creators make money. However, even entertainment apps should meet certain standards and reasonable demands about safety.
How Do You Choose Safe Apps?
The majority of people do not really put much effort into choosing apps unless they know exactly that a particular app is good (for example, recommended by a friend). If they are searching for just some random entertainment apps, the process is very simplistic: they open the store, check out the icons, look at the screenshots and ratings, maybe read the comments, and download the app.
And yet, when choosing apps for your kids, you should be way more considerate, and not only in terms of choosing for your kids mobile games that do not contain violence or similar content. Obviously you will not download a Winz.io application but rather play the games yourself but some things about mobile apps are not that obvious.
Some apps have privacy policy issues or issues with data safety, some apps may actually collect users’ data, etc. Moreover, some apps demonstrate very aggressive digital marketing mechanisms that make the content particularly addictive, and users want to pay more for it.
So, before you download anything for your kids, take a closer look at the app’s detail page.
Check the Age Rating
The first thing to pay attention to is the age rating. This information is usually displayed at the top of the app’s detail page. This rating gives a slight indication of suitability but you should not only rely on it. Some games are still very addictive.
Also, kids are very different and no one knows your kid better than you. So, what is appropriate for one 8-year-old may not be good for other kids of the same age.
Check the App Ratings and Reviews
If the app is popular and has been actually used by many people, it tends to have a healthy number of ratings and user reviews. While checking the app’s description from the publisher is always a good idea, checking comments and user reviews is an even better idea.
The only thing to keep in mind about user comments is that people have a general tendency to complain about things rather than praise them, so it is still better to check the app yourself.
Check for In-App Purchases
Many educational slash entertaining apps for kids are free to download and use but in reality, too many of those offer in-app purchases. In-app purchases mean that the app’s basic content is free but extra content should be paid for.
Also, some useful features can be hidden behind the paywall; for example, if you are stuck in the game, you can make a one-time payment to solve the problem.
The bad news is that some apps sneakingly add more of these situations when the user is likely to get stuck or find themselves in a position of really needing the paid feature. Even adults are often unaware that this marketing happens, let alone kids who are unable to analyze whether they want extra content or needed, or is it affordable.
There are some stories when people paid unhealthy amounts of money to succeed in a mobile game or unlock some extra content.
So it is crucial to check the apps for in-game purchases and also warn your kids about such a possibility. Kids can be really tempted to buy some small things for small money but these purchases can eventually accumulate.
You can also consider some parental control over your online payments like e-wallets connected to your smartphone or your kid’s phone. In Apple’s App Store, you can be notified when your kid wants to make a purchase. In Google’s Play Store, you can set a password that is required to make a purchase.
Check the App
If your first stage of the app analysis is successful, install the app on your phone and test it for a bit. You may want to use it more than once to really understand how it works and what content is offered.
Don’t forget to trust your gut feeling. If you think something about the app just doesn’t feel right, don’t let your kids use it. Don’t forget that a good child-safe app should be engaging, educational, and age-appropriate.
