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Apple shows off its parental features with new 'Families' page
Apple's website now has a dedicated page for family features and parental controls. It brings together the company's existing tools, such as the Ask To Buy tool, purchase-blocker and website restrictor already in the company's arsenal, into one single destination, making it easier for parents to manage their kids' smartphone use.
Netflix won’t reward kids with 'patches' for watching TV
Last week, reports surfaced that Netflix was testing a sort of rewards program wherein children could earn "patches" for watching shows like A Series of Unfortunate Events and Fuller House. While the patches didn't come with any additional benefits and didn't unlock new content, some expressed concern that it would encourage children to watch too much TV. The feature was just a test with no guarantee of a full launch, but Netflix has now told us that the feature won't be seeing a wide release. A spokesperson for the company told us today, "We've concluded the test for patches and have decided not to move forward with the feature for kids. We test lots of things at Netflix in order to learn what works well -- and what doesn't work well -- for our members."
Nickelodeon will use VR and AR to keep kids off Netflix and YouTube
Nickelodeon has announced an explosion of content for the 2018-2019 season in a bid to keep easily-distracted kids watching the network. More than 800 brand new episodes of new and returning series will hit its screens -- a 20 percent increase compared to last year -- and it plans on moving into the VR and AR landscape through its kid-facing apps.
PowerUp releases its phone-controlled paper airplane
PowerUp first previewed its smartphone-controlled paper airplane back in 2014, but now it's finally available to everyone. The startup has announced that a retail version of its Dart aircraft will ship in February, and is running a pre-order campaign for barebones (just the propeller module and two templates) and standard (wheels and Japanese aerobatic papers) kits that start at $29 and $37 respectively. Higher-priced packs offer additional modules and stands for your aeronautics-minded friends.
Advocacy group urges Facebook to pull Messenger for Kids
Facebook started rolling out its messaging app for kids last December, offering a standalone app with parental controls built right in. The app is available on iOS and Android Fire tablets, and allows children under the age of 13 to chat with approved contacts. As you might imagine, however, child advocacy groups have taken issue with it. In a letter to Mark Zuckerberg, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood express concern that "this new app will undermine children's healthy development."
littleBits and Pearson bring electronics kits to US schools
The littleBits team has long been eager to teach kids about the joys of building electronics, and it's taking that commitment to its logical conclusion. It's partnering with Pearson on the STEM Invention Toolbox, a kit that teaches students at varying grade levels how to design electronics and understand scientific concepts. They can craft circuits that save energy, for example, or a communication device for astronauts. The aim is to learn by doing, and encourage kids to "think beyond the text" -- they're not just memorizing facts or performing canned experiments.
Apple will combat iPhone addiction with more parental controls
Apple plans to incorporate new controls into its smartphones that will allow parents to control how much their children use them, Bloomberg reports. In response to a public letter issued on January 6th by two investment groups -- with a combined $2 billion in Apple shares -- on the company claimed it has always protected kids' interests but vowed to do more to keep them safe online.
Researchers find another smart toy that's easy to hack
A team of security researchers that has warned of the dangers of smart toys has found another that can be used to spy on your children. Pen Test Partners examined the Teksta Toucan, finding that it's easy to hack the device's microphone and speaker. According to The Register, the device is built by Genesis Industries, makers of the iQue and My Friend Cayla, two devices that are already feeling the heat from regulators. Both are currently being looked at in the US and Europe, while the latter has been withdrawn from sale in Germany.
YouTube pulled 150,000 videos of children over predatory comments
YouTube is taking extensive action after word broke that pedophiles were targeting videos of children with vile comments. The streaming service reported that it had taken down over 150,000 videos that had fallen prey to comment abuse, and had disabled comments for more than 625,000 clips. It also terminated the accounts of several hundred users behind those comments. You can read its full statement on the subject below.
YouTube goes after child-exploiting channels and videos
There's been a growing trend of content on YouTube that pretends to be kid-friendly, but is anything but. There have also been reports of content creators with incredibly questionable content that some feel borders on child abuse, as reported by Buzzfeed. Google has been trying to manage this dual problem by targeting disturbing videos, but now it's planning to do even more (which makes a ton of sense given the accusations). According to a blog post, the company wants to toughen up it's approach to manage this issue with policies like applying community guidelines more quickly and strictly, removing ads from the disturbing videos, blocking inappropriate comments on videos featuring minors, giving creators of family-friendly content more guidance and continuing to listen to experts when content is too nuanced for a simple decision.
Germany bans children’s smartwatches over privacy concerns
Germany's telecommunications regulator, the Federal Network Agency, announced a ban today on the sale of kids' smartwatches, the BBC reports, and encouraged parents to destroy the ones they already own. The agency appears to be taking particular issue with the devices' abilities to transmit audio from its surroundings. Jochen Homann, the agency's president, said today, "Via an app, parents can use such children's watches to listen unnoticed to the child's environment and they are to be regarded as an unauthorised transmitting system."
Amazon offers $250,000 prize fund for Alexa skills aimed at kids
Amazon's latest bid to boost its smart assistant's skill set is centered around kids. Oh, and a big pile of money. Alexa Skills Challenge: Kids wants Alexa tricks aimed at kids under the age of 13, with the best ones claiming cash prizes from a fund of $250,000. The overall winner will claim $25,000, so a farm yard animal noise generator won't cut it. All eligible participants in the challenge will also pick up a limited-edition Echo Dot, and there's dedicated prizes for high school and university student devs.
FTC loosens guidelines to let kids use voice commands
The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act bars companies from collecting audio recordings from kids under 13 without their parents' permission. However, that raises concerns about voice assistants like Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri or Google Assistant: is it legal for under-13s to use voice commands, given that there's rarely (if ever) a permanent recording to put them at risk? According to the Federal Trade Commision, the answer is yes... within limits. The agency has stated that it won't pursue enforcement action against companies simply because they let kids issue voice commands. So long as the firms only hold on to recordings for a brief moment and use them solely for voice commands, they'll usually be in the clear.
UK orders shutdown of online casino games aimed at kids
Have you ever seen a gambling machine or website that was all too conspicuously aimed at children? British regulators certainly have. The country's Gambling Commission and advertising overseers have ordered over 450 gambling sites to "immediately" remove casino games they say are targeting the under-18 crowd. The cartoonish graphics, cute characters and even game names (such as Piggy Payout) serve as gambling advertising that's "likely" to appeal to kids, according to an official letter. And these aren't just free titles -- bets range as high as £600 (about $792), so this could be particularly damaging if a child got access.
Australian police posed as child abusers for a dark web sting
Where do you draw the line when trying to catch child abusers? That's what authorities have to decide when they run sting operations on the dark web. When Norwegian newspaper VG investigated one of the biggest child exploitation sites on the dark web, Child's Play, they found that it had been run by Australian police for three months. The special unit out of Brisbane, dubbed Argos, had undercover detectives posting and sharing abuse materials on the site. The newspaper held off on reporting until now, a year later, to allow the police to finish its investigation.
Cue the CleverBot is a coding robot for older kids
Kids' robotics company Wonder Workshop is launching two new robots designed to introduce children to coding in a fun, hands-on way. First up is Cue, the slightly older sibling of the company's 2014 robot offering Dash (or at the very least it's Dash with a pre-teen makeover, as the bright primary colors have been replaced with a sleeker, cooler palette, a bit more fitting for its 11+ audience). Cue comes with a new AI engine that lets code-curious kids actively engage with the robot (and its four different avatars) via a text-based chat function that includes a vocabulary of more than 170,000 words. Via Cue's companion app -- available on iOS, Android and Kindle -- kids can use a simple block program or JavaScript text mode to take the reins in a freestyle coding environment, playing with all kinds of cool features such as proximity sensors, encoders, a gyro, an accelerometer and a microphone. And in November, Cue will support Apple's Swift programming language through a new Swift Playgrounds Playbook.
Alexa's new kid-friendly skills have a layer of parental control
Amazon's Alexa skills let you add all sorts of functionality to your Echo devices, and there are more coming every day. You can order a pizza, manage your video streaming binges, find out when your package has shipped and even book a hotel with your voice. But why should grown-ups have all the fun? Amazon has just announced kids skills in the US, which have a layer of parental permissions to help adults feel safe in adding them to their children's Echo devices.
BBC to spend millions luring kids back from Netflix and YouTube
For decades, the BBC has provided a huge amount of resources for children, whether it be TV programming, online games or GCSE revision guides. But gradually over time, companies like Netflix, Amazon and Google -- not necessarily rival broadcasters, after regulators cracked down on children's TV advertising -- have muscled in on that territory and lured younger viewers away.
US senator wants to make sure the FTC takes smart toys seriously
It's not just parents that are worrying about the security of connected toys. Senator Mark Warner has sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission grilling it about efforts to protect kids' privacy when they use smart toys like the CloudPets you see above. He's particularly worried that FTC Acting Chairwoman Maureen Ohlhausen is shrugging off concerns about how companies handle kids' data. In recent statements, she argued that the FTC should focus on "objective, concrete harms," such as financial damage or health risks -- toy data leaks might not fit under that bill.
YouTube Kids brings cartoons and bright colors to your smart TV
YouTube Kids' mobile app is fine if your young ones are content to watch videos on a tablet, but what if you just want to plunk them down on the couch to watch on the big screen? You can after today. YouTube is trotting out a version of the Kids app for many LG, Samsung and Sony smart TVs (more details below) in all 26 countries where the child-ready viewer is available. The interface isn't exactly a radical departure, but that's the point, isn't it? Ideally, this lets little tykes watch videos with minimal help from their parents.
