Charlotte is the niece of one of our marketing team members, and she loves pandas. They’re cute, cuddly (at least in theory), and, in her little universe, they know Kung Fu. She’s only seven years old but already is asserting her independence. So when Charlotte comes by the office and wants to look up videos of pandas, she wants someone to help her find the first video, and nothing more. She is perfectly capable of clicking links by herself.
However, there is a lot of content on YouTube and other video hosting sites that is not appropriate for Charlotte’s little eyes and ears. One would think that getting from pandas to something more explicit would be difficult to do. Unfortunately, this is not correct.
This past February, The Guardian published a story about research demonstrating that children are typically about three clicks away from explicit material on YouTube. The article goes on to say another “study of 24,000 young people found that 27% of 7-to-11-year-olds and nearly half of 11-to-19-year-olds had come across something they thought was ‘hurtful or unpleasant’ online in the past 12 months.”
Despite safety modes and safe search settings, kids like Charlotte can be learning about pandas one minute, then the next minute encounter something they shouldn’t be seeing: all because of the “suggested videos” feature. This isn’t to say that YouTube should discard this useful function, but the study does expose the very real need of a larger and more thorough filter so that children can watch videos safely.
This is how PlayCorner TV comes into the picture: our app is designed with kids like Charlotte in mind. Children should be able to explore their interests on video sites without the threat of hurtful or unpleasant images and videos distracting their learning process and teaching them things they shouldn’t know about until much later in life.
PlayCorner TV filters educational content in, and inappropriate content out, while also allowing parents to block videos. Essentially, it is a safe, mobile environment where kids can be kids, as well as a digital playground where parents can drop their kids off to explore their interests and learn about the world.
With PlayCorner TV, Charlotte now has a place where she can search for panda videos and be Ms. Independent, and adults have a place where they can let their kids explore without the worry of something inappropriate popping up.