These days App’s on Phones and Tablets are common practice and with the rise of streaming and Youtube etc, even on Macs and Laptops there is APP like programs that allow you to watch a variety of things but with all these choices, what’s best for kids? What’s out there? Disney Plus, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Sky, Youtube, Ceebeebies…the list goes on.
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What do we use?
Like most children our kids have changed the way they enjoy Films, TV, etc, of course, the old way of doing it was just sitting down watching 4 channels (if your old) or a few more in recent times, and if you are lucky enough you may have Sky, BT, or virgin and have even more media choices. However times had changed and now Kids are using streaming services Like Netflix, Disney plus, Sky, Prime, BBCi Player among many others.
We’ve had a few over the years as all 3 kids have utilized them, but they can differ and for many parents, the natural concern about what kids have access to is an obvious worry. That is a real issue and compared to having free room on the internet, Apps for streaming services can restrict that and allows much more peace of mind, furthermore these days Streaming Apps allow parents to configure and change what’s available for kids to use.
Some have taken this one step further, within their App you can enable a kid-friendly version, which means it will change the look and layout of the App completely, and of course this means limited content that a kid could stumble upon.
Kids Versions
These kids versions on Netflix, Disney plus, etc can allow you to customize it further, and to be fair Disney Plus have taken further than most with not only the opportunity to change it to a Kid version, which are easier to operate but you have multiple age choices, these kids apps are often directed towards the less than 5 age group but Disney plus allows you to choose almost every year bracket and with all content.
These days age certificated this is very useful, and with 3 kids at different age groups I can have different accounts and within them set Age brackets, to re change these you have to use the password, etc which I’m the only one who knows.
As the kids get older you can then tweak these further with changing age ranges, my only quick advice is to be careful what films and TV shows are rated as, you may not be aware so they may see something you didn’t want them to see but in reality, the age groups are fairly on point.
But flip that around you may not be aware what a film is and that there favorite but their too young to watch it! for example, Moana is a favorite in the house but for Piglet she had the kid version which meant 5 or less, Moana is rated at 6! again something to be aware of as they get older as you will want to review it.
However, it’s not just Streaming Apps like Disney Plus and Netflix, Youtube has a kids version which for many is much better than them having free roam on youtube, which is a sea of potential issues, again it’s much simpler to use with bigger icons and clearer to choose what you want, but that content is limited again so they won’t choose something dodgy. Its the same for Ceebeebies and those style apps, there is BBC iplayer, etc but for kids, its better t have these for those younger kids.
Over the top content
Personally, I’ve used several of these apps they are very easy to use, showing Tigger and Piglet is very easy and they picked it up almost straight away, even Piglet who uses youtube kids etc.. she will know what to press and how to use it, as for the bigger two i found restricted ages very useful with Roo being 14 and Tigger being 10, there’s a big jump at 12 for Tigger and an even bigger jump for Roo at 15, with both of them they have to ask at times to watch a film at either 12 or 15 rated films/program etc on the sky and for some cases
I will say its fine based on what it is, but i wouldn’t feel comfortable at all allowing them free roam at those aged shows/films etc..there’s alot that’s not quite their age on the streaming services so restricting and having control is vital for me. As the content is ever-changing this isn’t really an issue and over the last couple of years there’s been a scramble to get content on their streaming service which means for kids now they have never had more access to content, whether its free on youtube or a ipad service like Netflix, Disney plus, Prime etc..
