In today’s high-tech world, social media mobile apps represent the space, where kids and teens can chat outside of their homes or schools. The interest in social media and mobile apps is increasingly high amongst today’s children and teenagers. According to Pew Research Center, 92% of teens (aged 13-17) say they go online every day, and 24% of them state that they are online “almost constantly.”
In social media mobile apps, young generations communicate, play games, share photos and other images, and record short videos. About 170 thousand children go online at least once every day, that is why the number of social media mobile apps for kids is growing rapidly.
Social networks are part of the daily lives of most kids, many of whom devote a large amount of their time to these resources. If your child wants to start chatting, posting or sharing content, but you feel that he or she is not ready to use applications such as Facebook or Instagram, there are several alternative social networks mobile apps created for children that you can point them to.
Due to the rapid development of mobile child-friendly social networks, there are a variety of social media apps that rise above the rest in popularity. Ultimately, these social networks provide children with a safer environment in which they can share their experiences and chat with friends they know. In this article, we will look at 5 most popular and secure social media apps for children under the age of 13.
What Makes A Social Media Platform Child-Friendly?
Like most innovations nowadays, social media comes with its own pros and cons, which you should consider when deciding on the extent of your child’s exposure to it. If you want your child to experience the communication and social belongingness that social media can offer, your best option is to let them join social media apps solely created for kids.
Here are some important features that a child-friendly website or platform should have:
- Contains games and contests appropriate for children
- Requires a parent’s account confirmation and authentication
- Doesn’t collect or track sensitive information, such as location
- Limits photo, video, and other media sharing to accepted friends only
- Employs content moderators to monitor all content that gets posted on the platform
Best Social Media Apps For Kids
In this article, we will look at 5 most popular and secure social media apps for children under the age of 13.
Everloop: Goobit
With the help of this mobile application, children will be able to upload and publish photos, update statuses, comment and rate publications of their communities as well as their friends’ communities. Everloop complies with all COPPA laws, which means that online security comes first and privacy is fully protected for a child.
The new application represents the Everloop mobile interface and includes one of the most popular functions of this social network — “goobs.” It stands for children’s jokes like smearing a bug on someone else’s screen or unwinding toilet paper.
Everloop creates a truly childish atmosphere, which is important for the world in which kids become adults too quickly. The application is intended for children and should protect them from adult social networks. Thus, the kid will be able to develop communication skills at the most important moment of his or her life, when they still do not sufficiently understand what influence virtual activities can have on them.
The moderator’s team watches the children’s activities and prevents them from using foul language or mocking each other, as well as posting any other inappropriate information. In this case, the child will be explained why his or her post cannot be published.
Moreover, Everloop: Goobit is like Instagram, albeit a much more kid-friendly version. Since this application is exclusively for children, they can express themselves better to peers who share the same sentiments and experiences as them. But you may wonder, how does this app differ from an app like Instagram?
For one, when sharing content on Instagram, you’re typically limited to three options: posting publicly, posting privately (by setting your account to private), or posting for a handful of people you placed in your Close Friends list. In Goobit, children can decide on which loops or communities they want to post their content to.
Also, on Instagram, commercial content is more prevalent, as business owners and corporations continue to find ways to promote their products and services on the platform. They even enlist the help of the best site to buy Instagram followers in an effort to increase their reach. In contrast, advertising is less common on social media platforms like Everloop: Goobit, as children are not usually the target audience of most businesses.
PopJam
PopJam is a COPPA and GDPR-K compliant social security platform specifically designed for children. This is a safe, moderated community in which children can interact with their favorite content, authorities and brands.
The app is designed specifically for the safety and privacy requirements of children under 13. PopJam allows them to develop and share their art using a full set of tools for creativity such as filters and stickers. PopJam also includes quizzes, polls, games, and puzzles. It’s an app for filters and interactive games.
At PopJam, children can experiment with filters that have all their favorite characters such as LOL Surprise dolls. The platform provides a child-friendly alternative to popular social networks like Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat. Advanced AI moderation and human moderation work behind the scenes to ensure that all content in PopJam is safe and suitable for children.
PopJam Connect is expanding the PopJam ecosystem of social media for kids , allowing partners to use children’s content created for PopJam and embed it in apps and websites. A child can start a conversation with millions of children around the world with a fully compatible creative children’s social engine that spans platforms and devices.
СhatFOSS
ChatFOSS was designed for children under 13, which enables users to chat and send messages. ChatFOSS is a safe place where you always know who you are talking to since strangers cannot reach out to you.
The platform provides a child with control over what he or she shares online. ChatFOSS means “Friends Only Stay Safe.” No one can look for a child, and no one can look at what a child is doing. So a kid can have fun online with friends without any interference.
ChatFOSS is just as interesting as other social networks, but the difference is that a child directly controls who sees his/her published content and activities on the net.
TikTok
TikTok is a platform for creating and publishing short videos with a musical background reminiscent and appears to be a mixture of Vine, Instagram, and YouTube. Engagement plays a crucial part in both TikTok and Instagram. Therefore, many people buy real Instagram followers to work up on their social presence.
At the initial stage, TikTok was a platform for lip sync videos. These are short videos where users of the service hum a famous clip or repeat some funny phrase, trying to get their lips match the text. At the moment, the service has significantly diversified the content. “Viners’ ‘ with hilarious clips stepped into this environment wth a variety of challenges, contest and other activities.
Businesses and marketing professionals alike have noticed the opening they now have to reach Gen Z through the platform. Understanding the TikTok ad specs and mastering the new ad platform presents different challenges, but also unlimited opportunities to be creative in hopes of increasing engagement with younger demographics.
Edmondo
Edmodo is an educational technology company offering a platform for communication, collaboration and learning with a focus on studying at schools with K-12 education system. A child can work with the system both on desktop computers and on mobile devices that run on iOS and Android.
Edmondo’s interface reminds Facebook: color scheme, interface design, the layout of elements. However, unlike the popular social network, the functionality of Edmodo is significantly truncated and focused exclusively on the process of school learning. There is also no external advertising.
Pupils can receive assignments from the teacher and upload their homework to the site, chat with their classmates in groups, or schedule face-to-face meetings with the teacher. There is no messaging function between two students. Edmodo’s become not only a repository of methodological and scientific-entertaining content but also turned into a bank of educational and training applications.
Conclusion
Social networks are an important part of the daily lives of most kids and teens, many of whom devote a large amount of their time to social media mobile apps. There are many child-friendly platforms that retain all the features of popular social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, and keep online privacy and security on the Internet. The most popular and secure social networking mobile apps for children under the age of 13 are Everloop: Goobit, PopJam, ChatFOSS, TikTok, and Edmondo. These platforms allow kids to chat with their friends, create profiles, publish photos and videos, take quizzes and polls, and play games.
