Welcome to Pixalate’s CTV & Mobile App Manual Reviews According to COPPA, a series containing the detailed factors the Trust & Safety Advisory Board educators used to assess an app’s child-directedness.
The educators manually review thousands of mobile apps available in the Google Play & Apple App Stores as well as connected TV (CTV) apps from the Roku Channel Store and Amazon Fire TV App Store using the COPPA Rule factors shown below & make those results available to the public at ratings.pixalate.com.
This post takes a look at a popular mobile app (1 million+ downloads) from the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store. Our reviewer discusses how the subjective factors set forth in the COPPA Rule apply to the app and factor into the reviewer's determination as to whether the app is child-directed or general audience (i.e., it is not targeting children).
The teacher will indicate the factors they relied upon in their assessment using the 10 factors shown below that reflect the 10 child-directed factors in the COPPA Rule.
Kids Dinosaur Adventure Game is a cute dinosaur adventure game where kids learn problem-solving and improve their cognitive abilities with fun games. The gameplay has puzzles, matching, coloring, and digging adventures that involve strategy by helping children develop general knowledge, concentration level, and memory power. The subject matter in the about this app, says, “game for toddlers...drawing and puzzle app for kids…what do your boys or girls think.” The visual content and animation have vivid colorful cartoon-style dinosaurs and friendly graphic designs. This app has entertaining interactive educational features that assist in making it very engaging for children.
There are advertisements that play when changing games within the app. There are ads directed to a general audience, such as, “Kohler,” and other ads directed to children, for example,” Noggin and Cooking Madness.”
The app is rated E for Everyone in the Google Play store. There is no age gate but there is in-app purchasing. A review posted in July 2019 on the Google Play store says, “My kid is enjoying it very much.” Another review posted in November 2020 says, “My baby brother likes this app so much.” The reviews do not specify age.
Privacy:
The developer’s privacy policy does not have a defined COPPA policy. It does state, “We collect personal information that you voluntarily provide…we are not responsible for the safety of any information that you share with third parties that we may link to or advertise on our services.”
Find Pixalate's full catalogue of reviews in our CTV and Mobile App Review Page
Screenshots of Kids Dinosaur Adventure Game
Pixalate’s Trust and Safety Advisory Board was created to bring in individuals with experience using child-directed apps in the classroom to review and assess which apps are child-directed. This manual review process serves to quality check Pixalate’s automated review process. See our full methodology for more information.
Disclaimer
This blog post published by Pixalate is available for informational purposes only and is not considered legal advice. By viewing this blog post, the reader understands and agrees that there is no attorney-client relationship between the reader and the blog publisher. The blog should not be used as a substitute for legal advice from a licensed professional attorney in the applicable jurisdiction(s), and readers are urged to consult their own legal counsel on any specific legal questions concerning any specific situation. The content of this blog post reflects Pixalate's opinions with respect to factors that Pixalate believes may be useful to the digital media industry. Pixalate's opinions are just that, opinions, which means that they are neither facts nor guarantees; and this blog post is not intended to impugn the standing or reputation of any entity, person or app, but instead, to report findings pertaining to mobile and Connected TV (CTV) apps.
