parents

Several popular AI products flagged as unsafe for kids by Common Sense Media

An independent review of popular AI tools has found that many — including Snapchat’s My AI, DALLE, and Stable Diffusion, may not be safe for kids. The new reviews come from Common Sense Me

Meta seeks legislation that would require parents to approve teens’ app downloads

Meta wants to shift the burden of monitoring social media usage among teens back to the app stores — and to parents. In a blog post published today, Meta’s global head of Safety, Antigone

Snapchat adds new teen safety features, cracks down on age-inappropriate content

Snapchat today is announcing a series of new safeguards for its app, aimed at better protecting teen users, similar to other efforts introduced earlier by other social apps, like Facebook and Instagra

Common Sense Media, a popular resource for parents, to review AI products’ suitability for kids

Common Sense, a well-known nonprofit organization devoted to consumer privacy, digital citizenship and providing media ratings for parents who want to evaluate the apps, games, podcasts, TV shows, mov

After an investigation exposes its dangers, Pinterest announces new safety tools and parental controls

Following last month’s NBC News investigation into Pinterest that exposed how pedophiles had been using the service to curate image boards of young girls, the company on Tuesday announced furthe

Google Assistant gains new parental controls, kid-friendly answers and voices

Following the recent introduction of parent-controlled watchlists on Google TV and the revamp of its parental control app Family Link, Google today announced it’s also now bringing parental con

This Week in Apps: Elon wants out, TikTok’s content ratings, a new milestone for subscription revenue

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. Global app spending reached $65 billion in th

Amid growing concerns around app addiction, TikTok rolls out more screen tools

TikTok users regularly complain of hours lost on the platform, thanks to the video app’s unmatched ability to distract, entertain and engage users by way of its advanced recommendation technolog

Match Group launches its latest dating app, Stir, aimed at single parents

Dating app giant Match Group, already home to Tinder, Match, OkCupid, Hinge and others, is today launching the latest addition to its dating services lineup with Stir, an app designed exclusively for

Following suicides and lawsuits, Snapchat restricts apps building on its platform with new policies

After a bullied teen died by suicide, a grieving mother last year sued the platform where the abuse had taken place — Snapchat — for not doing enough to protect its younger users. Another

Instagram rolls out new safety tools for parents

Meta announced on Wednesday a new set of tools designed to protect young users, an overdue response to widespread criticism that the company doesn’t do enough to protect its most vulnerable user

Honeycomb, a private social app for families, raises $4M seed round

A women-led startup called Honeycomb is launching its private social app for families, backed by $4 million in seed funding led by Peter Boyce at Stellation Capital. Now out of private beta, the app o

TikTok adds educational resources for parents as part of its Family Pairing feature

TikTok is expanding its in-app parental controls feature, Family Pairing, with educational resources designed to help parents better support their teenage users, the company announced this morning. Th

Common Sense Networks launches Sensical, a free, hand-curated streaming service for kids

Common Sense Media has made a name for itself among parents as a useful resource for vetting entertainment and technology in terms of its age-appropriateness. Now, the organization’s for-profit

Snowman, the studio behind Alto’s Adventure and others, launches a kids app company, Pok Pok

Snowman, the small studio behind award-winning iOS games Alto’s Adventure, Alto’s Odyssey, Skate City and others, is spinning out a new company, Pok Pok, that will focus on educational chi

Netflix gives its Kids profiles a visual upgrade

Netflix is giving its Kids profiles a revamp, the company announced today. While adults’ profiles are personalized with horizontal rows of recommendations that appear as they scroll down, the Kids p

Google’s Family Link updates reflect the pandemic’s impact on how parents view screen time

Google is making changes to its parental control system, Family Link, that aims to better reflect parents’ changing views on children’s screen time. In the pre-pandemic world, parents were

Instagram adds new teen safety tools as competition with TikTok heats up

Earlier this year, TikTok made an update to its privacy settings and defaults to further lock down the app for its teenage users. This morning, Instagram followed suit with teen-focused privacy update

Apple teams with Common Sense Media to curate podcasts for kids

Apple announced this morning it’s teaming up with Common Sense Media to curate a selection of kid-friendly podcasts in the U.S. in light of what appears to be growing interest in spoken-word ent

YouTube to launch parental control features for families with tweens and teens

YouTube announced this morning it will soon introduce a new experience designed for teens and tweens who are now too old for the schoolager-focused YouTube Kids app, but who may not be ready to explor
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