Vine Kids – Rest Easy, it’s Not Social Media for Children
Mallory Scudder | @MalloryScudder
We live in an age where most 6-year-olds have their own tablets and today’s parents have the new challenge of constantly checking and censoring their child’s activity in the cyber world. When it comes to apps, there are a wide variety of games and activities categorized by age level for parents to download.
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However, with social media becoming such an inevitable part of every day life, parents struggle to protect their children from the uncensored, ever-so-popular world of social media that can be accessed with just the tap of an app. In fact, children have been notably drawn to one social media platform in particular – Vine.
Vine, a Twitter-owned six-second video-sharing platform, has recently introduced a standalone app called Vine Kids. Vine explained the thought process behind the new app in a recent blog post, “We’ve seen for ourselves – and heard through parents, siblings and others – that kids love Vine. So, we built Vine Kids, a simple new app that gives young children a fun way to watch Vines.”
So is Vine Kids the first social media platform created for children? The answer is no. While Vine Kids seems to mimic it’s social video-sharing older sibling, the two apps are completely different.
Vine Kids features videos of brightly colored cartoons dancing, porcupines playing the piano, and tons of cute, tiny animals that can be viewed by simply swiping left and right on the screen. Kids can also tap the screen to make wacky sounds. All of the content is pre-loaded and updated by Vine but has been screened and pre-approved for the G-rated age group.
Aside from its content, the main reason Vine Kids is, in fact, not a social media platform is that Vine has entirely removed the social aspect of it. Although Vines can be viewed on the app, they cannot be uploaded or shared by users. When Vine created Vine Kids, they purposely left off the camera feature. So really, the app is simply for your kids’ viewing pleasure.
Will Vine Kids eventually become a dynamic social platform to reach the younger audience? We will just have to wait and see.