Have you been worrying about what your child is stumbling upon on the internet?
Perhaps you don’t need to worry anymore, as there’s a new kid friendly search engine known as Kiddle which promises to only offer search results which are “kid-friendly”.
The search engine is powered by Google but it’s not owned by them – it does however resemble the Google search interface which we are all accustomed to but instead of the white background it has a “space-like” theme with a funny looking alien staring you in the face.
How does Kiddle work?
The search engine uses an embedded Google custom search bar which basically gets rid of all adult content search results.
The website then returns kids friendly results in the following order, as stated on their About page:
- Safe sites and pages written specifically for kids. Handpicked and checked by Kiddle editors.
Typically, results 1-3. - Safe, trusted sites that are not written specifically for kids, but have content written in a simple way, easy for kids to understand. Handpicked and checked by Kiddle editors.
Typically, results 4-7. - Safe, famous sites that are written for adults, providing expert content, but are harder for kids to understand. Filtered by Google safe search.
Typically, results 8 onwards.
Kiddle’s About page also states that “we don’t collect any personally identifiable information, and our logs are deleted every 24 hours”
So if your teenage child enjoys Miley Cyrus’ music and would like to find out more about her, Kiddle will ensure that only “kid-friendly” biographies about her appear rather than a video of her twerking!
In this day and age, its par for the course that our children will be exposed to computers very early in life – in fact they will actually need it to succeed academically. The internet is a vital tool which they will need to communicate and they will also need it for research purposes for school projects.
Thankfully technology is now evolving to ensure that our children are less likely to be exposed to the less desirable part of the internet.