Age restrictions on smartphone apps are often easy to get around.

A child can simply enter a different birthday and suddenly appear old enough to use an app that was never intended for them.

Zigazoo takes a very different approach.

The social media app is designed for kids and teens and looks a lot like TikTok. Users can upload short videos, scroll through a feed, like posts and leave comments.

The differences are in the safety features.

Zigazoo uses positive-only emoji reactions, does not allow private direct messages, and says content appearing in the feed is moderated before other users see it.

The company says more than 10 million people use the platform.

What caught my attention, though, was the signup process.

When I tried creating a free account, Zigazoo asked for a live video selfie of me and a child together in the same frame.

I did not have a young child with me, so I tried to fool the verification system using a photograph of my son and me.

For a moment, it looked like it might work. Then the app asked us to blink.

That step is designed to prove two real people are actually standing in front of the camera and that someone is not simply holding up a photograph.

Without completing the verification, I could not finish setting up the free account and get into the feed.

That is significantly more difficult to fake than simply entering a birthday.

There is, however, an important catch.

I later signed up for Zigazoo’s paid Premium plan. In my test, that account allowed me into the app without requiring the same parent-and-child video verification.

The Premium plan costs about $80 a year or $10 a month and also adds features including longer videos, faster posting, the ability to create challenges and additional account customization.

The free version still includes the basic social media experience. Users can scroll through the feed and upload videos, but they must first complete the verification process.

Zigazoo is not foolproof, and no social media platform can eliminate every risk.

But compared with apps that rely mainly on a user typing in a birthday, Zigazoo’s free signup process goes much further in trying to verify that a real parent is involved.

That raises an obvious question: if one kids’ app can make age verification this difficult to fake, why aren’t more platforms doing the same thing?