Age restrictions on smartphone apps are often easy to get around.<\/p>\n
A child can simply enter a different birthday and suddenly appear old enough to use an app that was never intended for them.<\/p>\n
Zigazoo takes a very different approach.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The differences are in the safety features.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The company says more than 10 million people use the platform.<\/p>\n
What caught my attention, though, was the signup process.<\/p>\n
When I tried creating a free account, Zigazoo asked for a live video selfie of me and a child together in the same frame.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
For a moment, it looked like it might work. Then the app asked us to blink.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Without completing the verification, I could not finish setting up the free account and get into the feed.<\/p>\n
That is significantly more difficult to fake than simply entering a birthday.<\/p>\n
There is, however, an important catch.<\/p>\n
I later signed up for Zigazoo\u2019s paid Premium plan. In my test, that account allowed me into the app without requiring the same parent-and-child video verification.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Zigazoo is not foolproof, and no social media platform can eliminate every risk.<\/p>\n
But compared with apps that rely mainly on a user typing in a birthday, Zigazoo\u2019s free signup process goes much further in trying to verify that a real parent is involved.<\/p>\n
That raises an obvious question: if one kids\u2019 app can make age verification this difficult to fake, why aren\u2019t more platforms doing the same thing?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Age restrictions on smartphone apps are often easy to get around. A child can simply enter a different…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1192127,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3159],"tags":[3084,3549,547,53,16,15,323064],"class_list":["post-1192126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mobile","tag-apple-inc","tag-itunes","tag-mobile","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-zigazoo"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117232054190770199","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1192126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1192126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1192126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1192127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1192126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1192126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1192126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}