Why secure parental controls are important.
Introduction
There are many things to consider when starting an OTT business or levelling up a current service. Content providers can get lost in a sea of features and configurations sometimes it’s easy to forget the main goal; to provide a good reliable service that customers enjoy and keep using. For entertainment providers having a service that is family appropriate not only increases your customer base but also provides your customers with flexibility over content availability for children.
Kids are clever
We live in a world of technology, our kids have grown up with technology and some do not know a life without an internet connected phone. Kids have a complete grasp on how to use technological platforms, even more so than some adults. This has its benefits but it begs the question, how easy is it for your kids to access inappropriate content online?
Well the answer is.. Very easy. Over 56% of 11-16 year olds have seen some form of explicit material online. Technology companies are responding to the demand for more parental controls and with most parents saying they would like more control over what their kids watch online it’s a must have feature for all content providers that wish to target families as their user base.
Screen time
63% of parents are concerned about too much screen time for their children and research has shown that screen time inhibits younger children’s ability to read faces and learn social skills, two key factors needed to develop empathy.
An interesting new feature to the OTT world is one that allows parents to put a timer on their platforms. Once the time slot finishes the app automatically turns off whatever is playing.
This is yet to hit the big names in the industry but with the growing amount of kids using OTT services it is one to keep your eye out for.
Dedicated Kids Profile
Having a kids dedicated section on streaming services enables parents to relax a little when leaving their kids to watch content. However a kids dedicated section or profile isn’t enough to block a child’s ability to watch inappropriate content. The OTT giant Netflix allows kids to jump from profile to profile with not much security at all.
During Covid a video went viral of a kid being able to cleverly cheat on his home maths exam. Watch the video here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI9umpSNJNk&ab_channel=MemeUniverse
Although very amusing and clever, a child of this age definitely has the ability to switch to Mummy or Daddys account with no problem. Enter Pin Protection. Pin protected content is an essential part of content security on OTT platforms. Without it there is little to no control over what young people are watching.
Conclusion
Having protected kids’ profiles is becoming more and more important for parents. If you are a content provider looking to start or improve an existing service, choosing an OTT solution with the ability to have both kids profile and pin protected accounts is essential.
With DIAGNAL ENLIGHT user accounts can be configured to support multiple profiles to share the same subscription account among family/friends. This feature also allows setting up kids profiles which filters out content unsuitable for kids.
Other highlights of our multi profile feature are:-
- Maximum number of profiles can be configured
- Kids profile exit pin – to ensure Kid users wouldn’t be able to switch to adult profiles.
- Profile specific favourites, continue watching rail, search history and video recommendations
- Language and push notification preferences for each profile
ENLIGHT is DIAGNAL’s application solution for premium OTT service providers looking to publish and monetize content quickly.
ENLIGHT provides a collection of feature rich premium application experiences across a wide range of device platforms. Well tested and deployed with global customers, ENLIGHT apps provide high performance and a high end experience to end-users.
