Like us, you might be going a little crazy, juggling your phone, as we try to keep our kids connected with their friends, but still keep working ourselves!
With a tagline of being safer, healthier and kinder, GoBubble is a UK web-based social media platform, designed specifically for kids aged 7 to 13, as an alternative to other social media platforms for which they are not yet age-eligible.
International studies indicate that 78% of children use social media underage, and at least 24% have been contacted by an unknown adult via social media. No wonder parents are facing such a dilemma!
With his experience as a police sergeant in the UK, Henry Platten and his wife, Danielle (a former Twitter e-safety advisor), built GoBubble with child safety in mind from the ground up. It helps that they have two young children themselves, and have first-hand experience of the dark underbelly of children in the digital world. As a result, only children are able to be loaded into the system by either teachers or their parents, and they can only interact with same-age classmates. Logins are monitored by cutting edge age verification technology, helping to ensure that it really is a platform for kids only.
The founders describe GoBubble as “social media with training wheels” – designed to help kids learn how to be positive digital citizens through practical learning on a safer platform. Turning the approach of traditional social media on it’s head, kindness is encouraged by rewarding the ‘likes’ children give, not the ones they get. All content is moderated (currently in over 12 languages) by software built into GoBubble, and any inappropriate audio, text or video which is blocked from being posted, is also notified to parents or teachers.
Free to schools, the uptake in the 39 countries where GoBubble has been adopted so far, has shown that it is being used as a complementary resource to online teaching channels, as a safe virtual “playground” for school children under 13. It is an ideal social add-on to the formal schooling platforms currently being used by schools during lockdown, whether google classroom, seesaw etc. During school breaks, kids can use GoBubble to chat with friends, share photos and short videos, and even call a friend, using a laptop, tablet or smartphone. Over and above the social benefits, teachers can use the platform to hook up with other classes around the world, connecting students in unparalleled shared learning experiences.
As the African Regional Partner for GoBubble, Be In Touch will be launching GoBubble, as a free resource, to all primary schools in South Africa, and wider into Africa. Contact them to secure your premium spot in the roll-out.
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