Children and gadgets
A child in first grade uses a new laptop in Caracas September 23, 2009 Reuters/Jorge Silva

Twitter has launched last Friday a new version of Vine, its short-video service called Vine Kids. CNET reports that the new kid-friendly app will allow children to watch 6-second videos that are pre-screened to ensure that its content will be age appropriate.

Vine Kids is quite simple as it only shows videos that are meant for the younger audience. The kid-friendly app targets to keep children busy enough to keep them occupied for hours or for as long as the phone’s battery would allow.

Children would have the liberty to browse on each screened videos and after finishing one clip, they can easily move to another video clip by simply swiping left or right. This way, parents and guardians will feel more secured that their children will not chance upon any pornographic or adult videos.

According to a blog post by Carolyn Penner, Vine’s head of communications and marketing, they decided to come up with the kid-friendly app after hearing clamour from parents that children get enticed with the more adult- oriented Vine app. It means that not all content played on the said app are applicable to children.

The company will choose kid-friendly videos from the millions of videos uploaded in the more matured Vine app. Vine Kids will showcase videos with purely family-friendly content such as Sesame Street characters including Elmo and video clips, which feature cute and kid-entertaining animals like hedgehogs and puppies.

Currently, the Vine Kids app is only available for users with iOS devices. Interested parents and guardians can head over to the App Store to download it. No details yet whether or not an Android version is in the works.

Vine is Twitter’s own video platform, where in its users can create stop-animation looping videos. The app also allows the videos to be shared and be re-shared. Vine has already earned around 40 million users since its launch in 2012.

Looking back, Vine had encountered a bulk of pornographic materials that lurked on its site in 2013. This instance has forced Twitter to take action by giving it an NC-17 rating hoping to warn to its users.

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