The internet can either feed your child knowledge or let them stray into the wrong path. It is important to child proof your search engine, especially if you have underaged kids at home. A new Google-powered search engine called Kiddle made the headlines as it gives anxious parents a peace of mind every time their kids go online.
According to Babylogy, Kiddle released a child-friendly search engine that allows kids to go online with access to child-friendly websites. Kiddle does this by dividing the search results into three different categories.
The first category contains kid-friendly pages intended for children. The second category hosts the websites that are not intended for kids but have content that can be easily understood. The third category solely focuses on the sites with adult content, blocking the child's access. Kiddle uses Google safe search in blocking its contents.
Kiddle's entire interface is similar to Google. Minor differences are visible such as the page's thumbnails, which appears to be larger for kids to easily spot. Kiddle's font also displays a playful color and loaded with child-friendly graphics.
According to the company, what makes Kiddle more secure is the fact that it every search result is handpicked by Kiddle's editors. Each site that is approved has been double checked by both the editors and programmers.
"Results are either handpicked and checked by our editors or filtered by Google safe search," according to Kiddle's official page. "You know you get kid-oriented results without any explicit content. In case some bad words are present in a search query, our guard robot will block the search."
Good House Keeping released a list of words that are part of the filtering which include "death," menstruation," "lesbian" and "gay." These filtered words, however, sparked debate among parents saying that "What is okay for a child of 12 may not be okay for a child of five."
