Lego’s amicable network aims to forestall bullying

Lego’s new amicable network for kids lays a building blocks to forestall bullying.

The association launched on Tuesday a giveaway iOS and Android app called Lego Life. The amicable height children underneath a age of 13 share photos of their Lego creations, watch charcterised videos and attend in building challenges.

“One of a core functions is to put their iPhone down and go do something else,” Rob Lowe, comparison executive during a Lego Group, told CNNTech.

Although several amicable networks such as Twitter have prolonged struggled with online bullying, Lego wants to take a active impediment approach. For example, a association is baking anti-harassment collection into a height itself.

When a child signs adult for a service, a app automatically suggests a user name — no real-life names allowed. However, users can make Lego avatars with personalized characteristics, such as conflicting gender, hair and outfit options.

Only photos with Lego-related calm can be common online and can’t embody people. Comments have limitations, too: Kids are usually authorised to criticism on other users’ photos with Lego emoji. (But they can criticism with difference on central Lego posts.)

Parents contingency also endorse their kids’ accounts around email, and Lego Life moderators approve any post.

These facilities are a partial of a company’s bid to cut down on a bullying and nuisance that mostly occurs in criticism sections. Lego has met with groups such as UNICEF to make certain a app adheres to child reserve regulations and best practices to keep kids protected online.

Related: Lego’s new pack teaches kids to code

But a app isn’t too limiting when it comes to exploring content. Similar to Instagram, kids can follow other accounts and hunt for topics such as Star Wars or super heroes. They can also “like” cinema by drumming a heart.

Lowe pronounced a association will closely guard how members use a fondness capabilities, and if kids start to concentration some-more on that — think: recognition competition — than a Lego builds, it will change a methods.

While remoteness policies forestall kids underneath a age of 13 from signing adult for Facebook, Twitter or YouTube accounts, a demographic can still perspective a open sermon of hatred debate on these platforms.

“If we go into a comments territory on YouTube, it’s not a good place for kids to hang out,” Lowe said. “We wanted to make it a conflicting of a comments territory on YouTube.”

The app is mobile-only for now, though Lego skeleton to hurl out a amicable network to a web soon.

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