By Megan O’Neill

The internet and social media play a huge role in our daily lives, which has undoubtedly increased with COVID-19 lockdowns. While we adults have been able to stay connected with loved ones via Zoom calls and social media updates, what about the kids? 

While social media platforms are geared towards teenagers and adults (with a minimum sign-up age of 13 on most sites), a 2018 Ofcom study revealed that the percentage of younger children with social media accounts is rising. It concluded that 12% of nine-year-olds had a social media account and 34% of 12-year-olds. 

The 2018 Ofcom statistics also revealed that 93% of 8-11-year-olds spent around 13.5 hours a week online. Children much younger were also accessing the internet with 52% of 3–4-year-olds going online for around 9 hours per week. The study showed that children as young as three use the internet for gaming, watching television, and using television services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Now TV. 

The introduction of home-schooling has also meant that young children are using the internet much more frequently too, so these figures may be higher following the pandemic. 

The rise in internet usage among young children correlated to a rise in concern about internet safety with common concerns being the collection of data, damaging future reputations, cyberbullying, and online content.

This is where SuperAwesome swings into action.

SuperAwesome are developers in the ‘kid tech’ market, helping children have safe digital experiences. Its kidtech is used and trusted by over 300 of the top children’s brands and content owners including Disney, SEGA, Nintendo, Nickelodeon, Nike, and Warner Bros.

Its CEO, Dylan Collins, is one of Europe’s most experienced digital media entrepreneurs and is an active investor in both kids’ media and technology companies, and previously sat on the board of Potato (a leading UK marketing agency) and Brown Bag Films (a creative-led animation studio).

When SuperAwesome was founded in 2013, the company saw two key problems with the rise in children using the internet:

1. Children shifted engagement from television to digital devices and instead of watching a small number of channels, children were now using a number of devices, screens, channels, and websites.

2. New laws were passed to safeguard children’s digital engagement (COPPA in the US, and GDPR in Europe). These laws surrounded kids’ data privacy and created new strict ‘zero-data’ limits for brands and banned the passive tracking of children online.

As a result of this, SuperAwesome set out to build infrastructure to enable the zero-data internet, so that personal information such as name, address, geolocation, photos, videos, and device IDs and IP addresses wasn’t collected, as well as researching and developing kid-safe advertising, social engagement tools, authentication, and parental controls, ready for their worldwide clients to use.

SuperAwesome has since introduced various products such as AwesomeAds, which ensures adverts in the kids space are fully managed by guaranteeing that adverts are age-appropriate and aren’t tracking personal data; PopJam, a child-safe social engagement platform where children can like, comment and share online content; and Kids Web Services, a parental consent management toolkit for clients.

By 2020, SuperAwesome had caught the eye of Epic Games, the developers of gaming mega-hit, Fortnite. In September, Epic purchased SuperAwesome for an undisclosed sum.

(A little nerdy aside, ‘Epic Buys SuperAwesome’ is an, er, epic collection of adjectives) 

At the time, CEO Dylan Collins said “Joining Epic Games means many things. It means continued (and indeed greater) support for our customers: developers, content-owners and brands who want to do more for kids. It means continued investment in kidtech solutions to help the overall ecosystem. Ultimately (and crucially), it’s a step-change in making the internet safer for kids. We have always been proud of our mission. We’re even prouder to do it with a principles-driven company like Epic Games.”

The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting lockdowns will surely have had a huge impact on the number of children using the internet, for leisure and school, and so SuperAwesome recently revealed 2020’s five biggest trends that will impact kids’ digital landscape in 2021:

1. COVID-19 accelerated the adoption of edtech tools needed during virtual learning environments

2. Screen time shifted from entertainment to everything (including shopping and social interactions)

3. With more kids online than ever before, kidtech is on the rise to ensure safe spaces

4. Family tools offered greater control over kids’ online activity – from monitoring and limiting screen time to setting restrictions on content and in-app purchases.

5. Movies released direct-to-home, prompting a new normal in streaming

Now under the wing of a $17bn US gaming behemoth, it will be interesting to see what SuperAwesome gets up to itself in 2021.