Parents Ask: Why Is It So Hard to Find Good Apps?

We recently released a new guide for parents called Family Time with Apps that features several resources, including Moms with Apps, to help parents find quality apps for their children. We invited them to describe their efforts to help families find age-appropriate apps and games that protect their kids’ privacy.

 

At Moms with Apps, we recently surveyed more than 400 parents about how they find apps for their children, what are the important criteria, and where they have challenges.  Some of the responses were expected: parents are concerned about the educational quality and age-appropriateness of the app, and whether their children’s privacy is protected.

There’s some great news, which I’ll get to later. But the most concerning survey result is this: When asked to rate their experience finding good apps on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being “very easy” and 5 being “very hard”), a full 49% of respondents chose 3, 4, or 5.

I get it. At home, I have two little ones who use apps, and at the office I’ve been working with developers since the advent of the app stores. Even though I have unique insight into the app economy and what developers are doing, I’ve still found it frustratingly difficult to find great apps for my kids.  There’s been no way to search by age range, and general queries for subjects like “spelling” or “phonics” turns up so many results that it feels impossible to sort through.  When I’ve found apps that I like, I tend to buy everything else the developer has done because they’re a known entity. (But there have been times when I thought I found a great app through traditional means, but was proven wrong. For example: My son liked the portion of BusyBee Studios’s ZooTrain where he would drag-and-drop letters in the proper order to spell a word.  So I looked for more apps like that. I found one that looked great—it had good reviews in the store, the graphics looked fun and engaging–but the first word presented was a four-letter word occasionally used for “rooster” that is also a four-letter word used for something very different and wholly inappropriate for a two-year-old. So to the survey respondent who wrote, “I don’t know if I can trust the reviews”—I HEAR YOU.)

It’s why I’m so thankful that Moms With Apps is here and trying to solve some of these problems. The MWA mission? Help parents find great apps for their kids.

MWA originated as a group of kids’ app developers who wanted to share knowledge, help each other navigate the legal and regulatory hurdles around kids’ apps, and help boost each other’s profiles to cut through the noise. Eventually, as the apps stores became more and more crowded and everyone heard more and more stories of frustration from parents (and felt it themselves!), the need for a resource for parents became plainly obvious.  What you see now at MomsWithApps.com is the result of years of collaboration between developers and my talented colleagues, and it’s phenomenal.

This survey was a done as a gut-check to make sure that what we’re doing is really what parents want and need. It’s reassuring that many of the concerns parents voiced in our survey can be addressed by searching for apps at MWA. You can filter by whether the app has in-app purchases or ads (desiring the absence of such—or at least knowing from the outset if the app contains them—is a recurring theme in the survey results). You can search by whether or not the app works without internet (apps I’ve dubbed “The Road Trip Specials”). You can search by age range and subject, too. Which means you can search for apps with a level of specificity not found anywhere else, giving you the results you want. (And on the administrative side, we even have a private forum where we help developers and answer questions, including advising non-U.S. developers on proper terminology for things like roosters.)

In addition to finding apps at MWA, you can get to know the people behind them. The developers are parents, teachers, homeschooling parents, therapists, behaviorists, medical professionals, and more. Many of them started developing apps because they too couldn’t find what they wanted in the app stores.  On the MWA site, you can learn their stories, understand why they’re doing what they do, and know that the dollars you’re spending on quality apps are supporting small companies and entrepreneurs and other parents who are just trying to create something great.

MWA is continually making changes to meet parents’ needs and the changing realities of the app stores. With the help of our community, and readers like you, we can keep improving it so you can get the apps that are right for your kids.

While much of the survey focused on parents’ concerns with children’s apps, there was a lot of positivity and hope, too. Ninety-six percent of parents felt that their “children have benefited from using apps.”   That tells me that developers—from the small company started by a stay-at-home mom to the large companies with popular, well-known characters—are doing something right, and have children’s experiences and education at the top of mind.

And that makes me feel good about my kids using apps.

 

 

Melissa Lee is the chief of staff at ACT | The App Association, the leading organization representing software companies in the mobile app community. She is also the Moms With Apps Parent Evangelist, the in-house mom who uses apps with her kids and encourages other parents to explore what’s available for their families. Follow her on Twitter @MelissaAtACT