 | ON: Content is age-appropriate for kids this age. |
 | PAUSE: Know your child; some content may not be right for some kids. |
 | OFF: Not age-appropriate for kids this age. |
 | NOT FOR KIDS: Not appropriate for kids any age. |
Tikatok
Common Sense Media says
Kids write and share stories safely on super-creative site.
Parents say
QUALITY
Kids say
What parents need to know
Parents need to know that this site includes strong safety measures. Parents have to register -- providing email, home address, and phone number "as a means of verifying parental identity and consent" -- and approve their kids' accounts, and are notified when kids add a friend, submit a comment, or do any other public activity. Younger kids who find the publishing tools challenging may want to work with a parent to create a book.
What's it about?
Budding authors can find a creative outlet on TIKATOK, an interactive site that lets kids write and illustrate their own online books. Using browser-based tools that mimic simple desktop publishing software, kids input text and images (their own creations or the site's stock art) into a template. Books can be kept private or shared with the Tikatok community, and visitors can buy printed copies of books in hard or softcover. The site also has a social element -- kids can create profiles, find friends, join groups, and even co-author books with fellow users.
Is it any good?
Kids who like reading, writing, and design will have a blast creating their own books, whether they buy print copies or not. The site has plenty of tools to help users get started -- or get past a bit of writer's block -- such as the "StorySparks," which offer topic ideas and writing hints. The community features are robust and easy to use, and there's plenty of activity -- kids who share their books are likely to get friendly feedback and suggestions from their peers.
Curious about copyrights? Tikatok owns user-created content but will return the copyright (with some conditions) on request.
What families can talk about
Families can talk about the creative process and review our Creating with Digital Media guidelines. Where do you get your ideas for stories? What do you do if you're "stuck" in your story? If kids decide to share their books with the community or comment on other users' creations, parents can talk about giving and taking constructive feedback.
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AGE
PARENTS AND TEACHERS BEWARE!!!!
Our daughter, age 12, registered without our knowledge. She very easily put in bogus age information and put her email rather than ours, also very easy to do. After writing several short books, several "friends" commented on them. One in particular began chatting (which is allowed in their "clubs") and claimed to be a 10 year old girl but proceeded to ask a series of leading questions including requesting a cell phone number, her age, if she had a nick name, where she lived, etc. Fortunately my wife monitors her email and saw that they had began exchanging emails. This person turned out not to be a girl at all. We contacted the authorities after printing pages of chat exchanges. BEWARE PARENTS AND TEACHERS!!! This is NOT a safe place for children. In my opinion, any site that allows chats is a haven for preying upon the vulnerabilities of children. Also, beware that the books that are written don't contain any personal information. I was amazed that such an innocent site such as Build A Bear would be a gateway to this type of behavior. Parents, the authorities advised us to not allow children to have an email address and to lock their computers to access only those web sites that you explicitly allow.
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AGE
safety is an issue
I used this site a few years ago and had problems with someone sending me a ' note' asking where i live. my mom never let me back on that site, which bummed me because it is REALLY fun for those who would like to be a writer one day. You can make your own book, save it, and then other people can click on something they enjoyed about it! ;)
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AGE
Defective product. Bad customer service.
This is a defective product. After setting up and using this service for many hours to create a book, we suddenly started to see somebody's else's content being inserted. Even though we had saved our book multiple times, suddenly all our content was replaced by somebody else's content. We were using a non-trivial password, so the only possible explanation is that the product mixed up two accounts. Customer service was non-existant and unable to fix the problem.
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| Genre: | Creating |
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