Amazon's Alexa Skills Kit is meant for children below 13 years of age; includes quizzes, trivia, adventure games

Amazon Alexa is now introducing Alexa Skills Kit meant for children below 13 years of age. [caption id=“attachment_3936843” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Amazon Echo and Echo Dot[/caption] Amazon Alexa, a digital assistant , is used to help its users to perform various functions such as scheduling, playing music by voice commands, adding reminders among other things. Now, the Alexa Skills Kit, has introduced ‘Skills’ meant for children. This skills kit is meant for children who are less than 13 years old and includes skills from big brands such as The SpongeBob from Nickelodeon, or Sesame Street from Sesame Workshop. The skills include trivia games, fun quizzes, adventure games. According to Amazon, the Alexa Skills Kit is compatible with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), a law which gives adults control over the information disseminated to their children. It is meant to give child privacy on online platforms and enable the parent to have control over their children. In order to enable this skill, parents need to give information about their children and choose skills they would like their children to engage in, in their **Alexa app** . Through a one time password sent to their phones or through security code in their cards, the parent will have to verify themselves. This will ensure parental consent. However, this isn’t a new phenomenon. Skills Kit meant for children were present even previously, however they weren’t present in consent with the COPPA, according to the TechCrunch. Through this method, Amazon will be able to keep these developers in their purview. Thus, it has become mandatory for the app developer to list their apps in children’s section, if applicable. This is currently available only in the US. Those who are developing child skill kit must not make skills which are promotional in nature.