Netflix Rolls Out New Feature For Parents Called The 'Kids Activity Report'

CBS All Access and Fire TV also launched new family friendly features

In an effort to help parents, Netflix announced the rollout of new family friendly features, including the Kids Activity Report, which provides parents with information about what, exactly, their kids are watching on Netflix. The emailed report sounds like a super-helpful, useful tool, as it not only suggests conversation topics and activities, like coloring pages, a list of questions to ask the kids based on their favorite show or character, and even jokes, but it also helps parents better understand and monitor the content their kids are streaming.

According to The Verge, Netflix is sending out emails this weekend to subscribers in select markets who have kids accounts enabled. In them, parents can expect to find a whole slew of recommended activities based on what their kids watch — even if the parents aren’t watching the shows or films with them. And if parents no longer want to receive the reports? They can simply unsubscribe at any time.

“Most parents have a pulse on what their kids like, based on their Halloween costumes or toys they ask for at Christmas, but we don’t always know what those shows are about,” lead of Netflix’s product innovation team for kids and family Michelle Parsons told the outlet. “What is the show, in essence, talking about?”

Netflix also rolled out — as of Dec. 8 — a global test for a Family Profile setting, which unlike regular or kids-only profiles, will pull in TV shows and films users consider family friendly. According to The Verge, the family profile uses ratings “to bring in a number of different titles that are then prioritized and recommended based on those individual interests. Movies up to a PG-13 rating and TV shows up to a TV-14 rating will appear.”

“The key thing to understand is that it creates a family profile with co-viewing in mind that’s most relevant for specific family audiences,” Parsons clarified.

“We’re always looking for new ways to improve the Netflix experience for members of all ages,” a Netflix spokesperson told TechCrunch. “We run these tests in different countries and for different periods of time — and only make them broadly available if people find them useful.”

Netflix isn’t the only streaming service to add family friendly features. CBS All Access added a Kids Mode and other updates aimed at families, including a new feature that allows families to create up to six profiles per account, all of which can be managed using the aforementioned Kids Mode option.

The new features follows the addition of nearly 800 more episodes of kid-friendly content, including Paw Patrol, Blaze and the Monster Machines, Blue’s Clues, Bubble Guppies, Dora the Explorer and more, to its already robust inventory of more than 1,000 episodes of children’s programming.

And it doesn’t end there.

Fire TV also recently made kid-friendly changes to its redesign, which rolled out Dec. 9. Not only does the redesign feature more improved navigation and recommendations, but it also now allows users, including kids, to create their own profile for a more personalized experienced.