Streaming Service are consuming too much media in our lives in today’s day and age. From teenager to young parents, to even grandparents, everyone seems to be hooked on to different consumption of digital media. Whether you talk about social media apps for staying connected to your loved ones, or a shopping platform where you order and get everything on your doorsteps, something or the other consumes our day.
One recent trend that has us all together in the game is streaming service Platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video are becoming increasingly popular amongst people of all age groups. Our screens are changing, from large TV screens to small, slim and high resolution laptop and mobile screens.
If you have a kid less than 12-13 years of age, you must be aware of the unusual attachment these kids have with phone screens. They could be eating their meals or taking an evening nap, but they will always need a cartoon or a poem playing on one of your mobile phones. This is pretty annoying, as you have to give your phone to them for god knows how long.
To avoid this, many parents are switching to smart TV screens for showing their kids the same poems and cartoons on a larger screen, which may as well put less strain on kids’ eyes. However, using an affordable subscription-based streaming service requires some thought. You can use your fiber optic internet connections to stream top-quality, best resolution content for your kids, but which streaming service should you use?
How to choose the best streaming service for kids?
- Cost
First and foremost, the cost of the streaming service. You must consider all plans and packages that the service has to offer, so that you can choose the one that best matches with your budget and usage requirements. Here are some of the top streaming service and their pricings:
- Netflix
Basic plan: $8.99
Standard plan: $12.99
Premium plan: $15.99
Ad-free and 30-day free trial
- Hulu
Basic Plan $6/month
Ad-free plan $12/month
Live TV $55/month
- Amazon Prime Video
Monthly plan at $9, 4K and ad-free
30 day free trial
$12.99/mo. for Prime subscription
These are some streaming platforms and their pricing. You must be aware of the different features and functions each plan has to offer, so that you can decide wisely.
- Kid-friendly features
Platforms like Netflix let you create a “kids” profile that only shows kid-friendly content recommendations and trailers. This lets parents be at ease and not worry about their kid watching adult content without supervision.
- Content quality and quantity
All streaming platforms compete with one another in various ways. One way that you can assess how good or bad is a streaming service is learning about how many titles or number of movies/shows they have on. For example, Netflix is reported to have about 3,781 movies, while Amazon Prime has around 290-300. These figures are easily available on Google search.
In terms of quality, your Spectrum packages or any other fast speed internet connection should let you stream all content at 4K resolution. Majority of the streaming service offer 4k quality content, but the price for such plans can be much higher than the basic ones. 1080p is also good quality, so you don’t have to spend a lot just for 4k.
- Languages
In their learning stages, kids need to watch something that is good for their speaking and language skills. If you are a bilingual parent yourself and want your kid to be learning or hearing more than just 1 language, make sure to check availability of language choices on the platform. Netflix has subtitles and audio dubbings in various language including English, Spanish and Hindi as well.
The best streaming services for kids
- Disney+
Disney+ is perhaps the most kid-friendly streaming service. It has a wide variety of content that kids of all ages including teenagers will enjoy. It will give you access to all Disney Hub movies that were ever created or will be created in the future. Moreover, it lets you watch Pixar and Marvel content. Basic plans start from $7, which makes it one of the best budget-friendly streaming service as well.
- YouTube TV
Kids are already fan of YouTube content and channels such as Coco melon. YouTube TV streaming service will give you access to more than 80 Live TV channels, including famous ones that your kid probably already watches on the mobile app. The content on this platform is ad-free, has content related to sports, animated films by Disney and Pixar, and content from channels like Nickelodeon as well. Its subscription starts from around $49.99/month, which can be a hefty price for some. However, its additional features like unlimited cloud DVR storage and 3 streams per household/family make it worth the money.
- Sling
Starting from no more than $35/monthly, Sling has one of the biggest collections of kids’ channels. While your kid may watch Disney and Nick Jr., you will also get many parental control features that will ensure more safety for both you and your children. You can create pin codes for kid’s profiles, much like in Netflix. You also get to lock content based on filters like “unrated, not rated” and age specifications.
The end note
All in all, most streaming service fall into the price bracket of $10 to $40 a month. However, price is not the only factor that you need to take into consideration. You must look for selection of titles, parental controls and contract requirements with whatever service you choose to buy. YouTube TV may be the most costly one of all, but it sure has a wide range of channels that both kids and parents can also enjoy.
