5 Things You Need to Know as Parents My Talking Angela





1. The app connects out to YouTube. One of the buttons children can press in Talking Angela takes them to the Talking Tom and Friends YouTube channel to watch videos based on Angela, Tom and the other characters. These videos are safe to watch for children: Outfit7 even worked with Disney on some of them.

But… your children will also be able to browse the comments under these videos, and sometimes those comments include swearwords. Also, they can access YouTube’s recommendations of similar videos to watch, and after a few taps, they’ll be out in the YouTube wilds where videos aren’t guaranteed to be appropriate. If you think your children are too young to be browsing YouTube on their own, then be aware that this feature exists in Talking Angela.

2. There are adverts in Talking Angela that lead elsewhere. This is a free-to-download app, which is making its money in two ways: from advertisements and in-app purchases. The ads appear as banners at the top of the screen, and are usually advertising other apps – Google and Hotels.com being the two most common ones at the time of writing.

They’re not dodgy ads, but they do take you out of the app and into the App Store or Google Play (depending on whether you’re on iOS or Android). It’s worth explaining to your children why they shouldn’t tap on the ads. Or you can remove them permanently with a single in-app purchase of virtual coins, which starts at 69p. Which brings us neatly onto…

3. Talking Angela uses virtual coins and in-app purchases. Whenever you download a free app for your children, we can’t stress enough how important it is to understand whether and how it uses in-app purchases for virtual items – as well as setting your restrictions to ensure your children can’t spend money without your permission.

In the case of Talking Angela, virtual coins are used to buy items and accessories for Angela: hats, shoes, makeup and so on. Some are dished out for free – 25 a day just for using the app, and a spinner to win more – while others can be earned by watching video advertisements for other apps. These tend to be other free-to-play games (which use in-app purchases…) so again, if your child is watching the video ads, make sure your restrictions ensure they can’t download those apps or spend money without asking you.

Meanwhile, you can pay for more virtual coins using real money: 69p gets you 4,200 coins while removing ads permanently, up to £17.49 for 146,500 coins plus the ad removal. Again, make sure your restrictions are on, so you’re in control of any in-app purchases, not your children!

4. Talking Angela isn’t a ‘kids’ game’ and that’s the big problem. We said earlier that 230m people are using the Talking Tom and Friends apps. Well, they aren’t all children, strange though it may seem for adults to be chatting to, dressing up and spending virtual coins on talking cartoon animals.

Talking Angela is trying to cater to two audiences: kids and grown-ups, and that’s why it’s in trouble this week: and a lot of that is down to the text-chat feature, and what would be considered cheeky, flirtatious banter for adults becoming much more inappropriate when addressed to children.

Even innocent questions about age and friends wouldn’t raise eyebrows for adults, but are spooking parents when they discover their kids chatting to Angela about personal information they’ve been taught not to share with strangers. And as some critics have noted, this in itself may be the most worrying aspect of Talking Angela: the risk that it makes children think it’s okay to tell people they don’t know all kinds of personal information, because they did it in an app.

5. Should you let your kids play Talking Angela? That’s your (informed) decision. We are very deliberately not giving a blanket “Yes, it’s fine” or “no, it’s dreadful” piece of advice. Hopefully everything we’ve written above will help you reach your own decision about whether Talking Angela is suitable for your children.

If you decide it isn’t suitable, there are plenty of other apps available for children. If you decide it’s fine, our advice would be to consider spending 69p to remove the ads and start with a cache of virtual coins, and to also sit down for a chat with your child about Child Mode, YouTube and in-app purchases, to help them act responsibly.

But that’s (lots) of our words, what do you think? Post comments with your thoughts on what we’ve said, and what your experiences have been with Talking Angela. And thank you for reading.

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