In this episode, Andy, Jo, and Emily are joined by Ashley Mady, President of Zigazoo — a social media platform built specifically for kids that has been quietly growing its user base to over 10 million while the wider debate around children and social media has grown louder and louder. The timing feels right: with social media bans for under-16s being debated in legislatures around the world, Zigazoo makes the case that the answer isn't to shut kids out of online social spaces altogether, but to build better ones.

Ashley walks through what Zigazoo actually is and how it works. At its core, the platform is challenge-based — kids respond to video prompts by creating their own short-form content, and everything goes through moderation before it reaches the feed. The design philosophy is the inverse of most COPPA-compliant platforms, which tend to solve the safety problem by removing engagement entirely. Zigazoo keeps kids active and social, it just does so within guardrails built by educators rather than pure tech entrepreneurs. The founding team — husband and wife Zak and Leah — bring that dual lens of engineering and digital wellness to every product decision, and Ashley is clear that the mission is read aloud at every team meeting to keep it front and centre.

The moderation conversation is illuminating. Zigazoo started with round-the-clock human moderation but has since developed a hybrid "human in the loop" model where AI handles the initial filtering — including detecting whether a user is a child or adult and flagging inappropriate content — while humans remain part of the process. The addition of a comments feature, which was held back for years due to concerns about intent being lost in written text, was only made possible once AI became reliable enough to support it.

There's a lot of ground covered on what the platform has learned about kids' behaviour online. Notably, Zigazoo found that punishing bad content didn't work as well as rewarding good content — a shift from early notification-heavy approaches to a model that simply surfaces positive posts and lets the algorithm do the teaching. Kids who post well get featured; kids who don't get silence rather than a telling-off, and they adjust accordingly. The existing community of over 1,000 kid creators reinforces those norms organically, policing the platform's culture with a pride of ownership that Ashley describes as one of its most unexpected and valuable outcomes.

The platform's audience data is interesting in its own right. While Zigazoo launched as a preschool app, its core audience has aged with it — 9 to 12 year olds are now its most active creators, and some users who joined five years ago are still on the platform at 15. Rather than losing them to mainstream social media, Zigazoo has had to keep evolving to stay relevant, a challenge Ashley acknowledges openly and with some enthusiasm.

The brand and commercial side of the platform gets a thorough airing too. Over 100 brands — from Paramount and Amazon to toy companies, sports organisations, and publishers — use Zigazoo as a COPPA-compliant way to build genuine two-way community with kids. The platform vets all brand partners for mission alignment and manages their channels directly, which keeps the quality high but also means brands get something genuinely rare: verified, bot-free engagement with actual children. A wishlist feature that sends personalised emails to parents when a child saves a product is highlighted as a standout commercial innovation — formalising the influence kids have over family purchasing decisions in a way no other platform can currently match.

The episode closes on a broader cultural note. Ashley sees the current generation of kids as meaningfully different from their parents — more media literate, more aware of the downsides of social media, and more interested in positive online experiences. Jo echoes this from her own experience as a parent, noting a generational swing away from the open, unguarded approach their own generation took to early social media. The group agrees that banning kids from social media entirely risks pushing them towards unmoderated spaces via VPNs and hand-me-down phones, and that platforms like Zigazoo represent the more responsible path.

Key Takeaways:

1. Zigazoo makes the case for building better social media rather than banning it — the platform argues that keeping kids off social altogether drives them to less safe alternatives, and that the right response is purposefully designed, moderated spaces.
2. The challenge-based model is central to how it works — kids respond to video prompts with their own content, creating active participation rather than passive scrolling, while everything is moderated before reaching the feed.
3. Rewarding good behaviour outperforms punishing bad behaviour — early attempts to notify kids when content failed moderation created a negative experience. Surfacing good posts and letting poor ones disappear quietly proved far more effective at shaping behaviour.
4. AI-assisted "human in the loop" moderation has unlocked new features, including the comments section that was held back for years — a reminder that moderation technology, not just policy intent, sets the ceiling for what's safely possible on kids' platforms.
5. The platform's community polices itself — 1,000+ kid creators model positive behaviour, and when TikTok faced its US ban and new users flooded in, existing Zigazoo users actively told newcomers that this was a different kind of space.
6. Age-gating within the platform recognises that under-16 isn't a monolith — the experience for a 6-year-old looks nothing like that for a 13-year-old, a distinction that blanket social media bans tend to collapse entirely.
7. Zigazoo has become a Gen Alpha trend intelligence platform — with 10 million users and polling features originally built for fun, the platform now has genuine insight into what kids are talking about, buying, and looking forward to, before those trends surface elsewhere.
8. The brand model is built on mission alignment and white-glove management — brands can't self-serve onto the platform, which keeps commercial activity COPPA-compliant and maintains trust with parents and kids alike.
9. The wishlist-to-parent email feature is a commercial innovation worth watching — it formalises child-to-parent purchase influence in a privacy-safe, opt-in way that no other platform currently offers.
10. Parent involvement is baked in from signup, which Ashley argues leads to longer platform lifecycles — a child whose parent has given informed consent is far less likely to be pulled off the platform than one who has found their way onto something their parents don't know about.

The Kids Media Club Podcast is open for sponsorship.

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Hello and welcome to another episode of the Kids Media Club Podcast. I'm Jo Redfern. Over to the island contingent.

I'm Emily Horgan. Great to be speaking to everyone today. We are here with Andy, who has a guest.

We do indeed. So we're delighted to be joined by Ashley Maddy, who's president of Zigazoo, which is a social media platform for kids.

And safe social has been very much in the news lately. So we are delighted you could join us. Welcome to the podcast, Ashley.

Thank you all for having me on. Really excited for an important and relevant conversation.

Absolutely. And before we get into some of the talking points, could you just give us kind of a, just a general overview of Ziggazoo and what you do there?

Yeah. Ziggazoo is really safe social media for kids.

It was created by two parents and former educators really out of need for their own kids to have safe, safe spaces online. And in today's world, kids are living in this half digital, half physical world and there really needs to be a safe space for them.

So that's why we exist and we really are pioneering what social media can look like for kids. And we've been ahead of all the trends that have been happening in our world and it's something that we're really proud of.

Awesome. Can you explain? I'd love to understand a bit more. Like how does the platform work? What does the platform look like? How do kids interact on it?

Give us the nuts and bolts.

Yeah. So the center of Ziggazoo is all actually based around project based learning. And, and so we designed the app to be fully interactive.

Do the kids know that, like a

gummy vitamin, we don't tell them about all the stuff underneath the hood. That's the really special part of it.

Given that we were founded by educators, we can bake in all of the good stuff and still give kids that social digital experience that they're looking for. So everything's challenge based.

We take a short form video, pair it with a challenge question, and then kids actually get to respond by commenting or making their own video. So unlike all the other COPA platforms, most of them, kids don't get to engage at all.

Like, the solution is just turn off all engagement and then it could be view only and safe for kids. Ziggs is the opposite of that. We moderate all the content.

We're moderating out, you know, everything where kids can't share personally identifiable information. There's no cursing, there's no bullying. Like, it's, it's really all positive interactions.

So they get to actually create videos, share them with, with their friends, and also respond and engage with polls. So they're really building a community.

And brands are getting to build communities within the ecosystem, celebrities are getting to interact with kids, and kids get to be creators, which is ultimately what they're. What they're looking to do.

Tell us about the moderation, because we were speaking with Chris Heatherly on the podcast a few weeks ago recently, who was there for the early Club Penguin. Club Penguin days. Because, you know, both from a creator point of view and from a swearing point of view, kids can be very innovative, right?

Or like in the ways that they speak and in the ways that they, you know, they learn the game and they try to circumvent the game. So, like, how do you guys manage that? Because that's like an ever changing code, right?

It's a great question. When we first started, we were all human moderated, and we moderated 247 around the clock. And that worked great in the beginning.

And I think as we're growing and as we look to what we can become, humans alone are not the perfect solution. And fortunately, AI has really helped us create what we call human in the loop moderation. So I can quickly recognize, is this a kid or an adult?

Did they use a swear word? And we have a really complex matrix that it moderates through and it's able to keep kids safe.

And one thing that we've been able to add more recently is comments. And AI has helped us be able to do that.

We were really worried to be able to do that in the beginning because it's hard to fully understand intent in written, written word. And it's something we've been able to release in the app fully moderated.

And a lot of that is of course, thanks to our humans, who are always part of the process, but also thanks to AI that just continues to get better and better every day.

And how do you mentioned.

So now they're able to comment because what's interesting in, in that you said in the prep for this, which we completely agree with here, is kids are inherently social. I mean, we know that they are.

They're inherently social in real life, but also they're growing up in a world where they want to be social online and normally they're getting the access and, you know, the phone handed down from mom when they've upgraded and they've got kind of, they're getting their phones earlier. So what, what's the thinking behind it in terms of promoting that kind of first toe dip into being social online but in that safe way?

What kind of thinking? How do you make it fun and constructive and a positive experience aside from the moderation?

Yeah, I think on the positive experience side, we aim to teach digital citizenship. All that stuff that we didn't get, we were just thrust into the world of social media and then we created our own rules on how to behave.

And now we're looking back like, oh, we, we know, we know we definitely got it wrong. So we're making sure that there's the proper guardrails and teachings.

You know, kids are, if they upload a video that they've created that's all positive, they're going to like maybe end up in the main feed and that that video is going to get a lot of interactions. If they upload something that is just not right for a public forum, it's not going to make it into the feed.

They get to host their own channels and our general users get to respond to their challenges. They all view themselves as role models in the app. They care about how they're showing up. They want to make it a positive only space.

And even our general users do a pledge that helps make our app more positive. And it's something they're really proud of. Actually.

Last year when the TikTok band happened, we had a lot of new users come to the app and kids were telling their friends. And then a lot of the kids within the walls of Zigazoo are like, this is not like TikTok.

It's positive only this is our space and really kind of telling the outside world how to behave. So it's something our users are extremely proud of and it's fun.

They're getting to do the get ready with me and the dance trends and the toy unboxings and all the things that they want to be doing.

And for a lot of kids, they're not on mainstream social media, so it's their first interaction with it, maybe they get to see it through some of their friends or older siblings. They know they want to be part of it, but they don't want to, you know, we don't want to send them down the path that they end up going down.

If they're on some of these other adult platforms.

For the children on the platform, if they do post something that doesn't fit within those guidelines, is it clear to them why, why, why it's failed to kind of get on the maid feed? Is there kind of two way instruction?

the beginning it was a lot more like, no, you did this wrong. And really notifying the kid, which it makes for actually interestingly not a positive experience.

And so we found the better way to educate them is to reward really good behavior and celebrate that. Start to learn what works and, and doesn't work in the app. And that's, that's something that was an evolution.

It's almost kind of part of the education as well, isn't it? I like the point about learning how to be a, a good digital citizen, but you, but you also have to learn how this digital world works, right?

And normally it's something you do pick up from your peers and your friends that certainly in the uk, digital literacy is not something that is really taught, certainly not to the younger ones. And again, I don't even know if it's on the curriculum in any kind of meaningful way, but modeling it early is really important.

Do you think that it's something that actually a founder that is an educator has baked into it rather than just a tech entrepreneur?

I think that's the biggest difference. We're founded by a husband and wife team.

Zach is our CEO and he leads all of our work with our engineers and really drives where the business is going from legislation and making sure we are ahead of every single trend. And then Leah is our director of digital wellness and so she, I call the heart of our organization. She's the one that's baking in all the good stuff.

Even as we as a team set out to do more commercial things in nature, she's always the one pulling us in other directions and challenging us to make sure we're doing what's right for kids. Even at every single team meeting that we have, we read out our mission because we want to make sure we keep center in what we're building.

And that's something that we're most proud of. And we want to make sure that as we continue to grow that that always, always stays.

Yeah, it makes sense.

So how are kids. So how are kids like finding, finding their people on Zigga Zoo? Is it that they'll have friends? Because it's kind of.

There's been two way, two kind of modes of social media. Right.

There's been the connection LED mode, which is kind of the Facebook mode that you know, you'd be friends with your friends and then you'd find their friends and they'd find friends of yours. And then the TikTok mode is more like an interest based mode.

Right.

Like if you're into something niche like full videos of baby horses. Yeah, you were into that. You would find yourself on full talk, you know.

Yeah.

And it's that kind of interest LED curation. How does Zigazoo manage it?

It's a mix of both. So it depends on how a child comes on.

Oftentimes we are something that a parent is searching for because their kid is asking to be on social media and then they, they discover us and decide that Zigazoo is better for their child. In those instances, the kid is getting to discover content based on their interests and they're participating in what they enjoy most.

I mean it really is Zigazoo. You can see things that you maybe aren't exposed to in your daily life.

Like we, we have a horse club channel that's sponsored by Schlage and kids are discovering, you know, that whole genre and you know, it's maybe a kid that's never been on a horse and doesn't get to live that lifestyle.

So we are making sure just kids are exposed to all different kind of kids, kids around the globe, all different kinds of interests that they can share their own and find their community. And on Ziggazoo we have our creators that are able to host challenges.

Brands that come on and stand up their channels and then celebrities also come on as guests to have this two way conversation with kids.

And it's all in a public forum so kids can shout out each other and they can also have their friends come on the app too, follow their friends, you know, chat. We see a lot of ripple effects in the challenges where they want their friends to participate too. And everything being challenge based.

You see a challenge and then you can always click into the feed and that is where all the user generated content in responses to that challenge live. So kids check out all the other responses and then go and create their own.

Part of what we're trying to make sure kids are doing is creating and they're learning how to present, they're learning how to edit, they're learning, you know, a lot of different skills while they're using social media.

And is all of that functionality built in, the ability to create and edit within the app?

Yeah, it's all built in. And importantly, kids and teens go through a consent process alongside their parents.

So it's actually the parent that's giving their the permission that they can create content. And so that's part of the flow when they go through the signup process.

And then as long as the user is consented, they're able to respond to challenges which all go through moderation and then would hit the main feed. And then the really cool thing is we have ethical algorithms.

So we're spotlighting kids that are doing really special things and making sure that they show up within the app and get featured, which they love.

Talk to me about the audience makeup. Is it English language led or is it very.

Is it. At the moment we are available to download around the globe. We're English language led. We also can moderate in Spanish.

90% of our users are based in the US because that's where we do the majority of our marketing at this point. There are plans for further global expansion in other markets like the uk, Ireland, even Australia.

We're being found organically and interestingly have also seen a lot of growth in Australia with the ban and have been, you know, really proud to say that we were not part of that, part of that ban. And that's because we're doing things different, differently and we expect to stay ahead in every single market.

And like, what's the, what's the uptake? Like what, like, you know, when a user comes on board, like, are you seeing like a long life cycle for them? Are they using the app daily?

Like, what are you, what do you think?

Well, we're dealing with kids, so some of them are coming on daily after school. Depends on their screen time, rules at home. Some can just use it on the weekend.

And also our app, by design, you're supposed to be coming on the app, getting your challenges and then going to create.

And so some of these users may be taking three hours to go and make their really special video or memorize the choreography so they could then do this dance. So it's not all perfectly measured within the app. And, you know, our goal is to make sure they're, they're finding that interactivity and balance.

What's, what's the age? Sweet, sweet spot, Ashley. I mean, what. I'm assuming you've got a range, but where does it kind of settle naturally?

It's A great question.

Really interesting to know that Zigazoo was founded as more of a preschool app and we're one, we're, we're an app that keeps getting cooler and cooler and cooler and cooler to the point that as, as friends are getting on the app and they're creating their, their, I guess digital map on Ziggazoo, they're not leaving.

We have 15 year olds now that we've been around over five years that are on Zigazoo and they're still creating and much like us, just because you have Facebook and then went to Instagram and then went to TikTok and you're on LinkedIn, you don't delete your other accounts, you just use them differently. So we age gate all the content within Zigazoo because we recognize, you know, a 13 to 15 year old experience looks very different than a 6 to 9.

We were really, I would say we have, we have some younger kids who are on the platform using it alongside older siblings and their parents. Core would be that 6 to 13 age group that are, you know, finding social for the first time are 9 to 12 year olds are just creating the most content.

They also have more screen time. So we see a lot of trends.

But the most interesting, I, I think the thing that shocked us as an organization is that they're not leaving and we keep, we keep having to make ourselves cooler and cooler and cooler and that's an incredible challenge.

And now we're at a point where we really are the collective tastemaker for Gen Alpha because we have over 10 million users and they are, you know, shaping the trends, they're sharing the trends. We can see there, we can, we can see what they're talking about, what they care about, their view of the world. We want to lift their voices.

And also we added a polling feature which we created as a just for fun engagement feature for the kids. And now there's so much that we're able to learn.

Like we asked them questions about our own app to guide us on features and things that we should do and create. And now the industry is tapping into that in really interesting ways as well because we have a lot to learn if we can listen to the voices.

That's really fascinating because one of the things we've ended up discussing a lot about the proposed social media ban for under 16s and one of the things that we've often talked about is how sometimes there can be quite a crude filter in which people just talk about everyone under 16 is treated the same, whereas it's Always seemed kind of crazy to us that you'd treat somebody that was 5 year old the same as you might treat a 13 year old.

Yeah.

So it's interesting that you're already looking at age gating and kind of aging up with your audience.

Are you finding the other kids, brands or other parents are kind of receptive to, to that that might be concerned about having their children on social media, but do you find that there's kind of an understanding that actually you can treat those age groups very differently on social media?

Yeah, Eileen, I think it's something special that we do and offer and we want to make sure that a kid that comes on Zigzoo isn't seeing something on Zigzoo for the first time.

Like, we want, we want to make sure that, you know, their lunch table conversations are different at every age and stage and they can still follow creators based on interest. And we're also making sure the content that ends up on the app is positive and good.

So like the stuff of I wouldn't want them exposed to that song or those words or this kind of behavior that's not going to make it up on the app anyways. So we want to keep, we want to keep kids innocence and you don't have that on, on other platforms that kids are on.

They can stumble into the wrong, wrong space very quickly.

I'd love to hear more about you because you said like, you're, like you're on the phone with Gen Alpha and like here and the trends happen on Zigazoo first. Give us some example. I'd love to hear some examples of those.

Yeah. So six, seven as an example, we started hearing on Sigazoo very early. Seeing it in all the comments, like,

oh my God, that's so old.

Yeah. So we know, you know, we see their language that, you know, just based on, you know, what they're, what they're saying in the comments.

We also see what products they care about. So these glitter squishy dumplings that kids are going crazy for, it's like we knew the second that it was popping.

In culture, things like Labubu, we, we know that they're happening really, really early and we have our, our ears to the ground. We actually have an internal team meeting every week and we talk about all the trends that we're seeing within the app and also in culture at large.

And there's, there's so much crossover and there's so many instances where Gen Alpha is, is shaping them. Also our creator community, a lot of them have social channels on the outside as well.

They're famous kids and teens in their own right, whether they're Disney or Nickelodeon stars or a massive influencer. So we have also these really powerful voices outside of the walls of Zigazoo who can bring a lot of what's happening to the greater social ecosystem.

What's, what's, what's trending right now? What's trending right now? Six, seven is over. What is next?

Six, seven is over.

Oh, I'm gonna have to, I think we should do a separate call just on this and I will have our, our head of content bring all the, all the hottest things in the app or we can run it, we could run a, we should run a poll after this together and I'll share it with you guys.

That is a great idea I'm interested in. I mean it makes complete sense that you get the heads up on what is starting to trend and what's popping. And your own background is in toy.

So you know, we know that getting ahead of trends, getting an advanced peak on what potentially is coming down the line, particularly in toy, but in the wider kids media business is so important. Right. So how are you, how are you helping that to help Zigazoo bring, you know, on board brands, for example?

That's key, that's key intelligence that you can leverage, right?

It really is.

And we're doing a lot for brands even when they're, when they haven't extended into consumer products yet and they want to understand their character base or they, you know, which character is your favorite or why do you love this brand? Would you, would you like to have T shirts, toys or some kind of merchandise?

We can get all of these insights from kids directly to brands so they can make decisions.

We can also find out how brands stack up side by side, what creators care about and not just backwards looking of what is selling and what are kids watching but what are they looking towards in the future? What's the next trending animal where, what kind of content do they want to be watching? So we can be very far ahead in our research.

And then brands are coming on Zigazoo for a few different reasons. One, in today's age, brands are communities. Right?

Like you could have, speaking from an entertainment perspective, you could have the best content in the world. If you lose, lose your placement on your platform, your stuff going to social and in Kinsafe platforms you don't get to build a community.

Yeah, maybe they get to subscribe, but you're not having a two way conversation. So a lot of brands are looking at Zigazoo for that participation, for that feedback loop for community.

And then also our creator network, we're able to have them partner with brands so we can have.

We've many brands that use creators as official ambassadors that are running or participating in their channels or going to premieres or doing those unboxing videos. We have ways to mass gift to our creator community and then also get the general users involved.

So we're able to run contests and giveaways and do all this stuff in a totally COPPA compliant way that makes it something special for a brand because they can't do that. To run a contest for kids to actually make videos to enter is. It feels impossible. Maybe you get five entries. You know, on zigazoo it's.

It's easy for us to turn on.

Tell us about the creators that are big there. So you're saying there's some. There's some like younger skewing talent, but also other influencers.

Yeah, we have a mix of creators. We have everyone from like Nastia and I think across all of her socials she has over 400 million subscribers and the Rock Squads on Zigzu.

So all of these, you know, big platform, big social channels from other, other platforms are on Zigazoo. Then also we have kids that have become Zigazoo famous.

We have one, Michaela dances and she's on Zigazoo and she tops the leaderboard on a frequent basis. She's amassed a really amazing following and now we've given her for the first time opportunities to do brand partnerships.

So it's been really exciting to see are homegrown craters as well.

It's fascinating because we say a lot you patronize kids at your peril. But very often that is the default if you're trying to create something that is inherently safe and or education, it kind of just tends to happen.

Yet the reality is they're growing up in a. They're aware of commercials.

They know what when they're being sold something, you know, they know that toy unboxing happens and they know that Labubu is huge and they're going to be pestering for one pretty soon. So to try and take them out of that and into a. Into a bubble almost doesn't do. Do you know them any favors?

Right.

But what, what is. Is great is that you've got like nastier and you've got brands on here, but you're doing it in that copper compliant way.

And I can see that becoming ever more important.

Particularly because, you know, we've seen how brands are getting away from just throwing tons of money at ads that aren't really effective or are being served to bots and not humanized. So they're getting into telling stories and actually you've got a turnkey solution for that.

Yes, we actually, we have no bots on our platform. That's one of, you know, our roles and we, we can guarantee that you're reaching an actual Kid. So over 100 brands partner with Zigazoo.

And I'm talking everyone from Paramount to Amazon. I think every major publishing company is on Zigga Zoo. Most of the toy companies, U.S. soccer, the NBA, Urban Air, the list goes on and on.

So it, it's really become the destination that if you are talking to kids that you need to be on Zigga Zoo. Like Kids Bop is on Zigga Zoo. Not only is Kids Bop on, but all the individual Kids Bop stars also have channels on Ziggas.

So we're able to allow them to all show up in special ways.

So the business model works in a similar way to another social platform in that, you know, it's brands turning up with advertising and partnerships and stuff like that. That's, you know, what the, what's, what the revenue driver for the platform is.

Yeah, we function a little bit different than most social platforms in the sense that a brand can't just come on and set up a channel on Zigasoo. The only way to do that is going through our team. And that is because we need to make sure that any brand that comes on Zigazoo is mission aligned.

We also white glove manage all of those channels because it's about this engagement factor and getting the right challenge questions and poll participations.

So we make sure that they're getting the consults of our team and the educators and we're making sure all the right disclosures are put on everything and how it shows up within the app. Brands can also run campaigns for moments in time. And generally that's a mix of challenges and polls and contests.

And we have, we have parent emails as well. So we're able to talk to that parent community and thread everything together.

And I would say every brand is using Zigazoo differently depending on what their goals are. Some are watch me, some are go to theater.

And of course there's a creation of the nag factor, which we have something really special that we developed.

We have a wish listing feature where kids can see the product that they love, wish for it, and then it sends a personalized email to the parent and there's no other platform that can do anything like that. Usually you're either targeting the kid or parent separately or it's some kind of co viewing.

We have this co creation with the whole family because kids are often involving their, their parents, their pets, their siblings to, to co star. And then we also have this other other piece that can be more commercial in nature where we're making sure that that threads over to their parent and

we know how important that that pester power which used to be just, you know, running into your mom or your dad kind of I want this, I want this. I love now that they get an email. You can pester your parents via email. That's.

But joking aside, I mean there's ample evidence and research to back up the power of kids as decision makers within families.

And very often again that's kind of missed but you look at a lot of research and they're saying kids are influencing not just which media subscriptions the family have, it's the next holiday destination, it's even the brand and size of car that is being bought. But actually tracking that is quite, is quite difficult.

But actually it's great that it's kind of built in here and the brands that do want to access it have to commit to showing up in the right way and in a consistent way. But in a way they're getting better data because of it.

Yeah, yeah. We actually have a new partnership on Zigazoo. We partner with mom.com and we created a new channel called the Family Room.

And so we're doing more family oriented challenges and bringing brands in in a special way. Also running polls, we just ran one on, on spring break and travel of you know who. How do you get to influence your family's travel?

And kids have a say in all of this. So I think what we're doing in app is reminding the world that kids voices matter and inviting them into the conversation.

And do you think having the parents as part of that conversation is kind of key to the whole moderation for Ziggur Zoo?

It feels like that's something that's coming across to me in our conversation that I don't feel is necessarily as apparent in other platforms that cater for kids. Yeah, yeah. I just wondered if you felt that was kind of a key part of

is a key part of it because you need to if you have the parents permission that a child can spend time on the platform and use it. It's something that a parent will support I think for longer than if a kid just finds their way onto a platform that they shouldn't be on.

And maybe they love it, but they could get pulled off of it if the parent learns that that's not safe for them. What are the challenge?

What are the challenges? It sounds, it sounds wonderful, right? Like it sounds ideal.

Yeah.

What are the challenge challenge challenges that

you guys are up against?

Like, is it scaling the volume of kids that are on there?

Is it like the ongoing, you know, moderation AI is helping and taking it to the next level, but always that responsibility is always hard and cold and pointy y. Right. What are the things that are challenging you guys?

I think the most challenging is we've amassed a great amount of users and we're really proud of our growth and we also recognize that there's still more work to do to make sure every parent, every family and every brand knows about Zigasoo and they're turning to us as a solution.

So I think there's a whole education of our world that, that needs to be done because there's a whole slew of parents that are just letting their kids on social. They're. It's not the kid is picking the parent is also letting their child go. Go onto certain social platforms. So it's, it's.

I think the biggest challenge is the re education of the world and legislation meeting us where we are is I think helping to, to educate the world. But that is a big, a big piece of it. You know, how loud, how loud can we. We get to make sure everyone knows that this is a social comedy work. It.

Yeah, yeah, it's. It seems like a, like a contradiction, but it is possible with the right design, I think.

Yeah, I think it is and I think because we, we apply our own misconceptions to it because we were the generation that got phones as teenagers and we went in hard and we did

as you said before, my space trauma.

Yeah, we did all the wrong things. We didn't have any knowledge. The guardrails weren't. Weren'. We made all the mistakes.

But I know certainly as the parent of two teenage boys, they're far more pragmatic included. And I can see actually why there might be a swing away from the big mass open platforms where, yes, you know, that's where everybody is.

But actually there are a lot of downsides to it back to somewhere where it's like, actually there are kids. Kids want a positive experience online. They don't actually go online with the intention of being toxic and horrible and then feeling sad themselves.

So actually I can see now it feels like we've got a generation who are so media literate and they've also seen how their parents made all the mistakes. Well, they're not going to make them.

Yeah. This generation's so different.

We see it in all their behaviors and healthy eating and how they take care of their skin and how they want to show up on social and really understanding screen time more.

We actually are in deep in the planning right now for our Youth Digital Wellness Month, which happens all May and it coincides with Mental Health Awareness Month. And our creators participate, brands participate, we have a whole literacy curriculum. We do roundtables in the industry.

We, we put together toolkits for parents and so that's coming up and it's something that the whole Zigazoo ecosystem leans into and it's unusual because nothing like that happens on most social platforms.

Amazing. I love it.

Yeah.

Emily?

I'm good. Oh, I'm good.

I was going to say that.

I feel like that's been really, really great. It's been such an education. For sure.

Yeah. Yeah, genuinely. And I mean, I remember Ziggazoo launching kind of five years or so ago.

Yeah.

And it feels like maybe with the best will in the world, the cards were stacked against you.

And yeah, it's really quite heartening to hear how the platform has evolved actually in that intervening period to be much more reflective of what grown up social media is, but actually consciously constructed to not bring through those kind of negative parts of it. And it's great to, to hear how it's succeeding. So, yeah, congrats.

Yeah, absolutely.

But a journey.

Yeah.

I mean it really, as you're saying, Joe, it really, it kind of answers something that a question that kind of is around at the moment and it feels like some people are just jumping for the, just an outright ban and, and just keeping people off of digital spaces.

But so much of the world takes place online that it always felt unfair to us to just deny kids that opportunity to have a voice and to be able to, you know, play within that space. So, yeah, really interesting.

Like lots of bad stuff happens online, but lots of positive stuff happens online too. Right. Like that's the part you want to bring them into.

Exactly.

For sure, it's all. Not all scrolling is doom scrolling 100%.

And it's better for you. Right? Like we compare ourselves to the Whole Foods movement. You know, it's better for you. There's. There's better choices that we.

And it still tastes good and it's

a. Yeah, it can still taste really, really good.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Awesome.

Well, thank you for joining us. That's been really, really good and very positive.

Yes. Thank you for having me on and looking forward to hopefully a part two. Would love to have our founders.

We've got part two, three and four all lined up.

We've got.

Excellent. Let's do it.

It's good.

We've got it.

We've got it.

Awesome.

Do you want to do the sign off?

Yeah, happily so that was a great conversation. Thanks so much for that, Ashley. And thanks to you guys for listening.

Please like and subscribe and find us wherever you get your podcasts and we will see you guys next week. But.