A Parent's Guide to Apps with Medical/Treatment Information

1. Why Is Medical/Treatment Information a Risk Worth Rating on Mobile Apps?
   • When you look at the factors that are taken into account for mobile app content ratings, most of them immediately make sense. After all, you don’t want to expose your young child to sexual content or nudity, profanity, or realistic violence. However, one rating component in particular seems like some sort of anomaly – medical/treatment information.
   • If an app has a little medical or treatment info, it usually gets a 12+ rating. If it has a lot, it usually gets a 17+ rating. Why might that be? You might think, after all, that younger children probably won’t even be interested in apps that feature medical information like this. Furthermore, you might think that giving kids this kind of information couldn’t possibly be damaging. However, there are actually a few different ways that this kind of information can be harmful.
2. Traumatizing Pictures and Videos
   • First of all, an app that shows pictures or videos of surgeries and other serious treatments might be very informative and interesting to an adult. However, those same images can be traumatizing to a child. Imagine your young child downloading and using an app, thinking that it’s a “doctor” game or something entertaining, then seeing images and videos of people being cut open during surgery.
   • Medical and treatment information can be really graphic, and that’s fine for an adult trying to figure out what to expect when they go in for a procedure. A child might come away with a phobia of doctors that could take years to treat, especially if you don't immediately address what they’ve seen.
3. Physical Harm From Playing Doctor
   • Next, most kids don’t have a clear understanding of just how dangerous many medications and medical tools can be. Playing doctor with toy stethoscopes and kid-sized lab coats is cute, but seeing how some medical treatments are performed can give your kids harmful ideas for the next time they play doctor.
   • They might get into the medicine cabinet, or they might try to play at giving each other shots with household items. You monitor your kids closely, but you never know what they’ll get into as soon as you turn your back. And, if they’re inspired by medical/treatment information from an app they’ve been playing with, they might decide to try to implement some of what they’ve seen the next time they play doctor.
4. Hypochondria Can Cause Problems
   • Next, think about how often your doctor and other medical professionals have told you not to self-diagnose. And how many times have you convinced yourself that you had some kind of terrible disease by looking your symptoms up online? Now think of all of the bad diet and fitness advice you’ve seen online.
   • If your child sees a series of symptoms on an app, they might easily be convinced that they have a medical condition. If you’ve ever tried to convince your child that there isn’t a monster under the bed or in the closet, then you know how active their imaginations can be and how quickly they can lock onto a scary thought. Imagine how much more difficult it would be to convince your child that there’s no danger of getting sick with a real-life disease when it’s so difficult to convince them that imaginary monsters won’t aren’t lurking in the dark.
5. Talking to your Kids About Medical/Treatment Information in Mobile Apps
   • Of course, medical and treatment information aren’t necessarily bad things for older kids and teens to see. It really just depends on the context, the intensity, and why they’re seeking it out. And, as with a lot of other content, you can’t completely control your child’s exposure to medical information if they’re using an app that allows others to upload videos and pictures.
   • For example, if your child is 12 or 13 and sees a friend posting pictures of their cast after breaking a leg, you know they’re not seeing anything dangerous or damaging. On the other hand, if your child is just nine years old, a video of someone getting stitches can be a whole different ballgame. The best medicine (no pun intended) for this is to talk to your child about the apps they’re using, the ones they want to download, the images and videos they see, and how they feel about them.
   • Monitor your children's app use and ask them what they think of the videos or images they’ve already seen. If they want to download an app that has medical/treatment information in its rating, check out what context the information is presented in and ask your child what attracts them to the app. Take some time to check out the review of the app in our directory, and then you can decide whether or not your child is ready to see that kind of material or not.