Zift Advisory
The Disney Story Central app is a reading library which encourages family story time and independent discovery for children. It is available for download in the App Store and the Google Play Store, rated for everyone, and features in-app purchases and advertisements. This app is safe for children but there are some concerns over privacy violations that parents should consider.
What is Disney Story Central?
The Disney Story Central app is a reading library which encourages family story time and independent discovery for children. With thousands of stories to choose from, kids can learn and improve their reading skills with their favorite Disney characters.
The Disney Story Central app is rated for users of all ages but is best suited for users ages 2-8. It is available for download in both the App Store and the Google Play Store. This app features in-app purchases and advertisements.
Kids are given rewards to motivate them to read more, and the app also provides suggestions for other stories of interest. Certain books in the library have optional audio narration and highlight words as they are spoken, which can help build your child's sight word vocabulary.
Books displayed with a blue border around the cover are intended for preschool kids, while green-bordered books are aimed at children who are just learning to read independently.
Users receive a few free titles with the initial app download, but thereafter, parents must create an account and purchase additional titles with “tokens.” Each token is worth one new book, regardless of difficulty level or additional features. New stories are added every week, keeping a fresh selection available for voracious young readers.
Immediately after downloading the Disney Story Central app, users are notified that the app requires in-app purchases; these can be adjusted in the settings menu. Individual book prices are comparable to other e-books, but the books lack the interactive features of many other reading apps on the market.
Although parents can set up multiple kids on the app, books can’t be shared among readers.
Is Disney Story Central safe for my kids?
While the content in Disney Story Central is safe for children, there are a few concerns of which parents should be aware before installing this app.
The Disney Story Central mobile app was cited in August of 2017 as part of class action lawsuit which alleged unauthorized data collection and violation of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.
According to the lawsuit, Disney Story Central tracked the activities and location of children without parental notification, using personally identifiable information to sell targeting advertisements within the app for six companies:
- The Walt Disney Company
- Disney Enterprises, Inc
- Disney Electronic Content, Inc
- Upsight, Inc
- Unity Technologies SF
- Kochava, Inc
Parents who are concerned with the privacy and security of their children should avoid this app.
Additionally, there are in-app purchases and advertisements within this app. The in-app purchases can be disabled on your device, and cannot be independently triggered by children, but the in-app advertisements may be concerning for parents.
App Screens
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