Startups to Watch: Betweened is making social media safe for children

Editor's note: In our 2024 Startups to Watch feature, the Silicon Valley Business Journal and San Francisco Business Times present startups and founders building groundbreaking products and companies in the Bay Area. Betweened is one of 17 we profiled this year — to read more about our mission and the other startups we're featuring, click here.

Social media is a hotbed of problematic content for children and the companies that operate services have struggled to find a balance between curating an engaging experience for impressionable youngsters and ensuring safety. Some have attempted to address parental concerns by creating their own child-friendly apps, with mixed results. It's a project that Carla Engelbrecht, CEO and founder of Betweened Inc., said has not gone far enough.

As a parent herself concerned with what her child can potentially see on social media, she has set out to empower children and parents to give them a social media app that provides age-appropriate content and teaches them useful skills to navigate the digital landscape.

So she started Betweened, a social platform designed for 6- to 9-year-olds to access short-form videos and connect with friends, similar to TikTok or Instagram Reels.

About Betweened

“I always expected the Big Tech companies would build kid versions of their platforms, but as we saw last year there was just a very public example that they're not trusted to do kid versions of things,” Engelbrecht said. “And then we also have a space where people understand there are challenges and we can't just hand social media over to kids because they need to be taught how to use it. And so understanding the risks, that the incumbents can't build this and that the UX is there, I was like, 'OK, this is time. Let's do it.'"

While in college, Engelbrecht was the victim of a gun crime that ended her career as an aspiring musician, but it pushed her into a career to develop children’s programming. She went on to receive her master's in media studies from the New School and a doctorate in instructional technology and media from Columbia University.

With a passion for making sure different forms of media are accessible to young people, Engelbrecht went on to work for Sesame Street, PBS Kids and Netflix. Now, she said, all her workplace experience and education has influenced the creation of Betweened.

“I certainly want this to be a global platform that families can engage with and I also want it to have impact," she said. "And there is a balance that comes with that."

Although the company is in its infancy and still beta testing its platform, all content is moderated and screened before making it onto the app. Currently, the company is posting 20-30 minutes of video content a day, and as volume increases, Engelbrecht says everything will be vetted. She says she hopes the app will grow to the point where influencers and content creation will have a huge role in educating children on the platform.

Though the company has been entirely bootstrapped and still developing its service, it’s looking into ways of generating revenue in the long run. Engelbrecht eventually wants to make the app ad-free but it’s not yet a viable business model.

According to a study by Harvard University, social media companies in 2022 generated $11 billion in revenue from advertising directed at children and teenagers. Close to $2 billion of that came from users under the age of 12. The study added that Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube reaped the highest share, which was approximately 30-40% combined.

However, advertising for children’s media is tricky. The Federal Trade Commission requires platforms to receive parental consent to collect personal information from users under 13 years old. In a 2023 report, the FTC expressed apprehensions about the issue of "blurred advertising" targeting children on the internet, raising doubts about children's ability to discern whether an influencer's enthusiastic product review is actually an advertisement.

“Betweened is an advertiser- supported platform. But it's a premium, different take on advertising where we will situate that advertising to be able to talk about how kids learn from it,” she said. “And so that may not be for every advertiser and they may not want to put their brand into that and I'm willing to take a haircut on revenue, knowing that we're doing the right thing to set kids up for the long term.”

For now, Engelbrecht is hoping the company will be able to garner enough support from venture capitalists and investors in order to take off so kids can have a safe experience.