Technology has long influenced the way kids play, and now a new mobile-based social network wants to revolutionize the way in which play dates are made.

Maryland-based KidMix allows children to connect with friends and plan their own play dates within a COPPA-compliant monitored environment.

The goal of the free platform is to connect kids ages five to 12 with their classmates, sports teams, neighbors, camp friends and relatives while allowing them to schedule their own activities─which are then viewable to parents via a specialized dashboard that allows them to accept, deny or change plans as they see fit. In short, it’s independence, but within reach.

In terms of security, one level will provide kids with full access to KidMix with keyboard accessibility for status updates and commenting. A more limited option forgoes the ability to type and requires kids to choose from a list of pre-written comments for status updates.

Aside from its social networking aspect, the platform lets kids learn about a range of subjects like science, history, cooking and music in KidMix‘s SmartZone, which includes curated videos that can be viewed and shared with friends. The videos are aggregated via YouTube and other video sources, and KidMix includes the author or publisher of the content for each video. KidMix users are also able to share the videos with individual friends or to their news feeds.

The app is currently available for Android, Amazon and iOS devices.