A Better Way to Connect with Kids

Lots of services provide video calling: Apple’s FaceTime, Facebook’s WhatsApp, Microsoft’s Skype, Google’s Hangouts. But none of them caters to young children who can’t handle sitting through a long video chat with their relatives. “Kids feel like they are in the Spanish Inquisition,” says Maxeme Tuchman, co-founder of Caribu, a Miami-based startup that aims to make video chat a better experience for both kids and adults. Caribu lets both parties share an activity on the screen, so they can see and talk to each other, as well as draw pictures, play games or read more than 1,000 books in eight languages together. The service costs $7 a month but is free for military families. —Emily Barone