In this guide
What is Calm?
Calm is a wellbeing app, designed to help users reduce their stress and anxiety and improve their sleep through the use of various meditation and sleep tools. These tools include bedtime stories read by celebrities, breathing exercises and relaxing music. There are also educational lessons intended to improve mindfulness and increase focus and productivity.
Calm has tools created for both adults and children, meaning both parents and kids can make use of it. It is available on both android and iPhone.
How it works
Calm can be used by signing up for either a free or premium account. The premium subscription costs £39.99 a year, or £14.99 a month. A family plan, giving users up to 6 premium accounts, is also available at a price of £40.99 a year.
Calm offers many different wellbeing tools:
- Bedtime stories
- Guided meditations
- Music for relaxation
- Nature sounds
- Lullabies for children
- Classes on wellbeing
- Mood check-ins
The majority of these tools are not available on the free basic plan, meaning a subscription is required to access most content. On the free plan, users are only allowed to listen to 3 audio tools each day.
Calm app parental controls
Calm does not offer any parental controls, meaning parent’s will be unable to use settings to manage what content their children access or how long they spend on the app. However, due to the nature of the app, there is not much negative content for children to access and it is unlikely that children will spend an unhealthy amount of time on a wellbeing app.
There is a Calm Kids content library on the app that features stories and meditations created for children, so if you are concerned about the content your child is exposed to, encourage them to only use tools from this library.
Benefits of Calm
- Dedicated library for child-friendly content
- New kids stories being released 2-3 times per month
- Celebrity story narrators and stories from notable children’s media franchises
- Wide array of wellbeing and meditation tools
Tips for using Calm
Calm can have a positive impact on its users wellbeing. To help your child get the most out of the app, consider the following.
Use Calm Kids
Calm has a dedicated library for content aimed at children and teens. This content includes bedtime stories, meditations and music. Some of the content is based around popular children’s media, such as Peppa Pig and Kung Fu Panda, so this could help children engage with Calm more.
Make it a part of their routine
The app can help your child reduce their stress and be more mindful, but this will only work if they do it consistently. Try making it a part of their daily schedule, perhaps as the last thing they do before turning their phones off for the night.