Parents' Guide to

Seek by iNaturalist

By Patricia Monticello Kievlan, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 8+

Snap photos, spot species with kid-friendly citizen science.

App iPhone , iPod Touch , iPad Free Education
Seek by iNaturalist Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this app.

  • Seek by iNaturalist App: Screenshot #1
  • Seek by iNaturalist App: Screenshot #2
  • Seek by iNaturalist App: Screenshot #3
  • Seek by iNaturalist App: Screenshot #4
  • Seek by iNaturalist App: Screenshot #5

Community Reviews

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age 6+

Based on 2 parent reviews

cnf123
cnf123 Parent of 11-year-old
April 19, 2020
age 6+

My children love the Seek app

My children ages 7 and 11 love this app are are learning so much. They are running around our yard taking pictures of everything from spiders to moss, mushrooms to birds. Some animals are hard to photograph, but we found out if we identify the animal ourselves, we can save a picture we find online to our account to get the creature counted.
dsmithy007
dsmithy007 Adult
August 12, 2019
age 6+

A learning app for all ages

What a fantastic App Seek is! My 8 year old son has it on his iPad and I on my iPhone. If you love the outdoors, nature and natural sciences then you’ll love this App. This App will identify every bird, plant, tree, animal, insect, fungus, reptile and amphibian with around 95% accuracy. It’s great fun, immersive and rewarding as you earn badges and complete challenges as you record each new species as you go. My son and I currently have a competition going on to see who can capture the most species of animal, plant etc... The photos are stored on your photo stream so I can send them to him for him to use on his Seek App! It’s very child friendly and has no issues with storing and sharing your personal data or location. We love this App and have recommended it to most of my friends and family. 5/5 stars!
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Privacy Rating Warning

  • Personal information is not sold or rented to third parties.
  • Personal information is not shared for third-party marketing.
  • Unclear whether this product displays personalised advertising.
  • Data are collected by third-parties for their own purposes.
  • User's information is used to track and target advertisements on other third-party websites or services.
  • Unclear whether this product creates and uses data profiles for personalised advertisements.
Learn more about our privacy ratings

What’s It About?

SEEK by iNATURALIST is a citizen science app that enables kids to use their mobile devices to identify plants and animals they encounter. After viewing a brief disclaimer to stay safe (don't harass the animals!), kids can browse a list of plants and animals they're likely to see near their current location. To identify a species, tap the plus sign to snap a photo or choose an image from the device's camera roll, crop the image, and then tap Done. If the image is clear enough, you'll read a brief profile of the found species, usually featuring info from Wikipedia, that includes the species's scientific name, a photo, a graph of the best times of year to spot this species, plus a tally of the number of times this species has been seen by iNaturalist users worldwide. Users can browse a gallery of the species they've seen, and they can earn badges for each species they add to their collection.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say: (2 ):
Kids say: Not yet rated

While you may not identify every tree in the forest, this is a solid tool for empowering kids to engage with the outdoors. Seek by iNaturalist's privacy features are solid: When kids spot a species and see a map of where other users have observed it, they're just viewing data submitted by adults without sharing their own photos or location. It's encouraging that kids can feel like they're part of the larger world of citizen science without compromising their own privacy.

Seek is powerful when it works: It's especially rewarding with flowers and with plants with distinctive-looking leaves. However, you might find yourself getting the "hrrrrrrm" error message a bit more often than you might expect, especially with tall trees whose leaves are too far out of reach. Be sure to bring a measure of patience to using the app -- and be ready to look around for other plants and animals if the first one doesn't work. While each species profile cites a web resource for its information, it would be even better if these profiles contained a clickable link to that resource, especially if it were kid-friendly and accessible. This could be a great gateway for engaging reluctant readers and budding naturalists alike.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about how Seek by iNaturalist can help kids learn about the natural world. Visit a local park, snap pics around your yard, or even take photos of houseplants and talk about how plants and animals live together all around us.

  • Each time you launch the app, there's a disclaimer warning users to be safe -- and legal! -- as they try to get close enough to plants and animals to snap a good photo. Talk about the best ways to take photos with the app: What parts of a flower or bush should be your photo's focus? How might you best use the app to take photos of more elusive animals, like deer or rabbits?

  • Talk about common names vs. scientific names, and learn more together about taxonomic ranks of kingdom, phylum or division, class, order, family, genus, and species. What familiar plants and animals fall in each? Talk about what the scientific names of plants and animals can tell you about those plants' and animals' characteristics.

  • Each plant or animal's description contains a link to a website like Wikipedia. What other resources might you use to learn more about each of these species?

App Details

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