Now the popular social media site Facebook is coming for your kids.The social media giant is all set to launches a messaging app for children where children can chat with their friends and parents which is also going to approved by their parents.
Facebook Messenger kids launched is the free app which is aimed at kids under 13, who can’t yet have their own accounts under Facebook’s rules, though they can use this app to use the facebook account.
Messenger Kids comes here with a swing and slew of the controls for their parents. The service will not allow for the children to add their own friends or even deleting messages – only parents can do that.
On the last Monday, the Messenger Kids came out in the US as an app for Apple devices – the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.
Kids don’t get a separate Facebook or Messenger account; rather, it will be a feature which will be given an extension to their parent’s account.
The versions for Android and Amazon’s tablets are all set to come out eventually.
A kids-focused experience
Whilst kids can use the social media apps and the messaging apps which are designed for the adults and teenagers, those services aren’t built for them, stated Kristelle Lavallee, a children’s psychology expert, she suggested the Facebook on designing the service.
“The risk of exposure to things they were not developmentally prepared for is huge,” she said.
In the meantime, the Messenger Kids, “is the consequences of seeing what kids like,” which are emoji and images, like? Face filters and playful masks will be distracting for adults, Lavallee stated, but for kids, this feature is going to be interesting as this will be let them learning just how to form relationships and stay in touch with parents as well also teaches kids the way to express themselves.
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Lavallee, who is the content strategist at the Center on Media and Child Health at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard University, said about the Messenger Kids a “useful tool” that “makes parents the gatekeepers.” But she said that while Facebook made the app “with the best of intentions,” it’s not yet known how people will actually use it.
The other tool of the Facebook has released in the past, purpose and real-world use do not always match up. Facebook’s live video streaming feature, for example, has been used for lots of the useful things and innocuous stuff, but also to stream suicides and crimes.
Hooked on Facebook
Is Messenger Kids is a way for the Facebook to rope in the young ones?
The CEO of the nonprofit Family Online Safety Institute, Stephen Balkam, stated: “that train has left the station.”
Federal law prohibits Internet companies from collecting personal information on kids who are below 13 without their parents’ permission; as well the feature imposes restrictions on advertising to them.
This is why Facebook as well many other social media companies forbid and prohibited the younger kids from joining. Balkam also stated that the millions of kids under 13 are already on Facebook, with or without their parents’ approval.
He said Facebook is trying to deal with the situation sensibly by direction-finding young Facebook users to serves the designed for them.
Marketing matters
Facebook said Messenger Kids will not display any advertisements or it will not collect data for marketing, though it will collect some data so that the app can necessary to run the service.
Facebook said that this feature will not robotically send the regular Facebook or Messenger when they get old enough, however, the company can give them the option to move contacts to Messenger down the line.
James Steyer, the CEO of the kids-focused on the non-profit group Common Sense, stated that while he liked the idea of a messaging app which needs the parental sign-ups, many questions remain.
Among them: Will it always remain ad-free, as well will the parents get ads based on the service?
“Why should parents simply trust that Facebook is acting in the best interest of kids?” Steyer said in a statement. “People said that it would be ideal for Facebook to clarify their policies from the beginning so that it would be perfectly clear what parents are signing up for”.
