#FACEBOOK MESSENGER FOR KIDS FREE#

#FACEBOOK MESSENGER FOR KIDS FREE#

Josh Golin, executive director of Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood, the nonprofit that helped organize the coalition, pointed to comments from David Marcus, Facebook’s head of Messenger. Instead, they say the app seems designed to hook children on social media at younger ages. (The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA requires parental permission to collect data on children under 13.) But advocates say pre-teens who already have a Snapchat, Instagram, or Facebook account are unlikely to convert, especially when features are designed with younger users in mind. When Facebook launched Messenger Kids in December, the company pitched it as a way to safeguard pre-teens who may be using unauthorized social media accounts. (Twenge signed the letter.) Another recent study found that adolescents who spend an hour a day chatting on social media report less satisfaction with nearly every aspect of their lives and 8th graders who use social media for six to nine hours per week are 47 percent more likely to report they are unhappy than their peers who use social media less often. The letter to Zuckerberg was signed by individuals and 19 nonprofits including Common Sense Media, Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, and Parents Across America, who say their concern stems from recent studies that link increased depression, poor sleeping habits, and unhealthy body image in children and teens with higher use of social media and digital devices.įor instance, a study by Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University and author of iGen, found that social media use by teens is tied to significantly higher rates of depression. Advocates say the app likely will undermine healthy childhood development for preschool and elementary-school-aged kids by increasing the amount of time they spend with digital devices. (Parents might also be concerned about their children’s messages being scanned by Facebook for advertising reasons, as Facebook is an advertising company at its core, but Facebook says children’s chats will be off-limits for such purposes.A coalition of 97 child health advocates sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday asking him to discontinue Messenger Kids, a new advertising-free Facebook app targeted at 6-to-12-year olds. It’s a restrictive system, but one that highlights how tricky it is to give children access to social media, and particularly an app that’s operated by one of the world’s largest (and most controversial) social media firms. Parents can also remove people from a child’s contact list at any time as well. In order to befriend another child in Messenger Kids, a parent must also be friends with that child’s parent on Facebook. That means when a child reports a conversation that they find offensive or block an individual user in the app (or vice versa), the parent is notified on Facebook. The control panel for Messenger Kids is located in the main Facebook app.

Messenger Kids may be completely separate from Facebook’s other apps, but a lot of the parental management happens through Facebook. Kids can’t delete messages either, so theoretically if a child is using inappropriate language, they wouldn’t be able to erase what they’ve said. This, combined with the fact that parents have to approve each of their children’s contacts, should prevent phony accounts from appearing on the platform, a practice that’s become a huge problem for Facebook. A child can’t even create an account on his or her own - a parent must do it for them.

But most importantly, Facebook is giving parents total control over how their children use the app and with whom they can communicate.

Facebook messenger for kids