New Facebook App for Children Ignites Debate Among Families
New Facebook App for Children Ignites Debate Among Families
SAN FRANCISCO — Few big technology companies have dared to create online products for boys and girls ages 13 and nether.
Merely on Monday, Facebook introduced an app, called Messenger Kids, that is targeted at that age group and asks parents to give their approval so children tin can bulletin, add together filters and doodle on photos they send to one another. It is a bet that the app can innovate a new generation of users to the Silicon Valley giant'south always-expanding social media universe.
In doing so, Facebook immediately reignited a furious debate about how immature is too immature for children to use mobile apps and how parents should bargain with the steady pitter-patter of technology into family life, especially as some fight to reduce the amount of time their sons and daughters spend in front of screens. On one side are parents similar Matt Quirion of Washington, who said Facebook'southward snaking its way into his children's lives at an early age would near probable do more harm than good.
"I'm an avid social media user, but I don't feel my kids need more social interaction," said Mr. Quirion, 39, whose 3 children are between ages 3 and 9. "They need their personal time to process all the social interaction and larn to abound into mature people."
Just as song are parents like Parker Thompson of Alameda, Calif., who said children's adoption of engineering is an inevitability and who appreciated Facebook's approach with the new app.
"Today, much of the time our options come down to giving kids devices and trusting things will work out, watching them closely at all times, or banning engineering," said Mr. Thompson, 38, a male parent of 3 children between vi months to 8 years old. "Tech is going to exist something kids prefer. The question is how this will happen."
Facebook'southward official entry into the children'due south market is a watershed moment both for families and for the social network. Preteens and teenagers already flock to YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat and Musical.ly, general interest sites whose policies country that they are not for use past children nether 13. Preteens are also gorging senders of text messages.
But but a handful of messaging and social apps — like Kudos, a photograph-sharing app — are designed for younger children to use with parental permission and supervision. That's because of a federal law, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, known as Coppa, which requires services aimed at children to obtain verifiable parental consent before collecting, using or disclosing personal information from a child under xiii — similar photos, videos, voice recordings, location, contact information and names.
Until this year, fifty-fifty big tech companies had been loath to set children'southward sites with a parental consent system lest they violate the police force. In 2011, for example, an operator of virtual worlds that had been acquired past the Walt Disney Company agreed to pay $3 1000000 to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that information technology illegally collected and disclosed personal information from children nether 13 without parents' consent.
Facebook said the bespeak of Messenger Kids was to provide a more controlled environment for the types of activity that were already occurring beyond smartphones and tablets amidst family members. The company said information technology had spent months talking to parenting groups, child behavioral experts and safety organizations to assist in developing the app, likewise as thousands of hours interviewing families on the ways that members communicate with i another. The app is compliant with Coppa, it added.
"Right now for kids, the time they spend on devices is very passive," said David Marcus, vice president of messaging products at Facebook. "Information technology's non actually a device that helps you connect with others close to them."
Messenger Kids is built so that children do not sign up for new Facebook accounts themselves; Facebook'southward terms of service require that users be 13 or older. The app requires an adult with a Facebook account to set up the app for his or her kid. After adults enter their Facebook account information into the app, they are asked to create the child'due south contour and which friends or relatives he or she will be immune to connect with on Messenger. Every boosted friend request requires approving by the parent.
The app is fairly limited in telescopic, assuasive for text and video chat, also as sending photos. As with Instagram, Facebook or Snapchat, children can add filters or playful drawings to the photos they send.
Loren Cheng, product manager for Messenger Kids, said Facebook would not apply for marketing purposes the details it collected from children. He besides said the visitor would non automatically catechumen children's accounts to adult accounts when they turned 13.
The app, which will be in a preview release on Apple's iOS devices earlier rolling out to a wider audience in the coming months, is Facebook's latest effort to increment the number of people who rely on its service to connect with one another regularly. More than two billion people utilise Facebook every month, while its other apps, like Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram, also have billions of users.
If Messenger Kids proves popular, Facebook may reap many benefits. The company could see increased messaging activity and more engaged, regularly returning users, not to mention insights and data on how families interact on Messenger.
Some children's and privacy groups commended Facebook for saying that Messenger Kids would give parents control over children's messaging and non show ads to children. But they besides described Messenger Kids every bit a marketing effort to increment consumer loyalty.
"This is an attempt to create a feature that will aid Facebook win over immature people and go on their parents tied to the site," said Jeffrey Chester, the executive director of the Center for Digital Republic, a privacy and children's advocacy group in Washington. "With YouTube monetizing the youngest children, information technology'south too lucrative a market for Facebook to overlook — plus the company is losing youth market share to Snapchat."
Others cautioned that the app raised concerns about children's privacy.
According to Messenger Kids' privacy policy, the app collects registration details from parents such as children'due south full names. It as well collects the texts, audio and videos children send, besides as information most whom the child interacts with on the service, what features they use and how long the children employ them.
The privacy policy as well says that "Messenger Kids is part of Facebook" and that the visitor may share information collected in the app with other Facebook services. While parents can delete their children's Messenger Kids accounts, the policy says, the messages and content that a child sent to and received from others "may remain visible to those users."
James Steyer, the chief executive of Common Sense Media, a children'southward media ratings and advocacy group, said European regulators had previously fined Facebook for reneging on privacy commitments. Given that history, he suggested that Facebook brand a public and permanent delivery to keeping Messenger Kids gratuitous of advertisement and to not using the app to prime children for grown-upward accounts subsequently.
"Why should parents simply trust that Facebook is interim in the best interest of children?" Mr. Steyer asked.
Facebook tin ill afford more controversies. The company has been in the cross hairs of Congress over the role it played in the 2016 presidential ballot, with the spread of imitation news and divisive content on all of its platforms. The visitor has said more than 150 million people across Facebook and Instagram could have seen content linked to Russian agencies.
Still, the company said that issue was largely separate from Messenger. Facebook said its overall mission remained centered on bringing the globe closer together.
"We tin can't permit the current state of things foreclose us from doing our jobs, which is to solve real bug in people's lives," Mr. Marcus, the head of Messenger at Facebook, said.
Marker Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, did not weigh in on the start of Messenger Kids. Over the weekend, Mr. Zuckerberg, whose second kid was born over the summer, posted on Facebook that he was going on paternity go out.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/04/technology/facebook-messenger-kids.html
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