What Can Parents Do for Safer Facebook Messenger Kids App?

Facebook is now global and kids no matter what their age is want to join this social media platform to connect with the friends and family already having an account on Facebook. Although Facebook allows only kids above 12 years of age to create an account on their platform, still many young people use a false date of birth to create an account on this site - which is not at all safe. Kids at this age are not aware of the dangers that are present online and no matter how man ‘talks’ you have, the kids will always be kids.

Therefore, to protect the kids, Facebook has come up Facebook Messenger Kids, which is an app designed for younger kids. It is a messaging and video chat app intended for children to connect with family and friends. The app is designed for kids between the ages of 6-12 years and lets children connect with friends and family through a tablet or smartphone without the use of a phone number or Facebook account. The app is intended for the children who are too young to use real Facebook but still want to chat with the people present in the family group. In these times, when it is really difficult to monitor the online activities of the children the app acts as a breeze of fresh air by keeping the parents in control of various activities that the young kids engage in online. Even after many security features of Facebook Messenger Kids, there are certain areas in which the app lacks and in order to protect the kids, parents need additional security.

Benefits of Facebook Messenger Kids for parents

As the app is specifically designed for young children, it has features that keep the parents in charge of all the activities of the kids, which makes the app safer. Below are the features of the app -

• Parents can themselves download Facebook messenger kids app on their child’s device and after creating a profile decide on the friends and family the kids can talk to and thus, keep the kids away from the child predator threats.
• Owing to the Facebook Messenger Kids app, kids will never feel left out of the family group chat. The app will make them feel responsible and trusted, thus, there are chances that they will never try to make an account on the real Facebook.
• As the app has Special proactive detection safety filters the kids won’t be able to share anything related to nudity, sexual content or violence.
• The app won’t be able to collect the data of your children.
• One cannot find the kid’s profile through the Facebook search, which is important for protecting the privacy of the kids.
• Facebook Messenger Kids does not have features like location sharing and payments

Is Messenger Kids app safe for kids?

Although the Messenger Kids app has many safety and security features, still it has many dangers involved. Some of the glitches and dangers are listed below -

• In some cases, it has been seen that it is easy to sneak vulgarity and nudity past the filters.
• Sometime back, there was a technical glitch in the Facebook Messenger Kids app that resulted in the kid’s friend’s friend to create a group chat with the kid and one or more of kid’s parent-approved friends. After this incident, Facebook had turned off this group chat and since then group chats like this have not happened.
• There can be a privacy error, which can result in the children’s data being shared with unauthorized third parties.
• The Facebook Messenger Kids app has certain features like the actual Facebook, which lets users know if the kid is online or for how long he/she has been online. It also lets people know if the child has seen the message and when. All this puts unnecessary pressure on the kids.
• Once the kids get on the Facebook messenger, there are chances that the addicted to it and spend a lot of time online. Moreover, the platform lets children interact online, which can impact the need for face-to-face interactions and result in the delay in building healthy developmental skills, comprising the capability to read human emotion, delay indulgence, and connect with the physical world.
• If the parents are not well acquainted with the Facebook messaging apps things can go out of control and the kid can get involved in gossip, exclusion, bullying, etc. There are chances that without the knowledge of the parents the kids involve in a group chat.