New Facebook app for children

But parents are questioning the notion of ‘how young is too young’ for children to use mobile apps, write Mike Isaac and Natasha Singer

FEW big technology companies have dared to create online products for boys and girls ages 13 and under. But last week, Facebook introduced an app called Messenger Kids targeted at that age group and asked parents to give their approval so children can message, add filters and doodle on photos they send to one another. It is hoped the app can introduce a new generation of users to the Silicon Valley giant’s ever-expanding social media universe.

In doing so, Facebook immediately reignited a furious debate about how young is too young for children to use mobile apps and how parents should deal with the steady creeping of technology into family life, especially as some fight to reduce the amount of time their children spend in front of screens. On one side are parents like Matt Quirion of Washington, who said Facebook’s snaking its way into his children’s lives at an early age would most likely do more harm than good.

“I’m an avid social media user, but I don’t feel my kids need more social interaction,” said Quirion, 39, whose three children are between ages 3 and 9. “They need their personal time to process all the social interaction and learn to grow into mature people.”

DIFFERING VIEWS

Just as vocal are parents like Parker Thompson of Alameda, California, who said children’s adoption of technology 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 technology,” said Thompson, 38, a father of three children between 6 months and 8 years. “Tech is going to be something kids adopt. The question is how this will happen.”

Facebook’s official entry into the children’s 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 state that they are not for use by children under 13. Preteens are also avid senders of text messages.

But only a handful of messaging and social apps — like Kudos, a photo-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 infor- mation from a child under 13 — like photos, vid- eos, voice recordings, location, contact informa- tion and names. DISCLOSURE

Until this year, even big tech companies had been loath to set up children’s sites with a parental consent system lest they violate the law. In 2011, for example, an operator of virtual worlds that had been acquired by the Walt Disney Company agreed to pay US$3 million (RM12.2 million) to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it illegally collected and disclosed personal information from children under 13 without parents’ consent.

Facebook said the point of Messenger Kids was to provide a more controlled environment for the types of activity that were already occurring across smartphones and tablets among family members.

The company said it had spent months talking to parenting groups, child behavioral experts and safety organisations to aid in developing the app, as well as thousands of hours interviewing families on the ways that members communicate with one 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. “It’s not really a device that helps you connect with others close to them.”

ON MESSENGER KIDS

Messenger Kids is built so that children do not sign up for new Facebook accounts themselves; Facebook’s 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 child. After adults enter their Facebook account information into the app, they are asked to create the child’s profile and which friends or relatives he or she will be allowed to connect with on Messenger. Every additional friend request requires approval by the parent.

The app is fairly limited in scope, allowing for text and video chat, as well as sending photos. As with Instagram, Facebook or Snapchat, children can add filters or playful drawings to the photos they send.

Loren Cheng, product director for Messenger Kids, said Facebook would not use for marketing purposes the details it collected from children. He also said the company would not automatically convert children’s accounts to adult accounts when they turned 13.

The app, which will be in a preview release on Apple’s iOS devices before rolling out to a wider audience in the coming months, is Facebook’s latest effort to increase the number of people who rely on its service to connect with one another regularly. More than two billion people use Facebook every month, while its other apps, like Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram, also have billions of users.

The Facebook’s Messenger Kids app.