Zuck creates a parent’s nightmare
STUDY after study proves what we know, intuitively, to be true: that screens and kids don’t really mix. Take the 2014 study from UCLA that found that kids who went five days without exposure to technology were much better at reading human emotions than kids who had access to televisions, computers and phones. Too much screen time can permanently dull kids’ abilities to read nonverbal cues, accept delayed gratification and actively engage with the world around them.
Tech giants like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg knew it; according to a 2014 New York Times article, Jobs didn’t let his kids use the iPad and strictly limited how much technology his kids used at home.
This summer, after the birth of his second child, August, Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, posted an open letter to the newborn, urging her to make time to go outside and play. “You will be busy when you’re older, so I hope you take time to smell all the flowers and put all the leaves you want in your bucket now,” he wrote with his wife, Priscilla Chan.
It’s solid advice — but apparently after posting this heartfelt message, Zuckerberg went back to work determined to get other people’s kids to engage more with screens (specifically, Facebook) and not so much with flowers, leaves and buckets.
What’s best for his kids is not sound business for the social-networking site.
On Monday, Facebook announced the creation of Messenger Kids, a stand-alone app that allows kids age 13 and younger to use the service under the supervision of a parent. As it stands, only those 13 and over are allowed to create Facebook accounts. Messenger Kids is connected to the parents’ account; parents set up the child’s profile and have to approve each new friend. The app is limited to sending texts, videos and photos. The company claims the app is in compliance with the Children’s Online Privacy and Protection Act.
It’s a “safe space” for kids without advertising. Except, of course, that the whole service is an advertisement for Facebook. They’re hooking them young.
Messenger Kids is little help in an age where it’s not unusual for parents to begin fending off whining requests for phones and iPads at age 7, where the peer pressure of “Everyone else has a phone but meeeee” becomes real and constant. Parents would do well to ignore the whines and cries for as long as they can and follow the Jobs and Zuckerberg schools of parenting — less screens, more outside time.
While David Marcus, vice president of messaging products at Facebook, claims Facebook’s job is to solve “real problems in people’s lives,” that’s a laugh — he and his team at Facebook have just created another real problem for parents.