New Echo Dot Edition focuses on kids
Amazon wants its Echo to, well, echo even louder with your kids.
On Wednesday, Amazon unveiled the Echo Dot Kids Edition, a $79 version of its Echo home speaker and Alexa voice assistant designed with parental controls and content made for kids. Oh, and it also comes in blue, green or red cases. The new Echo became available for pre-orders Wednesday, and will begin shipping on May 9. The new Kids Edition Echo comes with a one-year subscription to what Amazon calls FreeTime Unlimited, a service that gives parents several controls such as the ability to set time limits on the device, go online to view their children’s activity and block the playing of inappropriate songs.
FreeTime Unlimited also comes with access to a set of books, apps, shows, and other content that has been curated and deemed ageappropriate for kids. The service will work on the Echo and other Amazon and Android devices.
Amazon Prime members who already have an Echo device can set it up with FreeTime Unlimited for $2.99 a month. There is also a free version of the service called FreeTime Alexa that doesn’t cost a thing, but doesn’t come with the bundled package of books, apps and related material.
The matter of children’s privacy when it comes to using social media or tech products has been a popular issue of late. When Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg appeared before Congress earlier this month, he took steps to assure lawmakers that the data from users of its Messenger Kids app “will not be shared with third parties.”
Tim Bajarin, director of tech research firm Creative Strategies, said that such privacy concerns may cross the minds of parents who let their children use Amazon’s Echo Kids Dot, but “Amazon has shown it can protect its customers’ data and has not taken the same type of negative hit on this issue as Facebook has. The new Kids Dot has a lot of parental controls, but in the end, parents have to see the real value it could provide for their children and be willing to trust Amazon to protect their privacy.”