Child Experts: Just Say 'No' To Facebook's Kids App (apnews.com)

A group letter sent Tuesday to CEO Mark Zuckerberg argues that younger children -- the app is intended for those under 13 -- aren't ready to have social media accounts, navigate the complexities of online relationships or protect their own privacy. From a report: Facebook launched the free Messenger Kids app in December, pitching it as a way for children to chat with family members and parent-approved friends. It doesn't give kids separate Facebook or Messenger accounts. Rather, the app works as an extension of a parent's account, and parents get controls such as the ability to decide who their kids can chat with. The social media giant has said it fills "a need for a messaging app that lets kids connect with people they love but also has the level of control parents want."

But a group of 100 experts, advocates and parenting organizations is contesting those claims. Led by the Boston-based Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, the group includes psychiatrists, pediatricians, educators and the children's music singer Raffi Cavoukian. "Messenger Kids is not responding to a need -- it is creating one," the letter states. "It appeals primarily to children who otherwise would not have their own social media accounts."

Comments

Re:Child "Experts"

[Voyager529]

Consider the difference in timing, both technically and societally. IRC gave you your first foray into tech support. You were amongst the sort of people who used technology in the late 80's and early 90's, back when distrust on the internet was the default. It was a great time to use the internet. Both IRC and DALnet were not dependent on a multibillion dollar company to access, and while those rooms may have been moderated, they were not curated. You had an e-mail account...where the spam filter was likely between your ears.

You saw the worst of the worst and identified it as such because you knew there wasn't a filter and it was your responsibility to act accordingly. Facebook Kids gives the parents the assumption that Facebook is doing some amount of curating, which means that everyone up the child's chain of trust says "it must be okay".

When you were an adolescent, there were no watchmen. Now, there are watchmen, and someone needs to watch the watchmen. And that is the difference.

Re:who controls?

[Opportunist]

Facebook offers little that the next gen wants. Facebook didn't manage to make the leap onto the cellphone smoothly, which is essentially the tool younger (under 20) people use to stay in touch with each other. The thing closest to a computer they use, aside of gaming consoles, is maybe a touchpad.

Facebook isn't quite a mobile app. Yes, yes, it has a mobile app, but face it, it sucks. It's too bulky, too unwieldy and too overloaded, and the next gen users don't want that, it seems. They want apps that do what they want to do NOW, do it well and everything aside of that, there's another app for that that does that well. Simple interfaces without having to dig through 6 menus to get to what you want to do NOW is what they want. If that means running 10 apps that you switch between with the flick of a finger, so be it.

Re:Child "Experts"

[hey!]

Well, I don't know what it takes to be a "child expert", but presumably it takes more than having had a childhood. One thing that having a business taught me about customers, and by extension people in general, is that you can't take it for granted that your own experiences and preferences are universal, or even typical.

And in any case I don't think the real problem with children -- particularly teenagers -- is them seeing bad things, although that's a kind of weird cultural obsession we have.