But a combination formed by educators, health professionals, parents and interested in the subject asks that the tool should be simply discontinued. As the social network giant Facebook’s terms of use require the user to be at least 13 years old. Messenger Kids comes on the scene right there. The app is geared towards children aged 6 to 12 years. Because they can not create accounts on the social network, parents are the ones who create profiles for the children in there and add contacts. There are no ads, much less forwarding of data for advertising purposes, the social network giant Facebook guarantees. In addition, Messenger Kids respects COPPA, the American child protection law on the Internet. What’s the problem, then? For members of the Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood, the application can cause disruption to children by increasing the time they spend on digital media. The group sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg (PDF) requesting the end of the application. The paper cites a study that associates the increased cases of depression among youngsters with the longest use of mobile devices.
For the group, overexposure is dangerous because children are not fully able to understand the complexity of online relationships, nor do they have sufficient understanding of privacy and measures to preserve it. Apparently, the arguments did not convince. Moreover, a social network giant Facebook’s representative said that “the service even comes to receiving reports of happy parents with Messenger Kids because the application would be helping their children in contact with them and family members who live far away”. No comment was made regarding the content of the letter itself, but this misleading attitude is a clear sign of the obvious: the social network giant Facebook would not give up the application so easily. So, what do you think about this? Simply share all your views and thoughts in the comment section below.
