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My kids go to a school where they use an iPad from age 7 up. Messenger for Kids is a well thought out app that lets parents have a lot of control over who thei

My kids go to a school where they use an iPad from age 7 up. Messenger for Kids is a well thought out app that lets parents have a lot of control over who their kids talk to. It also allows you to monitor their conversations way that respects the kids' privacy. Contrast this with iMessage, where literally anyone can randomly message a child using their Apple ID, and there are zero controls available to parents for monitoring or approving contacts. Look beyond messaging, and the Apple store targets kids with crappy apps filled to the brim with creepy ads. YouTube recommends creepy, addictive, unmoderated, content. Facebook, and maybe Microsoft, are literally the only companies making products that are actually designed for kids.

nafizh 5y ago
Genuine question. Why are we assuming kids need to use messenger type apps? Shouldn't they be encouraged to be away from screens as much as possible?
weeznerps 5y ago
HN is so crazy sometimes. Literally the only two comments mentioning the actual product in question are positive and discuss the features and why they are useful for kids. Everyone else just uses the headline as an opportunity to sound off on why FB engineers should be taken behind the chemical sheds and beaten with electrical cords.
- TheRealNGenius 5y ago
  I agree with this sentiment. HN lately has often seemed a reactionary cesspool where anything and everything is scrutinized based on the headline alone. The vast majority of highly upvoted comments are always negative critiques in this regard, with few comments coming from people who may have actually clicked the link. This holds true of Show HN's, Launch HN's, or anything else about anything.
- crossroadsguy 5y ago
  HN was also this. I think you, and a lot of people, probably hold HN in some weird kind of high regard. HN is just another anonymous forum frequented mostly by techies. Also being a constant contrarian is a special flavour here.
  - weeznerps 5y ago
    Yeah this is true. Probably the level of discourse was never really that good, especially for non-technical threads. I suppose it’s just become more apparent to me.
    - LordDragonfang 5y ago
      It's still better here than most other pseudonymous public forums, with the exception of carefully curated feeds (and such curation has a fairly high opportunity cost and difficulty)
- gatlin 5y ago
  Some of us aren't as enthusiastic about the idea of giving these amoral companies access to our children, regardless of how polished the product is or how many times I reread the article. I hope I am qualified to dislike this service.
- drnonsense42 5y ago
  I think your take is the crazy one. I’m not sure if you remember how this whole thing works with Zuckerberg, but it sounds like they’re in the “let’s gather a lot of 6 year old users” stage. The “let’s make billions of dollars off them now that they’re all on here” stage comes later. Most of the people on here (not you) aren’t falling for the same crap.
  - f6v 5y ago
    Haven’t corporations always targeted children? Toys, movies, food, etc.
    - raxxorrax 5y ago
      Many skills they develop with digital products will be bound to a very small amount of companies. That certainly can be a problem. This is of course to set up a pipeline for new Facebook users. Doesn't have to be bad, but it is what it is and there shouldn't be naive illusions about it.
    - WickyNilliams 5y ago
      Toy companies aren't systematically eroding privacy at every opportunity. A child is not able to understand the implications of using FB. Hell, outside of technical circles, I doubt most adults are able to truly understand the scope of what FB does!
    - drnonsense42 5y ago
      Do you really think toys or food or comparable to Facebook? You go into a store, you see the product your child wants, and 99.9% of the time you know exactly what it does. You cannot walk away from a child eating a happy meal for 5 minutes and come back and see them watching a porn video hidden in the hamburger.
- waste_monk 5y ago
  Maybe we could have kid-safe apps that don't also funnel them into being products for a privacy-invading advertising behemoth.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tekknik 5y ago
Why are you so concerned with who your kids are talking to? You have to teach them trust else they’ll continue on passing on this mistrust you clearly take as normal. How did the kids exist prior to Facebook messenger?
- flyingchipmann 5y ago
  Don't know if you have any children. I will quote a line from chef in South Park: there's a time and a place for everything. It's ok to have a line drawn somewhere and have a hybrid approach, relax the rules gradually. And I'd rather like to be so when I was a kid.
  - tekknik 5y ago
    So then how do you shelter them from the world? It has no parental controls. Is the hope this time doesn’t come until their of proper age? Life has its ways
    - flyingchipmann 5y ago
      Do it gradually just like how you learn materials in schools? All I am saying is that it's not black and white. Make different choices at different age groups.
- LordDragonfang 5y ago
  Young teenagers should be learning how to moderate who to trust and who not to trust. Seven year olds should not have that responsibility.
  - tekknik 5y ago
    You as well, how do you protect them from the real world threats? Interestingly I’m married to the product of this sheltering. When anything bad happens at all, she panics. Like panic attack panics. Things happen when they happen, and you’re attempting to control that instead of teaching. There will never be a proper age to ween them into the real world.
bradgessler 5y ago
You can control iMessage via Screen Time for kids via an allow list. My kids iPad only allows FaceTime and messages from grandparents, aunts, and uncles. YTKids is full of trash and ads with no way to moderate. I’m thinking about starting a video library app for $4.99/mo that has curated age appropriate educational video content for kids. How many HN parents would be interested in something like that?
- safetech4 5y ago
  I am currently building a social scrapbook for youth organizations and tribal communities. Memory preservation meets social without the datamining. It might very easily work for what you are describing. This thread has been interesting.
good8675309 5y ago
I hate Facebook but you've got a solid point. Youtube still hasn't fixed Elsa-gate. And Apple is hostile to any serious parental control apps that would fix their issues.
crackercrews 5y ago
> the Apple store targets kids with crappy apps filled to the brim with creepy ads. On several occasions I've searched for apps by name, and not only are they not in the top few results, the App Store shows me borderline adult content within just a few screens of the top. I have no idea why it is so hard to find apps searching by name, but it is one of the main reasons I don't let my kids use the App Store app.
snarf21 5y ago
All fair points but let's not pretend that this is altruism. They are providing this for a reason and their business is creating outrage to sell ads. iMessage and others could do better but Apple's business is selling expensive phones and apps from an app store.
- jensensbutton 5y ago
  Why do you think Apple pushes ipads for education?
  - tekknik 5y ago
    Because Apple has always been in education. It’s how they hook you on their products so you’ll buy them later when you’re an adult. The same reason Facebook is doing it as well as MS and a whole slew of companies you’ve never heard of. I know of one company that partnered with Sony for educational games to get PlayStations in classrooms for the same reason (from Sony’s perspective)
yumraj 5y ago
> My kids go to a school where they use an iPad from age 7 up. > Messenger ... > .. IMessage .. Not sure what kids using iPad has to do with them having access to Messenger and iMessage? Or, even YouTube app access. Speaking as a parent ... It is a parent's job to make sure the software and the content children are using is appropriate for them and is in their interest. If one is relying on for profit companies, then .... I'd rather not say.
- Cosmin_C 5y ago
  It's just another way of saying "kids grow by themselves and school educates them" instead of actually becoming involved with the process and shielding the child from big tech which feels like a rather big threat to underage humans. I have so many friends who leave their tablet babysit the baby and feeding them so much multimedia content it's making me physically sick. And it's a lot more widespread, kid sees shiny and soundy and quiets down, then won't eat without a tablet shoved to their face.
- AnotherGoodName 5y ago
  Yes that's right. That's why the above parent comment looked for an app that enables parents to make sure the content and software is safe for their kids. It's also why the app store is problematic since it makes it more difficult for adults to choose software and content appropriate for their children. You two have a lot in common.
- underwater 5y ago
  A fair question. The school is using a BYOD model and mandating a latest device. As a result kids have a dedicated iPad that comes home with them every evening. Not only that but their entire peer group had the same device. So friendship groups are naturally moving to span school and online life. As a parent I'm now faced with the situation where I either need to block my kids from 50% of the interactions their friendship groups have and miss out on the media that their friends consume, of find a way that they can do that safely. Which is the crux of my complaint. If kids are using iMessage I can't say it's OK for my child to communicate with an allowed list of contacts, or it is OK at certain times, or ensure they don't take selfies or send photos they shouldn't. As it is we have set screen time each weekend, and do our best to educate them on responsible use of messaging but in my opinion apps should have far more fine grained control, especially when targetted at children.
IshKebab 5y ago
YouTube Kids is pretty solid too.
lhorie 5y ago
> YouTube recommends creepy, addictive, unmoderated, content If we're comparing with Youtube, I can't help but think people aren't looking very hard. My kids' school can recommend dozens of places to get computer activities for kids. None of them are from big tech companies. There's a ton of small players in edtech, many with high quality content (I bring up prodigygame.com here from time to time, but there are others) If you want to look specifically into communication tools for kids, the thing to be aware of is COPPA: it's an extremely restrictive regulation that governs what is allowable in apps/websites targeted at kids (e.g. something as basic as avatars are a no go, because they can expose the kid's appearance to strangers). Considering the horror stories you hear about teens and instagram, it's actually fairly understandable that the regulatory position is that kids have no business exposing themselves to online threats. Doctors also often suggest limiting screen time to no more than an hour a day. Parents letting screens babysit their kids do so against all sorts of expert advice. People also bring up covid quarantines as a justification for more online engagement, but IMHO, this is an abnormal situation in the first place, and even then, there are various ways for kids to socialize, be it via zoom at school or just going to the nearby playground. And FWIW, I didn't have any of this fancy pants online social stuff growing up and I turned out just fine, even without a whole lot of in-person socialization either.
Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
This is the first time I've read something positive about FB that too on a post involving kids, Thanks for sharing. But what do you think is the endgame for Facebook in providing a service for kids which are approved by the parents? None other than improving their prospects of LTV i.e. getting the 6 year old invested in the platform so they could yield conversions when 13(or what ever the age in which they get access to broader content i.e. Ads). So the real question here to a parent is, Do you want your child to get invested in a platform which has consistently proven to be unethical, immoral, indulge in outright illegal activities or has been attributed with degrading democracies around the world? May be Facebook wouldn't sell the data of kids until they're 13 or 18 but If I'm a parent I wouldn't want even my 18 year old to do anything with a platform like Facebook.
- urthor 5y ago
  > So the real question here to a parent is, Do you want your child to get invested in a platform which has consistently proven to be unethical, immoral, indulge in outright illegal activities or has been attributed with degrading democracies around the world? Without commenting on any of the wider topics. Let he who is without a misspent youth on 4chan cast the first stone. Castigating parents for making bad choices around their children's online behavior seems a bit unfair. I'd say it's safe to say the kids are off on their own after a certain age, and making their own choices on the world wide web. The vast majority of parents are not IT professionals and not up for the task of closely filtering access to the entire internet. Not one bit of this can be solved by pushing the responsibility on individual parents.
  - Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
    I agree with your on the broader context of a parent being unable to control what a kid does online (or) on the question on whether a parent should really do that; But the parent(thread parent) specifically states that they allow the Messenger of Kids because that allows greater control over their kid's messaging activities and so my question simply is regarding the trust they place on the platform which provides that.
nikolay 5y ago
You're wrong. This existed for ages in Windows via Family Safety. Unfortunately, after Microsoft milled Windows Messenger, the feature died, and it wasn't added to Skype. I could control my kids contacts in Windows Messenger and in addition to just Facebook Messenger limitations, Family Safety gave me 360-degree control including restrictions for sites, apps, etc.
raxxorrax 5y ago
The net will never be safe for kids, so specialized apps are necessary if children have to use iPads (I think the educational value is questionable anyway). Also be aware that kids will break from the prison their parents set up sooner than they might want.
albrewer 5y ago
I'm just as distrustful as everyone else regarding FB, but the messenger kids app is, so far, the only one I'm ok with letting my kids use regularly. Nothing else has enough parental controls where I can be certain some rando creep isn't messaging my kid.

nafizh 5y ago

Genuine question. Why are we assuming kids need to use messenger type apps? Shouldn't they be encouraged to be away from screens as much as possible?

weeznerps 5y ago

HN is so crazy sometimes. Literally the only two comments mentioning the actual product in question are positive and discuss the features and why they are useful for kids. Everyone else just uses the headline as an opportunity to sound off on why FB engineers should be taken behind the chemical sheds and beaten with electrical cords.

TheRealNGenius 5y ago
I agree with this sentiment. HN lately has often seemed a reactionary cesspool where anything and everything is scrutinized based on the headline alone. The vast majority of highly upvoted comments are always negative critiques in this regard, with few comments coming from people who may have actually clicked the link. This holds true of Show HN's, Launch HN's, or anything else about anything.
crossroadsguy 5y ago
HN was also this. I think you, and a lot of people, probably hold HN in some weird kind of high regard. HN is just another anonymous forum frequented mostly by techies. Also being a constant contrarian is a special flavour here.
- weeznerps 5y ago
  Yeah this is true. Probably the level of discourse was never really that good, especially for non-technical threads. I suppose it’s just become more apparent to me.
  - LordDragonfang 5y ago
    It's still better here than most other pseudonymous public forums, with the exception of carefully curated feeds (and such curation has a fairly high opportunity cost and difficulty)
gatlin 5y ago
Some of us aren't as enthusiastic about the idea of giving these amoral companies access to our children, regardless of how polished the product is or how many times I reread the article. I hope I am qualified to dislike this service.
drnonsense42 5y ago
I think your take is the crazy one. I’m not sure if you remember how this whole thing works with Zuckerberg, but it sounds like they’re in the “let’s gather a lot of 6 year old users” stage. The “let’s make billions of dollars off them now that they’re all on here” stage comes later. Most of the people on here (not you) aren’t falling for the same crap.
- f6v 5y ago
  Haven’t corporations always targeted children? Toys, movies, food, etc.
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    Many skills they develop with digital products will be bound to a very small amount of companies. That certainly can be a problem. This is of course to set up a pipeline for new Facebook users. Doesn't have to be bad, but it is what it is and there shouldn't be naive illusions about it.
  - WickyNilliams 5y ago
    Toy companies aren't systematically eroding privacy at every opportunity. A child is not able to understand the implications of using FB. Hell, outside of technical circles, I doubt most adults are able to truly understand the scope of what FB does!
  - drnonsense42 5y ago
    Do you really think toys or food or comparable to Facebook? You go into a store, you see the product your child wants, and 99.9% of the time you know exactly what it does. You cannot walk away from a child eating a happy meal for 5 minutes and come back and see them watching a porn video hidden in the hamburger.
waste_monk 5y ago
Maybe we could have kid-safe apps that don't also funnel them into being products for a privacy-invading advertising behemoth.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

tekknik 5y ago

Why are you so concerned with who your kids are talking to? You have to teach them trust else they’ll continue on passing on this mistrust you clearly take as normal. How did the kids exist prior to Facebook messenger?

flyingchipmann 5y ago
Don't know if you have any children. I will quote a line from chef in South Park: there's a time and a place for everything. It's ok to have a line drawn somewhere and have a hybrid approach, relax the rules gradually. And I'd rather like to be so when I was a kid.
- tekknik 5y ago
  So then how do you shelter them from the world? It has no parental controls. Is the hope this time doesn’t come until their of proper age? Life has its ways
  - flyingchipmann 5y ago
    Do it gradually just like how you learn materials in schools? All I am saying is that it's not black and white. Make different choices at different age groups.
LordDragonfang 5y ago
Young teenagers should be learning how to moderate who to trust and who not to trust. Seven year olds should not have that responsibility.
- tekknik 5y ago
  You as well, how do you protect them from the real world threats? Interestingly I’m married to the product of this sheltering. When anything bad happens at all, she panics. Like panic attack panics. Things happen when they happen, and you’re attempting to control that instead of teaching. There will never be a proper age to ween them into the real world.

bradgessler 5y ago

You can control iMessage via Screen Time for kids via an allow list. My kids iPad only allows FaceTime and messages from grandparents, aunts, and uncles. YTKids is full of trash and ads with no way to moderate. I’m thinking about starting a video library app for $4.99/mo that has curated age appropriate educational video content for kids. How many HN parents would be interested in something like that?

safetech4 5y ago
I am currently building a social scrapbook for youth organizations and tribal communities. Memory preservation meets social without the datamining. It might very easily work for what you are describing. This thread has been interesting.

good8675309 5y ago

I hate Facebook but you've got a solid point. Youtube still hasn't fixed Elsa-gate. And Apple is hostile to any serious parental control apps that would fix their issues.

crackercrews 5y ago

> the Apple store targets kids with crappy apps filled to the brim with creepy ads. On several occasions I've searched for apps by name, and not only are they not in the top few results, the App Store shows me borderline adult content within just a few screens of the top. I have no idea why it is so hard to find apps searching by name, but it is one of the main reasons I don't let my kids use the App Store app.

snarf21 5y ago

All fair points but let's not pretend that this is altruism. They are providing this for a reason and their business is creating outrage to sell ads. iMessage and others could do better but Apple's business is selling expensive phones and apps from an app store.

jensensbutton 5y ago
Why do you think Apple pushes ipads for education?
- tekknik 5y ago
  Because Apple has always been in education. It’s how they hook you on their products so you’ll buy them later when you’re an adult. The same reason Facebook is doing it as well as MS and a whole slew of companies you’ve never heard of. I know of one company that partnered with Sony for educational games to get PlayStations in classrooms for the same reason (from Sony’s perspective)

yumraj 5y ago

> My kids go to a school where they use an iPad from age 7 up. > Messenger ... > .. IMessage .. Not sure what kids using iPad has to do with them having access to Messenger and iMessage? Or, even YouTube app access. Speaking as a parent ... It is a parent's job to make sure the software and the content children are using is appropriate for them and is in their interest. If one is relying on for profit companies, then .... I'd rather not say.

Cosmin_C 5y ago
It's just another way of saying "kids grow by themselves and school educates them" instead of actually becoming involved with the process and shielding the child from big tech which feels like a rather big threat to underage humans. I have so many friends who leave their tablet babysit the baby and feeding them so much multimedia content it's making me physically sick. And it's a lot more widespread, kid sees shiny and soundy and quiets down, then won't eat without a tablet shoved to their face.
AnotherGoodName 5y ago
Yes that's right. That's why the above parent comment looked for an app that enables parents to make sure the content and software is safe for their kids. It's also why the app store is problematic since it makes it more difficult for adults to choose software and content appropriate for their children. You two have a lot in common.
underwater 5y ago
A fair question. The school is using a BYOD model and mandating a latest device. As a result kids have a dedicated iPad that comes home with them every evening. Not only that but their entire peer group had the same device. So friendship groups are naturally moving to span school and online life. As a parent I'm now faced with the situation where I either need to block my kids from 50% of the interactions their friendship groups have and miss out on the media that their friends consume, of find a way that they can do that safely. Which is the crux of my complaint. If kids are using iMessage I can't say it's OK for my child to communicate with an allowed list of contacts, or it is OK at certain times, or ensure they don't take selfies or send photos they shouldn't. As it is we have set screen time each weekend, and do our best to educate them on responsible use of messaging but in my opinion apps should have far more fine grained control, especially when targetted at children.

IshKebab 5y ago

YouTube Kids is pretty solid too.

lhorie 5y ago

> YouTube recommends creepy, addictive, unmoderated, content If we're comparing with Youtube, I can't help but think people aren't looking very hard. My kids' school can recommend dozens of places to get computer activities for kids. None of them are from big tech companies. There's a ton of small players in edtech, many with high quality content (I bring up prodigygame.com here from time to time, but there are others) If you want to look specifically into communication tools for kids, the thing to be aware of is COPPA: it's an extremely restrictive regulation that governs what is allowable in apps/websites targeted at kids (e.g. something as basic as avatars are a no go, because they can expose the kid's appearance to strangers). Considering the horror stories you hear about teens and instagram, it's actually fairly understandable that the regulatory position is that kids have no business exposing themselves to online threats. Doctors also often suggest limiting screen time to no more than an hour a day. Parents letting screens babysit their kids do so against all sorts of expert advice. People also bring up covid quarantines as a justification for more online engagement, but IMHO, this is an abnormal situation in the first place, and even then, there are various ways for kids to socialize, be it via zoom at school or just going to the nearby playground. And FWIW, I didn't have any of this fancy pants online social stuff growing up and I turned out just fine, even without a whole lot of in-person socialization either.

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago

This is the first time I've read something positive about FB that too on a post involving kids, Thanks for sharing. But what do you think is the endgame for Facebook in providing a service for kids which are approved by the parents? None other than improving their prospects of LTV i.e. getting the 6 year old invested in the platform so they could yield conversions when 13(or what ever the age in which they get access to broader content i.e. Ads). So the real question here to a parent is, Do you want your child to get invested in a platform which has consistently proven to be unethical, immoral, indulge in outright illegal activities or has been attributed with degrading democracies around the world? May be Facebook wouldn't sell the data of kids until they're 13 or 18 but If I'm a parent I wouldn't want even my 18 year old to do anything with a platform like Facebook.

urthor 5y ago
> So the real question here to a parent is, Do you want your child to get invested in a platform which has consistently proven to be unethical, immoral, indulge in outright illegal activities or has been attributed with degrading democracies around the world? Without commenting on any of the wider topics. Let he who is without a misspent youth on 4chan cast the first stone. Castigating parents for making bad choices around their children's online behavior seems a bit unfair. I'd say it's safe to say the kids are off on their own after a certain age, and making their own choices on the world wide web. The vast majority of parents are not IT professionals and not up for the task of closely filtering access to the entire internet. Not one bit of this can be solved by pushing the responsibility on individual parents.
- Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
  I agree with your on the broader context of a parent being unable to control what a kid does online (or) on the question on whether a parent should really do that; But the parent(thread parent) specifically states that they allow the Messenger of Kids because that allows greater control over their kid's messaging activities and so my question simply is regarding the trust they place on the platform which provides that.

nikolay 5y ago

You're wrong. This existed for ages in Windows via Family Safety. Unfortunately, after Microsoft milled Windows Messenger, the feature died, and it wasn't added to Skype. I could control my kids contacts in Windows Messenger and in addition to just Facebook Messenger limitations, Family Safety gave me 360-degree control including restrictions for sites, apps, etc.

raxxorrax 5y ago

The net will never be safe for kids, so specialized apps are necessary if children have to use iPads (I think the educational value is questionable anyway). Also be aware that kids will break from the prison their parents set up sooner than they might want.

albrewer 5y ago

I'm just as distrustful as everyone else regarding FB, but the messenger kids app is, so far, the only one I'm ok with letting my kids use regularly. Nothing else has enough parental controls where I can be certain some rando creep isn't messaging my kid.