Facebook urged to shut down chat platform made for kids
The social network was urged on Tuesday by a coalition of child health advocates to shut down Messenger Kids — a chat platform targeted at children as young as 6.
In an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) argued that “younger children simply aren’t ready to have their own social media accounts.”
Messenger Kids, which rolled out in December, was not created to provide young children with a safe social media platform to use, but rather to reel in users at an even younger age, the CCFC said in the letter.
The move by the group, made up of more than 100 development experts, comes after a recent study found 50 percent of adolescents report feeling addicted to their phones.
“Messenger Kids will exacerbate this problem,” the CCFC says. “The anticipation of friends’ responses will be a powerful incentive for children to check — and stay on — a phone or tablet.”
Facebook, which has a loosely enforced minimum- age-of-13 requirement, has long grappled with the issue of underage people using its social network.
Messenger Kids is a training wheels version of Facebook’s full-fledged product that allows children to exchange messages and photos with friends and family as well as video chats.
Facebook said there will be plenty of safeguards built into Messenger Kids. Parents will have to sign their children up for the service and have to approve any person their kids communicate with.
The letter is the latest push against Messenger Kids. When the project was announced in early December, negative feedback was swift.
“Why should parents simply trust that Facebook is acting in the best interest of kids?” said James Steyer of the kids-focused nonprofit group Common Sense Media.
“We encourage Facebook to clarify their policies from the start so that it is perfectly clear what parents are signing up for.”
No comments