Facebook has released its new Messenger Kids app to the Amazon App Shop, making the service bachelor to owners of its Fire line of tablets. So I grabbed one of the Burn down seven tablets we have for our kids and installed the app to run across what it was all about, and only how well it works on Amazon'southward lowest-end hardware.Because hither'due south the thing: These tablets are slow. Really, really irksome. Oftentimes on sale for $thirty, ane would expect cypher else. They piece of work as intended for the most part, and my kids are delighted we have them. Simply apps can take ages to launch, animations are hasty, and scrolling through anything is a great manner to drive yourself insane.But I can report that the Messenger Kids app runs acceptably on a Fire 7.Facebook expects a parent to be a footling suspicious of this app, so right from the beginning it lets you know that the app will non create a Facebook account for your kid. The service runs nether the auspices of the parent's account, but the child never has access to do anything with that account.

Setup is therefore very straightforward. The parent logs into their own business relationship and pops in the kid's proper name. From there on, the child can have their photo (or accept it taken past the parent), choose a theme color, and swoop in.

Right off the bat, the authorizing parent is in the child'southward contact list, and that's all. Others tin be added from this first screen nether "Ask to add together a contact," and the kid can't add someone without the parent approving of information technology outset, give thanks goodness.

From there it works like many other video-chat services, with text conversations, audio calls, and video chats complete with child-friendly, Snapchat-way filters.

And here's where the Fire seven shows its weaknesses. The filters are beautiful, but take long plenty to load that I was always wondering if something was wrong. Once activated, the filters seem to work pretty fluidly, without skipping or stutters. Merely it helps to take incredibly long arms (which I virtually certainly do non) considering Burn 7's front-facing camera forces a relatively tight shot on i's face, and the overlays don't seem to detect your face unless it'south at a distance that's difficult to attain while holding the tablet. I eventually had to only stand the device up on my desk to play with the filters. Here's one where a dove poops on your picnic.

I chosen myself for a examination video chat, and the video quality sent from the Fire was abysmally blocky, though motion was more than or less smooth. As expected, at that place was a time delay between devices, effectually 4 or 5 seconds in my testing, but of grade, this is all dependent on the force of one'due south cyberspace connection, and then I expect mileage will vary widely. 1 has to assume, too, that the experience on something like a Fire HD 10 would be much better.

At present, equally a parent of young kids, I'm glad my children have no interaction with Facebook and its seemingly unquenchable thirst for our attention. I worry nigh the extent to which Facebook equally a service can manipulate emotions and reinforce bad ideas. Facebook itself has even admitted to having the potential to put us in bad moods and even plough people against each other. And my kids are already quite practiced at turning against me, thank y'all very much.

But for now, with everything locked up tightly within a parent'south control and away from newsfeeds, pages, and walls, Messenger Kids seems most equally benign as a FaceTime call. I won't be keeping the app installed on my kids' devices, though. Every bit safe as the app itself seems to be, I'chiliad in no hurry for my kids to become accustomed to Facebook whatever sooner than they take to be, if e'er.

Source: Amazon

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Paul Fidalgo (47 Articles Published)

Paul is an actor, director, musician, and communications professional. He has a main's degree in political management from George Washington University, which isn't getting a lot of use. His work has been published at outlets including CNN.com, Skeptical Inquirer, Dark Mountain, Friendly Atheist, and in a few posts featured past Medium that even Ev Williams said he liked. Paul was once the host of the podcast Point of Inquiry, which was cool. His personal blog is Near-Earth Object. He is a dad. He lives in Maine, which is fine.

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