To support parenting organizations and child safety experts, Facebook has introduced additional tools and features to the Facebook Messenger Kids App. With these features, it plans to offer extended parental controls and intends to safeguard your kid’s messaging experience.
As per a recent release, the new updates will allow children to have fun on messenger by connecting with their friends, and simultaneously empowers parents to monitor their children’s chats. The new Facebook monitoring feature makes Facebook a social media app that works for the family.
What Is Facebook Messenger Kids App?
Facebook Messenger Kids is a kid exclusive messaging app. With this app, children can send texts or video chat with their friends and family members. Messenger Kids App was initially launched in December 2007(United States) for iOS devices, followed by the release of its Android version a few months later.
Facebook co-developed this app with parents, kids, and experts. This messaging app can be controlled by the parent’s Facebook account. The newly launched features will act like Facebook parental control and it will enable kids to have a sheltered messaging environment.
Now let’s get a better understanding of the newly added Facebook chat monitor feature. It is available for use from the Parent Dashboard of the app.
Chat History And Contacts
- It allows parents to see with whom their kids chat frequently. It displays the chat data of the last 30 days along with the frequency of chat.
- Here, parents get to know who their kids are video chatting or sending text messages to.
History Of Photo /Videos
- This feature keeps the log of images and videos your kid has sent or received recently.
- If you find any image or video inappropriate, you can remove it from your kid’s message thread and you can also report such posts.
Log Of Reported And Blocked Contacts
- You can see the list of contacts that your child has blocked.
- You will get notifications from the Messenger Kids app whenever your child blocks, unblocks or reports someone.
Remote Device Logout
- With this tool, Facebook monitoring takes full charge of kids’ safety. Parents can see all the devices through which kid is logged in to the Messenger Kids app.
- From the Parent Dashboard, parents can log out of the app on any device.
Download Your kid’s Information
- Get the list of your child’s contacts with this tool. It also enables parents to get messages, images, and videos children share or receive.
Note: When a parent requests this information, the child gets notified by the Messenger Kids app.
Apart from these changes, Facebook has also updated its Privacy Policy. The new privacy policy is about additional information on data collection. This also deals with the usage of the data, sharing, data retention, and deletion process.
Moreover, Facebook – the social giant, in a press release has clarified and claimed that it will not use kids’ data from Messenger Kids App for advertising or for any other purposes. There will be no advertisements and no in-app purchases with this kid-friendly app.
Younger children (Below the age of 13) will get a controlled environment with these new Facebook chat monitor tools. These features are simple to use and effective to monitor your child’s messaging experience.