Had a good conversation with a dear friend yesterday. I explained I wouldn’t let my daughter install Facebook Messenger for Kids on her device to communicate with her daughter. The app is insidious. Addicting children to a toxic platform from a morally bankrupt biz.
Comments (9)
@cleverdevil which App you install on your daughter's phone instead?
@niklasjordan great question! I advocated for Apple iMessage, as it is end-to-end encrypted, and comes from a company with strong, consumer-oriented privacy views. I showed her how to create a Family Sharing setup in iCloud and an Apple ID for her child.
@cleverdevil I am extremely careful what apps my daughter is exposed to. No FB ofcourse. YouTube is equally bad. I hear Hangouts being a good option.
@amit YouTube is tricky. We removed it from all devices relatively recently and blocked it too. There is some good content there, but so much questionable content too, and their algorithms are dangerous.
@cleverdevil Absolutely, letting someone browse YT is indeed dangerous. Their recommendation engine sucks.
@cleverdevil I’m always glad to hear parents who don't just lament the dangers of the phones they give their kids, but actually do something about it. Those deepest into tech sometimes are uniquely aware of its dangers.
We just use Messages... but I’m not entirely happy about it being hardware specific. What other options are there?
We have also been using Messages, but Signal would be another option. Main issue w/ Signal is that its text-only. Messages has a lot of fun enhancements that make it good for kids – stickers, memoji, reactions, "send with lasers," etc. We haven't had a need for anything else yet.
Yes on Signal. Using a separate app just to talk to the kids would be a nuisance, though. And things like stickers are important these days... Messages it is!