Facebook launches parent-controlled Messenger app for kids

Facebook is coming for your kids.

This photo provided by Facebook demonstrates parental controls on Facebook's new Messenger app for kids.  (Courtesy of Facebook via AP)

The social media giant is launching a messaging app for children to chat with their parents and with friends approved by their parents.

The free app is aimed at kids under 13, who can't yet have their own accounts under Facebook's rules, though they often do.

Messenger Kids comes with a slew of controls for parents. The service won't let children add their own friends or delete messages — only parents can do that. Kids don't get a separate Facebook or Messenger account; rather, it's an extension of a parent's account. Messenger Kids came out Monday in the U.S. as an app for Apple devices — the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Versions for Android and Amazon's tablets are coming later.

A KIDS-FOCUSED EXPERIENCE

While children do use messaging and social media apps designed for teenagers and adults, those services aren't built for them, said Kristelle Lavallee, a children's psychology expert who advised Facebook on designing the service.

This photo provided by Facebook demonstrates Facebook's new Messenger app for kids on an iPad. Facebook is launching the messaging app for children to chat with their parents and with friends approved by their parents. The free app is aimed at kids under 13, who can't yet have their own accounts under Facebook's rules, though they often do. (Courtesy of Facebook via AP)

"The risk of exposure to things they were not developmentally prepared for is huge," she said.

Messenger Kids, meanwhile, "is a result of seeing what kids like," which is images, emoji and the like. Face filters and playful masks can be distracting for adults, Lavallee said, but for kids who are just learning how to form relationships and stay in touch with parents digitally, they are ways to express themselves.

Lavallee, who is content strategist at the Center on Media and Child Health at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard University, called Messenger Kids a "useful tool" that "makes parents the gatekeepers." But she said that while Facebook made the app "with the best of intentions," it's not yet known how people will actually use it.

As with other tools Facebook has released in the past, intentions and real-world use do not always match up. Facebook's live video streaming feature, for example, has been used for plenty of innocuous and useful things, but also to stream crimes and suicides.

HOOKED ON FACEBOOK

Is Messenger Kids simply a way for Facebook to rope in the young ones?

Stephen Balkam, CEO of the nonprofit Family Online Safety Institute, said "that train has left the station."

Federal law prohibits internet companies from collecting personal information on kids under 13 without their parents' permission and imposes restrictions on advertising to them. This is why Facebook and many other social media companies prohibit younger kids from joining. Even so, Balkam said millions of kids under 13 are already on Facebook, with or without their parents' approval.

He said Facebook is trying to deal with the situation pragmatically by steering young Facebook users to a service designed for them.

MARKETING MATTERS

Facebook said Messenger Kids won't show ads or collect data for marketing, though it will collect some data it says are necessary to run the service. Facebook also said it won't automatically move users to the regular Messenger or Facebook when they get old enough, though the company might give them the option to move contacts to Messenger down the line.

James Steyer, CEO of the kids-focused non-profit group Common Sense, said that while he liked the idea of a messaging app that requires parental sign-ups, many questions remain. Among them: Will it always remain ad-free, and will parents get ads based on the service?

"Why should parents simply trust that Facebook is acting in the best interest of kids?" Steyer said in a statement. "We encourage Facebook to clarify their policies from the start so that it is perfectly clear what parents are signing up for."

LONDON (AP) — The European Union said Tuesday that it's investigating Facebook and Instagram for suspected violations of the bloc's digital rulebook, including not doing enough to protect users from foreign disinformation ahead of EU-wide elections.

The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, said it's opening formal proceedings into whether parent company Meta Platforms breached the Digital Services Act, a sweeping set of regulations designed to protect internet users and clean up social media platforms under threat of hefty fines worth up to 6% of annual revenue.

European authorities are scrambling to safeguard elections amid official warnings that Russia is seeking to meddle with the vote in June, when citizens of the bloc's 27 nations pick lawmakers for the European Parliament.

The investigation includes an urgent request for Meta to provide information about its move to discontinue a key tool for monitoring elections.

“We have a well established process for identifying and mitigating risks on our platforms," Meta said in a statement. "We look forward to continuing our cooperation with the European Commission and providing them with further details of this work.”

Meta is being scrutinized “for suspected breach of DSA obligations to protect integrity of elections," European Commissioner Thierry Breton said in a social media post.

The Commission said it's looking into whether Meta is doing enough to curb the spread of “deceptive advertisements, disinformation campaigns and coordinated inauthentic behaviour” that could pose a risk to “electoral processes” and consumer protection.

Officials said they suspected Meta's content moderation system for advertisements was inadequate, allowing ads made with generative AI including deepfakes to exploited by malicious foreign actors seeking to meddle in elections even as the company makes money from them.

Experts worry that new generative AI systems could be used to disrupt the many elections being held around the world this year, by supercharging the ability to spread disinformation at scale.

The EU also suspects that Facebook and Instagram might be reducing the visibility in recommendation feeds of political content from accounts that pump out a lot of it - a practice known as shadowbanning - and not being transparent about it with users, which would violate the DSA.

A third concern is Meta's decision to phase out Crowdtangle, a tool used by researchers, journalists and civil society groups for real-time monitoring of trending social media posts including during elections. The Commission is giving Meta five days to respond with information on how it will remedy the lack of such a tool.

The Commission is also investigating whether Meta's mechanism for users to flag illegal content is good enough under the DSA, because it suspects it's neither easy to access nor user-friendly.

Brussels has been cracking down on tech companies since the DSA took effect last year, opening investigations into social media sites TikTok and X and ecommerce platform AliExpress. TikTok bowed to EU pressure last week and halted a reward feature on its new app after the Commission started demanding answers about it.

FILE - The Facebook logo is seen on a cell phone in Boston, USA, Oct. 14, 2022. The European Union said Tuesday April 30, 2024 that it's scrutinizing Facebook and Instagram over a range of suspected violations of the bloc's digital rulebook, including not doing enough to protect users from foreign disinformation ahead of EU-wide elections. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File)