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."

Meta has cut a trio of deals to power its artificial intelligence data centers, securing enough energy to light up the equivalent of about 5 million homes.

The parent company of Facebook on Friday announced agreements with TerraPower, Oklo and Vistra for nuclear power for its Prometheus AI data center that is being built in New Albany, Ohio. Meta announced Prometheus, which will be a 1-gigawatt cluster spanning across multiple data center buildings, in July. It's anticipated to come online this year.

Financial terms of the deals with TerraPower, Oklo and Vistra were not disclosed.

The Mark Zuckerberg-led Meta said in a statement on Friday that the three deals will support up to 6.6 gigawatts of new and existing clean energy by 2035. A single gigawatt, according to a general industry standard for utilities, can power about 750,000 homes.

“These projects add reliable and firm power to the grid, reinforce America’s nuclear supply chain, and support new and existing jobs to build and operate American power plants,” the company said.

Meta said its agreement with TerraPower will provide funding that supports the development of two new Natrium units capable of generating up to 690 megawatts of firm power with delivery as early as 2032. The deal also provides Meta with rights for energy from up to six other Natrium units capable of producing 2.1 gigawatts and targeted for delivery by 2035.

Meta will also buy more than 2.1 gigawatts of energy from two operating Vistra nuclear power plants in Ohio, in addition to the energy from expansions at the two Ohio plants and a third Vistra nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania.

Vistra said that electricity from the three power plants — Beaver Valley in Pennsylvania and Davis-Besse and Perry in Ohio — will still run through the mid-Atlantic grid for all electricity customers. It also said the agreements with Meta “provide certainty” for it to ask federal regulators for 20-year license renewals for the reactors.

Tech companies have been under pressure in the stressed mid-Atlantic grid — which includes Ohio and Pennsylvania — to build new power sources to supply the entire electricity needs of their new data centers there.

Jesse Jenkins, an assistant professor of engineering at Princeton University who specializes in energy systems, said bringing Prometheus online without a new power source for it will only increase electricity rates across the mid-Atlantic grid.

Ratepayers in the mid-Atlantic are already paying higher electricity bills to support new and proposed data centers.

The deal with Oklo, which counts OpenAI's Sam Altman as one of its largest investors, will help to develop a 1.2 gigawatt power campus in Pike County, Ohio to support Meta’s data centers in the region.

The nuclear power agreements come after Meta announced in June that it reached a 20-year deal with Constellation Energy.

Associated Press writer Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report.

FILE -A Meta logo is shown on a video screen at LlamaCon 2025, an AI developer conference, in Menlo Park, Calif., April 29, 2025. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)