'I have many teenage clients who suffer from anxiety and panic attacks, attachment and abandonment issues due to social media pressures and increasingly this client base is getting younger and younger.įacebook Kids appears to be targeting very young children and we have to look at the impact that may have not only on their immediate world but also the dependent future we are creating. We asked Beverley Hills, Psychotherapist and Lead Partner at The Practice East Molesey, Surrey for her thoughts on Messenger Kids and young people's relationship with social media. However, these safeguards do little to combat many experts and parents main concern - the normalisation of social media use by young children. In an aim to reduce problems around cyberbullying, children can block friends through the app which will then only allow those friends to be re-introduced with parental permission. Unlike with their other apps and websites, Facebook does not harvest data from Messenger Kids, nor does the app show paid-for advertising.
It is disingenuous to use Facebook’s failure to keep underage users off of their platforms as a rationale for targeting younger children with a new product’ It appeals primarily to children who otherwise would not have their own social media accounts. The open letter goes on to say ‘Messenger Kids is not responding to a need - it is creating one. Concerns over the introduction of a social media app specifically targeting younger users focus widely on the increased emphasis on digital over face-to-face interactions, and the unlikelihood of 11 and 12 year olds already breaking Terms of Service to use Facebook to switch to an app created for children as young as six. Led by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC), the letter acknowledged that Messenger Kids would ‘likely be the first social media platform widely used by elementary school children’, highlighting the ‘growing body of research demonstrates that excessive use of digital devices and social media is harmful to children and teens, making it very likely this new app will undermine children’s healthy development’.Īccording to the CCFC, 78 percent of adolescents report checking their phones at least hourly, with 50 percent saying the feel addicted to their phones. Launched in the US in December 2017, Facebook’s latest app, Messenger Kids, aims to ‘make it easier for kids to safely video change and message with family and friends when they can’t be together in person.’ Created based on feedback from ‘thousands of parents’ and ‘parenting experts’, the standalone app is downloaded onto kids’ tablets or smartphones and can be controlled from parent’s Facebook accounts.Īround 100 children’s health and mental health experts including nonprofit organisations, pediatritians, and early childhood development specialists sent an open letter to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, urging him to discontinue Facebook’s first social media app designed for children aged six to 12.
Around 100 children’s health experts from across the US have asked Mark Zuckerberg to shut down recently launched ‘Messenger Kids’ app designed for children aged six to 12.
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