Messenger Kids, the exchange service Facebook messaging for kids, released today for Android. It's a bold move, as the app has already received rave reviews from parents and child rights organizations.
Nearly 100 health counselors sent a letter (PDF) protested to Mark Zuckerberg last month, urging him to stop releasing the app.
For those unfamiliar, Messenger Kids is aimed at six-year-olds and allows parents to control who can talk to children through the service.
Of course Facebook will do everything to attract new users. But on the other hand his social network requires that you be 13 years of age or older during any new registration.
A Facebook spokesperson told the Gizmodo that one motivation for launching the app was that "many of us on Facebook are parents and we don't seem to realize that our kids are connecting much earlier."
The spokesman for the largest social network noted that, according to an external study by Dubit, 93 percent of children aged six to twelve in the US have access to tablets or smartphones.
The spokesperson also said that for more than a year, the company has heard feedback from "thousands of parents who have expressed the need for safer online experiences adapted to the needs of children".
But as Wired reported, most of the experts tasked with reviewing the app had financial ties to Facebook, creating a clear conflict interests. The social network instead of dealing with the criticism heard from people who did not have finances, chose experts who lean towards it. This calls into question how reliable the reviews the company representative mentioned in the paragraph above are.
It remains to be seen how much Messenger Kids will be adopted by Android users, but app company App Annie ranked it 36th on Apple App Store charts for "Kids Apps" in the US.
At the end of January, it ranked fifth among iOS children's apps in the US.
It may not be as popular as the regular Facebook Messenger app, but it clearly has some uses.
