Amazon Bolsters Parental Controls with FreeTime for Kindle Fire HD

Attention parents: Amazon is hoping that a new update to the Kindle fire HD makes you feel more comfortable about leaving your children alone with the tablet. In the latest over-the-air update to hit ...
Amazon Bolsters Parental Controls with FreeTime for Kindle Fire HD
Written by Josh Wolford
  • Attention parents: Amazon is hoping that a new update to the Kindle fire HD makes you feel more comfortable about leaving your children alone with the tablet.

    In the latest over-the-air update to hit the device, Amazon is introducing Kindle FreeTime, which “provides a dedicated space for kids to interact with books, movies, TV shows, apps, and games.”

    FreeTime allows parents to tailor their kids’ experience by hand-selecting what kinds of content they can access. Once a child is inside FreeTime, they can’t exit without a password. FreeTime also supports time limits, which allow parents to regulate the amount of content the kids can take in on any given day.

    Also in FreeTime: Multiple profile functionality. This way, parents can set up separate account for each of their children – because you obviously don’t want the same restrictions for a 5-year-old and a 12-year-old.

    Amazon tells developers that they don’t need to do anything special to be included in the kid-friendly apps:

    “As a developer, you don’t need to do anything to participate in Kindle FreeTime other than build great products. Simply by including them in the Amazon Mobile App Distribution Program, your apps will be available for parents to include in their children’s personalized experience,” says Amazon.

    Back in May, Amazon updated the Kindle Fire to give it some rudimentary parental controls. Parents could disable certain types of content, or block the Silk browser altogether. It also allowed for them to password-protect their purchases. FreeTime looks like it gives parents more specific control over the content by taking an opt-in approach.

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