As if it wasn’t bad enough that adults spend so much time buried in their phones and computers, Facebook decided to launch Messenger for Kids where it provides a way for kids to keep in touch with each other, at least through Facebook’s platform. The good news for parents is that Facebook has recently introduced a new feature that should help manage your kid’s time on the platform.This comes in the form of “Sleep Mode” where parents can basically lock the messaging app for specific times in the day or the week. As you can see in the screenshot above, it lets parents decide the usage of Messenger for Kids from 10am to 10pm from Sunday to Thursday, and Friday and Saturday kids will be able to use it all day.
According to Facebook, “With sleep mode, parents can set a designated off time and each day at the designated time, the app will ‘go to sleep’ and not be accessible to kids during those hours. Sleep mode is controlled from the Parent Control center in the parent’s Facebook account and the “off times” can be changed at any time.”
These changes should already be live so if you have a kid with Messenger for Kids, then perhaps these could be new tools worth checking out.