by Michelle Stein posted in Parenting

My tech-crazed grade schooler loves taking silly photos with filters, video chatting with his grandparents and composing text messages (peppered generously with poop emojis, of course) on my smartphone. There's just a few issues I have with these things:
1) Not everyone he wants to video-chat with has an Apple device for FaceTime.
2) I don't want him sending messages in my name all of the time/hogging up my phone.
3) He's not old enough to have his own Facebook/Snapchat/Instagram account to access cool filters. (And I wouldn't want him to have his own social media accounts at this age, anyway.)
Enter: Facebook Messenger Kids.
That's right. Facebook has made it fun, easy and most importantly, safe for kids to keep in touch with family and friends, near or far. On Monday the company unveiled a free video calling and messaging app called Messenger Kids. And it has some pretty smart features. 1) Kids can only connect with contacts that parent approve of first; so parents fully control the contact list.
2) Your kiddo can participate in one-on-one or group calls -- with kid-appropriate interactive masks, reactions and sound effects.

3) It allows kids to message and video call using Wi-Fi, so they don't need a phone number.
4) Parents, and approved adults (like grandparents) can video chat and message with kids through their existing Messenger app. No additional app download is needed for parents to control settings, either; that's don...