Facebook parent company Meta has launched a new campaign on its Messenger Kids platform aimed at teaching children about the safe use of the internet. According to a blog post by Erik Michael Weitzman, director of product management for Messenger Kids, the new gamification will “help kids learn how to use the internet safely and practice making healthy decisions online.”
Pledge Planets is based on what Weizman calls the Messenger Kids Pledge: kindness, respect, safety and joy. The first episode, titled “Be Kind,” includes two games that will help children “learn and practice how to behave in kind”.
Rough Reviews: Players must help store owners read reviews and match each review with the correct online response. This game teaches children to identify benevolent and unkind behavior and to familiarize themselves with tools such as blocking and reporting.
Order Up: Players create a sandwich order by choosing the emoji that best reflects the customer’s mood. This game teaches kids how to read people’s emotions online. The company has developed campaigns such as Pledge Planets with guidance from experts in cybersecurity and child development, Weitzman wrote. Meta/Facebook first launched Messenger Kids in 2017, a Messenger app designed for children with a link to a parent’s Facebook account.
But last year, after widespread criticism, Facebook shelved plans for a kid’s version of its Instagram photo-sharing platform. The Verge believes that aside from the question of whether Facebook/Meta/Messenger is qualified to provide health decision-making and internet safety guidance, what these two games are really doing is teaching kids how to use Messenger.
While “Sesame Street” was praised for its positive impact on children’s learning skills and its diverse, multicultural cast of characters, many also noted that the show did a good job teaching kids how to watch TV, learning through play to keep them engaged and entertained.
However, Meta’s platform has a somewhat troubled history when it comes to children’s online safety; internal documents from whistleblower Frances Haugen suggest that Facebook/Meta knew Instagram was “toxic” for teenage users and that its algorithms could lead kids to To content that may encourage self-harm.
And a study last May by online child safety advocacy group Thorn found that children are being abused and harassed at far higher rates on social platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and Messenger, than previously thought.
And, recently revealed internal documents show that Meta is losing young users, with one forecast finding that Meta will lose 45% of its teen users within the next two years. Most kids don’t see Facebook as a platform for them, and while Instagram remains popular among teenage users, it has also lost a lot of users in recent years to its app’s bullies and competitors like TikTok.