Amazon has added a new browser setting to Amazon Kids that lets parents give their children wider access to the internet.
Amazon Kids — previously known as Amazon FreeTime — is a free suite of parental controls that lets parents set age filters, educational goals, and screen time limits by content type on Amazon Fire tablets.
With the new setting, kids can explore on their own, but their internet access is still filtered with built-in controls that block mature content and social media sites. The feature is optional and only works in the Amazon Kids browser; parents can still choose to limit browsing only to permitted sites, view browsing history, and turn off the browser altogether.
With the new browser setting in the Amazon Parent Dashboard, Amazon is giving kids access to potentially the entire internet. Amazon envisions kids using the feature to do things like self-directed research for a school project. The company is betting the setting will be particularly useful while many children are still learning virtually and need access to more of the web for school content.
Amazon says kids’ browsing history is automatically deleted after 90 days.
Amazon Kids also includes an optional browser for kids that features tens of thousands of kid-safe websites and videos. To get more kid-friendly books, movies, TV shows, educational apps, Audible books, and games, parents can subscribe to Amazon Kids+, previously known as FreeTime Unlimited. It costs $2.99 per month for Prime members and $4.99 per month for everyone else. The service works on compatible Fire tablet, Echo, Fire TV, Android, iOS, and Kindle devices.
Other tech companies including Microsoft and Netflix offer similar kid-focused features and services.
