Do your little ones love Alexa? Ensure children don’t stumble across anything inappropriate with Amazon Kids for Alexa. Here’s what you need to know.
The best smart speakers can be a handy tool for children – from helping them with their homework to letting them chat to family and friends and even listen to their favorite music and audiobooks. The inbuilt voice assistants are great for education and keeping the kids amused, but there’s a worry that kids could stumble on something inappropriate if left to their own devices with Amazon’s voice assistant. You can’t supervise them 24-7 so how can you strike the right balance between keeping them safe and letting them benefit from Alexa’s expertise? This is where Amazon Kids on Alexa comes in. The free-to-use service lets you restrict when Alexa can be accessed, the Alexa skills that can be used and even blocks explicit lyrics when listening to Amazon Music, Apple Music or Spotify. Initially launched in the US in September 2020, Amazon Kids on Alexa has now been made available in the UK as well. As we’ve already mentioned, Amazon Kids on Alexa is a free-to-use parental controls service that when switched on, lets you set time limits on when, and for how long the smart speaker can be used. It also allows pausing access to the device at any point – ideal if you want the kids to concentrate on eating dinner rather than interacting with a voice assistant. It comes built-in to the new Echo Dot Kids smart speaker, which is priced at $59.99 / £59.99 (around AU$80), and is available with either a tiger or panda theme. However if you have an existing Echo smart speaker in your home, including an Amazon Echo (2020), Amazon Echo Dot (2020) and even the Amazon Echo 1st generation, you can enable Amazon Kids on Alexa through the Alexa app. If your child has a subscription to Amazon Kids+, which offers unlimited access to child-friendly audiobooks, apps, games and tv shows, this can also now be used on any Amazon Echo smart speaker – although only content that’s audible rather than visual will be available.
