Chill, parents. Amazon's new dashboard will let you see the content your kids are consuming.
Hey parents, great news! Thanks to Amazon's latest product you can feel slightly less guilty about leaving your child alone with technology instead of spending time with them.
The company's new Parent Dashboard is allowing families to easily monitor the content their children consume and interact with via daily activity reports. It means parents can work, chat on the phone, or just take some much needed relaxation time while still knowing what their kids are up to. The dream.
According to a press release, the Parent Dashboard, released on Wednesday, will be available for free to all Amazon FreeTime users through parents.amazon.com.
The new feature will allow parents to gain additional insight on how many minutes children are using a tablet and what portion of that time was spent reading books, watching videos, playing in an app, or browsing online, which will help them better manage time limits and educational goals, and ensure their kids are viewing age-appropriate content.
"As kids learn and play more independently with their tablets, we want to provide parents with more ways to join in that digital discovery," said Kurt Beidler, Amazon's Director of Kids & Family.
To further achieve this goal, Amazon also introduced a Discussion Cards feature in the dashboard, which allows parents to gain additional insight into specific FreeTime books, videos, and apps their children are using.
The cards, written by Amazon Content Editors, provide parents with a summary and sample questions about select content, which they can use to better connect with their child and become more familiar with their interests. Essentially, they're helping parents become more involved and maybe even upping their cool level.
"Discussion Cards also offer ideas for real-world activities families can do together, like participating in community service or working on an art project — all inspired by what kids are doing in FreeTime," Beidler said.
So hopefully the new features will put a social spin on technology and maybe encourage some ~fun~ parent-child bonding.
Topics Amazon Family & Parenting
Nicole is a Senior Editor at Mashable. She primarily covers entertainment and digital culture trends, and in her free time she can be found watching TV, sending voice notes, or going viral on Twitter for admiring knitwear. You can follow her on Twitter @nicolemichele5.
