Amazon’s Alexa-enabled devices are an essential part of every smart household. Since the Echo’s launch in Canada back in 2017, the adoption of Alexa-enabled smart home devices has been on an uptrend, and families with kids love using the device.
When kids see their parents using the Echo to turn on lights, call friends and family or even ask answers to questions, their curiosity naturally rises. This abundance of information and knowledge can be beneficial for children to learn new things, but this is also worrisome for parents.
There are existing Alexa skills for kids, but parents want more parental control over what their children are looking at and for.
While gadgets like Amazon Fire tablets for kids have made parents worry less, the same doesn’t translate to other Alexa devices.
With new Voice Profiles, parents can teach Alexa what their children sound like, ensuring that whenever the kids ask a question or request a task, Alexa can recognize the voice and give an appropriate kid-friendly reply and suggest suitable apps, songs, stories, games or other parent-approved content.
Let’s say for example your child asks an Echo to play Better Now by Post Malone. Alexa would automatically recognize that the voice isn’t an adults, and will play the clean version of the song.
Parents can also set bed timings, or timings to pause the Echo in certain situations like for dinner, or when your kid is doing homework. Further, a range of parental controls are available in the Alexa app that can automatically default to a specific music service that you want your kids to be listening to.
Through the dashboard, parents can also turn off voice purchasing and review recent activity, including voice recordings and what questions Alexa was asked. Parents can also pre-approve select contacts they want their kids to have access to, such as emergency numbers or certain family members.
As a way of positive reinforcement, whenever your kid asks Alexa to do something politely, Alexa will reply in a positive way and compliment the fact that they asked politely.
You can create a voice profile for your children by heading to the Alexa app. Navigate to settings and tap on Amazon Kids and follow the prompts.
This range of controls offers ease of mind to the parents while budding children’s curiosity and making the overall experience fun.
Learn more about Echo’s parental controls and Amazon Kids on Alexa here.
