Amazon’s kid-friendly FreeTime subscription service is making its way to Google Play. If you’re not familiar with FreeTime, it consists of a curated selection of books, videos, games, and apps handpicked for children. Parents can sign up for the FreeTime Unlimited service for $5 a month — or $3 for Prime subscribers — and give their kids access to all that content, or opt for the free version, which simply houses approved YouTube videos and links.
Prior to this, FreeTime was only available on Amazon’s own hardware: Kindle e-readers, Fire tablets, and the Fire TV media player. The expansion to Android comes just weeks after Amazon rolled out a new Parent Dashboard to the service, allowing parents to check in on their child’s activity within the app over the past 90 days. The Dashboard can break down how much time has been spent on each media type, such as books versus games.
Parent Dashboard also introduced a new tool called Discussion Cards, which take the form of little chat bubbles that pop up within content to provide parents with plot summaries, questions, and other handy information. The idea is that a parent can keep up with their child as they read a book, for example, and be able to strike up a meaningful discussion about it.
FreeTime is designed for children between the ages of 3 and 12, and Amazon makes it clear the information collected on children’s media consumption isn’t used for advertising purposes.
“Parent trust is important. We only store what we need to store,” Kurt Beidler, Amazon’s director and general manager for FreeTime, told Digital Trends in April. “We’re not using it to advertise to parents — we make no attempt to upsell.”
All of FreeTime’s features from Amazon’s devices are making their way to the Google Play version, along with Parental Controls so you can set a limited amount of time your child can engage in certain types of content. Amazon is currently offering a month free for parents and kids who would like to try FreeTime for themselves.
