kindle fire for kids?

A co-worker asked me about my Kindle Fire the other day because someone recommended it to him as a device that would be a good alternative to the more expensive iPad. Apparently his kids (ages 10 and 8) have seen their one of their friends playing with an iPad and wanted one. The ten year old actually ended up getting a little Netbook recently, but the eight year old was interested in a tablet.

I was a little torn on this one. I gave him my Fire to handle and answered all the questions he had, but the more we talked the more I was not so sure that the Kindle Fire would be a good thing to give to a kid. He wanted something for road trips to play games and watch videos. OK, there are plenty of Android games you can get through the Amazon App Store even though it's cut off a bit, but videos...well, the Kindle Fire is excellent for *streaming* video. Not so much when it comes to loading up your limited 2 GB with downloaded videos for a long road trip. To be honest, I haven't even spared my Kindle Fire a thought when I wasn't near wifi. 

He also asked about Parental Controls which I thought would be another pretty huge issue. The only control parents have is turning the wifi on and off which is only sort of useful and I think would become extremely annoying having to go back and forth just to stop your kid from downloading things you don't want them to download. Which leads to the biggest problem - your Kindle Fire has to be connected to an Amazon account. One with a credit card. One that your kids could charge up insane amounts of content on purposefully or accidentally. I am fairly certain you can't just use a dummy account with no credit card info, since you get a receipt for every single purchase, even the free stuff. 

Is the iPad better for kids? Does it have better parental controls? Do you have to have a credit card associated with it? I'm curious now. Sure, it costs $300 more, but you might lose that much anyway in rogue Kindle store purchases! 

I think he ended up sold on the neatness of the Kindle Fire and, like most current owners, was still interested in it just based solely on how cheap it is for what you get. I'm just not convinced this is a device that you would actually want to hand children. To me it seems more useful for someone who wants to get a device to read books on anyway and they just step it up the 50 or so extra bucks for a tablet because at that price, why not?

Haha, if I had to pick two words to describe my Kindle Fire experience or why I think people buy them it would definitely be "why not". 

Not that I don't enjoy the hell out of my Kindle Fire (saves me using up my phone battery!) but I doubt it is a good idea to hand it to your young child unless you're sure you have a pretty damn responsible child. One who loves wifi. 

In related news, after I was done answering his questions he revealed to me that while he was on vacation in Hawaii he and his wife discovered Macadamia Nut Hershey's Kisses! You apparently can't get them anywhere BUT Hawaii! He gave me some for helping him!

Spoiler Alert: They are awesome!