The latest iteration of the Kindle Fire has recently been announced, and it comes with a free parental controls feature called FreeTime. FreeTime allows parents to customize what their child is allowed to view on the Kindle. Limitations include which apps are visible, limiting access to system settings, and limitations on music, movies and TV shows based on their ratings. Once the feature is turned on, the screen turns blue, and the fonts and icons change to a “kid-friendly” version. Parents can set time limits for individual apps, so that a child might only be allowed to use Facebook for 4-5 pm, but could use the e-book reader at any time during the day. FreeTime also could be used to limit video watching to only 1 hour a day.

FreeTime allows for multiple profiles to be set up, this means each child can have their own customized profile and settings. Although it lacks content filtering for Internet content, FreeTime is a good tool for managing the time spent and apps used by your children on the Kindle Fire.

FreeTime is only available on the new versions of the Kindle Fire HD tablets and Amazon has not given any indication that the older Kindle Fire tablets will be updated to the new feature.

As far as we know, Amazon is the only major Android tablet manufacturer to offer this type of control to parents. As soon as I can get my hands on one, I will put together a full tutorial on using the Kindle Fire controls and Net Nanny for Android software together. This should be a great combination that allows parents to manage both the tablet and the Internet content together.

I work for ContentWatch and all opinions expressed here are my own.