Thankfully, there are some really impressive video chat apps that cater especially to kids and parents. These are the best video chat apps for kids that will keep them protected and entertained. Not to be confused with our choices for best free video conferencing apps. Child: Mother, Father, I would like to formally request the privilege of adding my friend Clancy to my Facebook Messenger Kids app. You: Hmm . . . I’ve heard about this Clancy fellow. All right! I’ll allow it. Here’s the code you need. Child: Bless you, parents. Wouldn’t it be nice if all of our child-parent interactions went down like this? As the parent on the Messenger Kids account, you have control of a passcode that your child can send to friends to add them as a contact. The friend enters that passcode and voilà, your kid and their friend can chat. As long as you vet the person your child wants to add to their account, you won’t need to worry about randos sneaking into your child’s contacts. You can just keep on scrolling through the app like you would scroll through your social media feed—it’s essentially endless. (Though the limited version gives you only 15 books a month.) Books are organized well and categorized by genre or author. Both participants in a video chat need to have a decent internet connection for the video chat to run smoothly, and you can at least make sure that your connection is solid at home. We recommend an internet plan with 25 to 50 Mbps download speeds at a minimum. But if your family is larger and all online together, you’ll want to aim closer to 100 Mbps or more. What are the video chat apps for kids?
Best parental controls: Facebook Messenger Kids offers the most features for parental controls that we’ve seen. Our favorite standout feature is Sleep Mode, which doesn’t allow your child to access the app when they’re supposed to be sleeping. Best user experience: JusTalk Kids is a free videoconference app that won’t even advertise to your child. It’s not quite as feature-rich as Facebook Messenger, but at least you don’t need to worry about sketchy ads popping up. Best performance: Google Family Link is a wonderful tool that’s easily integrated with a family that uses Gmail. The video chat feature (Google Hangouts) isn’t designed to be kid-friendly, but you can control everything your child has access to from your Gmail account. Best for reading books: Caribu is the best video chat app for reading books with your kids. It offers a free version with 15 books a month, or you can upgrade and get access to thousands of books to read together.
What’s your child’s favorite video chat app? Are you ever concerned about their security while they use video chat apps? Let us know in the comments below.
