I was in college when social media really seemed to take off, and I’ve enjoyed daily usage of it since then. That’s when I got my first email account, and it was fun to send and receive messages from friends and family, near and far.
My kids have been wanting that same privilege, especially since we live so far from so much of our family, but the Internet and social media aren’t as safe as they used to be. With spam, sketchy ads, and predators seemingly everywhere, I’ve looked hard to find a safe email provider for their first accounts. That’s why we’ve enjoyed using a one-year subscription to Kids Email Safe Email for Kids. It’s a Kids Email subscription service that allows you a great deal of control and your kid lots of fun.
It was easy to set up and get started. My Little Man was able to choose his own address, but then it got even better. Maybe you can do this with other commercial email accounts, but I’ve never seen it possible to this degree: My Little Man could choose how to ‘decorate’ his account with template options. It was more than just color scheme for the window itself, but for clipart and wallpaper for the emails themselves. It was definitely more fun to use with a colorful theme!
My Little Man enjoyed picking these out, but he’s not really such a little man anymore, even if this was his first email experience. Many of the themes seemed particularly suited for young elementary students, with colorful, cartoon-like animals or pretty, pinkish washes. He would have loved something a bit more grown-up: something that was less like a cartoon and more masculine: realistic animals, superheroes, comic-book figures, or the like. If we had longer to use this, I’d probably bump him up to the teen version of the program.
The teen version also seems pretty cool. I don’t know what sort of templates it has, but it has a simpler email ending (**@kmail.org instead of **@kidsemail.org) and has a separate log-in page. The transition from one kind of account to the other is supposed to be pretty simple, but we didn’t get that far.
There are lots of great features of the kids’ version, too, which is why we enjoyed staying in that version. There are no ads whatsoever with Kids Email, so you don’t have to worry about spammy messages showing up in your kid’s account. There’s specifically no spam, so it’s not just ads that you’re safe from, but also unwanted messages.
As a parent, you have a great deal of control over those messages. You can set up many controls that your child will never even see. You can add or delete people from the contact list, or even set it up so that only you can add or delete people from that list. You can even set limits to the account so that your child can send and receive messages only to the people on the list – that way s/he’s protected from messages from predators or other unknowns. Should your child try to send a message that violates a rule that you’ve set out, the message goes to you to be approved and sent on or denied. In this way, your child can send messages to a local museum for a research project, say, without you needing to add the museum to the list, and s/he is still protected from other, unwanted messages.
You can even set time limits on each account so that it can be accessed only at certain times of the day. If you’re having trouble limiting screen time, this would be a great way to maintain limits.
One of my favorite aspects of Kids Email was the limits to attachments. You can choose what types of files can be sent to your child’s account, making it impossible for unwanted videos or music, documents, or pictures to get through.
My Little Man also really liked one unique feature: there’s a drawing board, so that your child can draw simple pictures and attach them to emails. It reminded me of a simple version of the old Paint program, and it was fun to see what he drew.
I could see his drawings because, when setting up his account, I opted to see all incoming and outgoing messages. If your child is a prolific writer with no safety concerns, you may choose not to take advantage of this option, but I liked seeing how he was using it when he got started.
There’s another option we didn’t take advantage of, but other children might love it. You can choose to have your email read to you, if you have trouble reading it. I could see this really encouraging beginning readers to want to read and write.
While My Little Man is definitely not a beginning reader, writing is not his favorite thing to do. I was excited, then, when he decided to spend his early mornings with his account open, writing a very long story. As of this time, he’s written several ‘chapters’ of it, and I can’t wait to see where it takes him.
When we first set up our account, we had a weird computer issue. It wasn’t related to Kids Email, but something specifically with my computer – and didn’t affect My Little Man’s usage of his account on his computer at all. The Kids Email staff was on top of the problem, and they worked hard to help me resolve the issue.
Later, we had another issue, and this one was my fault – completely my fault. Despite messages to Kids Email for information, however, I have not gotten a response, even though it’s been several days. I’m disappointed not to be able to get the information I need, especially as they were so on the ball in the beginning. Perhaps with more time? **I’ve heard from Kids Email and my issue has been resolved. Yay!
Does Kids Email sound like something you’d like to try? You can – for free! Kids Email offers a free, 30-day trial with no credit card required. You can find out more and sign up here.
Kids Email offers fair pricing and price breaks for signing up annually as opposed to monthly. They charge only $38.95 for six accounts annually or $4.95 monthly for four accounts. I think that’s more than fair for keeping your kids safe online!
