if you have For kids who love to read, Amazon Kids+ makes financial sense. Access an incredible amount of books, movies, apps, music, games, and more, all for a relatively low monthly fee. If I tried to buy the same number of books without Amazon Kids+, I would soon be bankrupt.
However, Amazon’s definition of age-appropriate may not match your definition. Either way, each child is different and that is something only you, the parent, can decide. But even the most laid-back parent probably wants some control over what her child sees on her Amazon device.
This means that you must actively participate in your child’s Amazon Kids+ experience. To help you out, here’s how you can filter content and track what your kids are doing on the platform. Also, be sure to check out our other guides for parents, like Best Kids Podcasts and Best Subscription Boxes., Best STEM toys for kids.
Update May 2023: Rewrote some instructions to reflect changes to Amazon’s Parent Dashboard, added instructions for controlling audio and video calls, and added instructions to allow non-Kids+ content purchases on children’s devices Added a new section on how to navigate to
create profile
To get started, you need to create your child’s profile.
- Open the Amazon Kids+ app.
- When using for the first time, Add child profile A screen will pop up.Otherwise, please select Add child Add another profile on the home page.
- Please enter your child’s name and date of birth. Amazon uses the date of birth to control what content your child sees. You don’t have to use the child’s actual birthday. Please choose the closest one. That way, the first content will be something Amazon deems appropriate for that age group.
Here you also set a PIN number that you must remember. This PIN is required to exit Amazon Kids+ on your device. If you don’t want your child to be able to quit Kids+ on their own, keep the PIN secret.
After creating a child profile, you can use it to sign in to any Amazon device. Your child can read books on his Kindle or his Kindle app on other devices, watch movies, play games and surf the web on other devices like Fire tablets and Kids Echo Dot.
Content management
Once you have set up your child’s profile, parent dashboard Control what your child sees. Most controls are accessible through the app, but in many cases it’s easier to set up and control Amazon Kids+ through the web interface.
The bad news is that you have limited control. In Amazon’s words, there are “thousands of age-appropriate books, movies and TV shows for kids ages 3 to 12.” This is a huge amount of content and no one can scrutinize it all. Amazon assured WIRED that all content is hand-picked. Algorithms may recommend relevant content, but all pools are vetted by humans.
