*By Christian Smith*
A recent report claiming that kids shouldn't have more than two hours of daily screen time has sparked a debate among parents and scientists, but the man in charge of Amazon's family and kids division thinks the debate is more nuanced than the study may suggest.
"All screen time is not created equal," Kurt Beidler, general manager of kids and family at Amazon ($AMZN), told Cheddar. "There's lots of wonderful things kids can do online, and we try to bring those experiences to kids."
The study published in [The Lancet](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanchi/article/PIIS2352-4642(18)30278-5/fulltext) found a correlation between screen time and mental cognition. However, it didn't prove that increasing screen time decreased mental capacity.
To help parents monitor their child’s activity online, Amazon developed FreeTime ー a suite of parental controls for screen time, content prioritization, and data security.
The software launched in 2012 and enables kids to safely surf the web on devices like the children's edition of the Fire tablet, which includes over 20,000 e-books, videos, apps, and games tailor-made for a younger set.
Many parents are concerned with giving their kids access to an unfettered internet ー especially given the recent data hacks on platforms like Facebook ($FB) ー so Amazon built in a data security safeguard.
"Kids can do whatever they want in FreeTime Unlimited, and to the extent parents aren't comfortable with them doing that, they can see what the kids are doing, and they can delete that data if that's not something that they're comfortable with," Beidler said.
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/how-amazon-is-helping-parents-monitor-their-kids-activity-online).
Seth Schachner, Managing Director at Strat Americas, talks Disney's taking control of Hulu, Warner Bros. and Discovery's split and how if affects the viewers.
The Tony Awards on Sunday lured 4.85 million viewers to CBS, its largest broadcast audience in six years. CBS says Monday that Nielsen data shows the telecast — hosted by “Wicked” star Cynthia Erivo — scored a 38% increase over last year’s 3.53 million viewers. That’s the largest audience for the Tonys since 2019, when the telecast that year nabbed 5.4 million viewers and “Hadestown” was crowned best new musical. The latest version also had to compete with the second game of the NBA Finals, between the Thunder and Pacers,
After stumbling out of the starting gate in Big Tech’s pivotal race to capitalize on artificial intelligence, Apple tried to regain its footing Monday during a developers conference that focused mostly on incremental advances and cosmetic changes in its technology.
Six weeks before UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was gunned down outside a Manhattan hotel last December, Luigi Mangione mused about rebelling against “the deadly, greed fueled health insurance cartel” and expressed that killing the executive “conveys a greedy bastard that had it coming."
Shaquille O’Neal and Allen Iverson once clashed on the court in the 2001 NBA Finals, but now the basketball legends are joining forces to revive the Reebok brand they helped make iconic.
