*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).
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