*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).
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
