Facebook is launching a messenger app for kids. Bell + Ivy Co-Founder and CEO, Cynthia Johnson, explains how the social media giant is trying to gain more early adopters.
The app, "Messenger Kids," allows children between ages six and 12 to send texts, messages, and videos to a list of parent-approved contacts. Facebook says there will be no advertising on this platform, and only data it will collect from the kids is their names. But still, some parents are concerned.
Johnson says the best way to create customers for life is to get them when they are young. So while launching this app for kids in one way, Facebook is open to evolving it in new ways in the future, says Johnson. Facebook's advantage is the wealth of information it contains in its network, she adds.
Fresh off of receiving an innovation award at ShowStoppers @ CES 2022, Iasha King, co-founder of SOLO Secure joined Cheddar to explain how its platforms, the GoSOLO app and the SOLO Backpackpacker device, helps improve personal safety for users. "People just don't know what's going on around them, so it's very important that you're using smart technology to provide them with what's going on," she said. "For example, if there has been an increase in robberies in a neighborhood, that's something that our technology would inform a user."
Ellen Fitzsimmons-Craft, assistant professor of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine, joins Cheddar News to discuss how chatbots can help prevent eating disorders and the research that uncovered these findings.
Markets closed the day mixed, and well off their lows of the day following a market meltdown earlier in the session. The Nasdaq staged a comeback late in the day, even amid ongoing worries about the Federal Reserve raising interest rates. Doug Flynn, certified financial planner and co-founder of Flynn Zito Capito, joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss the markets' close and what's driving the major indexes.
