Jump to content

Menu

Kindle and hiding adult books from kids


MotherGoose
 Share

Recommended Posts

I know there was a thread about this recently but I couldn't find. Please share if you can. Anyway, my girls got kindle fires for Christmas and I'm trying to make it so they can read their books but not mine. I've found parental controls, and they can't do all sorts of things, but they can still open any book. Do I have to get a separate Amazon account? Thanks!

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I just went through this. I still have some bugs to work out, but in the parental control area, you want to enable Kindle Freetime. What's a pain, is you then have to be the one to specifically add the books they want to read to their Kindle, but at least it works. I just can't figure out how to make it work with a Kindle book I checked out from the library for dc.

Wait a minute, for $6.99 a month ?!
Link to comment
Share on other sites

kand, can't you assign the book to one of the devices at checkout? (We have 4 regular Kindles on one account; perhaps it is different for Fires)

We have several Kindles/Kindle-apps/Kindle-for-PCs registered in one account, and while you can assign a book to particular kindles/kindle-substitutes, they are all in "the cloud" and any device can go to the "stuff in your account but not on your device" list and download it to any other device. (Even stuff of my own that I emailed to a particular device is available in the cloud to download onto another device.) So not putting it on their device isn't enough to block access to stuff - not for us, at least.
  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have a separate Amazon account (that I don't pay for prime on) that my little people's kindles are associated with. My older kids (16 and 21) have their kindles associated with my regular Amazon account. The only thing I ever buy on the kids' Amazon account are books for their kindles.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wait a minute, for $6.99 a month ?!

Amazon has two different things called Freetime. One is parental controls, it comes on the Kindle Fire. There is also a subscription service for downloading children's books (and maybe apps). The free version has a blue icon, maybe with a child flying a kite. From there you can set up a profile for each child and add which apps they can use and which books they can read.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have a separate Amazon account (that I don't pay for prime on) that my little people's kindles are associated with. My older kids (16 and 21) have their kindles associated with my regular Amazon account. The only thing I ever buy on the kids' Amazon account are books for their kindles.

 

 

This is what I did too. DD gets Amazon gift cards for holidays often, so she always has some credit on there for books. Otherwise, they almost all come from the library, and it's easy for me to manage that.

 

Edited by ILiveInFlipFlops
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On a kindle touch, you can turn off their access to the cloud with a password. On the kindle fire I use the "free" freetime. It's a bit of a pain, because I have to have the actual device in hand and "add" that particular book, app after I send it from my PC. Also I can not add free prime videos on there, only videos we "own" which I don't like.

For library books, I just added the Overdrive app to his fire and "allowed" that app in the freetime. He can check out books he wants.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As far as I can tell, you can't control it on the Kindle app on non-Kindle devices - so if they read on an iPad, for example.

 

This is one of the things I LOATHE about Kindle, honestly. None of the solutions are perfect. I basically trust my kids not to read anything I said don't go there about so I put everything in collections and made collections that they're allowed to read and ones they're not. But Kindle really doesn't want the default view to be collections. Sigh. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I just block access to the cloud so they only have what I put on their device. Every now and then I remove the stuff I accidentally downloaded to their kindles. Of course ds9 is using mine right now but I don't think he is interested in my stuff and when he is he can read it. I don't have pornography after all.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

When my kids received fires last year for Christmas, we initially tied them all together on my account so they could share apps but we couldn't figure out a way around the book issue and I borrow a lot of books from our library on my kindle.  We finally took them all off of my account and set up each with their own amazon account.  They really don't buy many apps and usually only borrow books from the library and I can still get those from my library account and just send them to their kindles if I want.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On DD's non-fire, she can only access books specifically pushed out to the kindle, not ones in the cloud. You set that with parental controls. Having said that, I did accidentally push out a mystery that I had picked up as a "daily freebie" book-that had a protagonist who's day job was selling TeA enhancers! It wasn't until I noticed that it was listed as 95% read that I realized what I must have done (this was before DH got his Kindle, so it had to be DD's). Luckily, it wasn't explicit, but I'm guessing that she gained some vocabulary words from the experience!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Okay, now I have another related question. So there's a green circle, which say "x children " which is name of device. Then there are two puppy icons that say child 1 and child 2. I basically wanted the screen to just be for the child since I don't need the device at all (seems to be set up for multiple users) and I could just type in my parental controls password when I needed to change something. But both kids show up on both devices, as well as the green circle. Is there a way to simplify things? Also is there a way for my dd to inpendently check out library books if I block internet access? I accidentally purchased a book when I went from the overdrive app to Amazon to get the book, (experimenting to see if it would let me.). Definitely don't want kids to have access to Amazon shopping! :) does this make any sense?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...