Pinterest will warn kids not to use its app during school hours

Pinterest is testing a new prompt that warns kids to get off the app during school hours, as reported by The Verge. The pop-up warning encourages minors in the US and Canada to stop using the app and turn off notifications until the end of the day. "Focus is a beautiful thing," the prompt says. "Stay in the moment by putting Pinterest down."

This prompt only appears to kids aged 13 to 17 and only between 8AM and 3PM on weekdays. It’s a large-scale test, so Pinterest says the prompt will reach "millions" of minors. The platform says it's the first tech company to institute this kind of "proactive" feature to help kids build healthy online habits. That may be true in the world of social media, but any rabid Nintendo fan will remember the incessant prompts to take breaks in the Wii, DS and 3DS eras.

Pinterest CEO Bill Ready has also announced the company’s support of phone-free school policies. Some European countries have banned phones in schools in recent years. Here in the US, New York is close to implementing a statewide ban that’s informally called a “bell-to-bell” restriction. Several other states are in the process of developing their own bans.

To go along with this initiative, Pinterest is providing a $1 million grant to the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) to "support school leaders in creating a healthy digital culture in their schools." This money will fund task forces across a dozen states to help develop policies that “improve students’ digital wellbeing.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/pinterest-will-warn-kids-not-to-use-its-app-during-school-hours-171512379.html?src=rss https://www.engadget.com/apps/pinterest-will-warn-kids-not-to-use-its-app-during-school-hours-171512379.html?src=rss