Echo dots for kids

[AdmiralButterfly]

Thinking of buying each of my three kids an echo dot for christmas so they can use it to play music in their bedrooms. We have a family sub to Apple music - does this work through it? Also can they be set up so they are not linked - I don't want one kid blaring music into the other kids' rooms.

It Works with Alexa, yes. You just have to enable it.

You'd need to check your Apple settings I think to see if you can play different things at the same time but each Alexa will play in her own space not invade everyone else's.

We have two dots and yes you can play something on one without it playing on the other, but as pp mentioned it's more about your subscription to Apple Music, because we pay for Spotify but can still only listen to it on one device at a time. We can however have one dot using Spotify and one playing radio, or Amazon music.

Oh I had not thought of that thank you. I'll check out the subscription.

Please can I jump in here and ask about dots too! My children both really, really want one and I’m looking at the childrens dots because they can’t then access adult/inappropriate music etc.
We don’t have an Alexa and I think they play independently and you don’t have to subscribe to anything? They just play music through our Wi-Fi? Is that right? I also want to disable the ability to make phone calls - is this possible? I’d also like to make it turn off between 8pm and 7am - is that possible? I’m not good at tech… 🫣

Please answer with simple terms for Luddite me - hopefully will be helpful to other people too!!

You can do all that on the Alexa app

@Gr33ngr33ngr4ss ok, I’m not a troll and I’m not stupid but I don’t do tech. What is the Alexa app? I mean, obviously it’s an app for Alexa. But do you have to pay for it?

I think maybe my oldest child might need a normal dot if I get them (age 11) but can I apply parental controls to a normal dot?

Also, there is a cool kids dragon dot now in John Lewis!

Alexa App is just the control centre... its free. I can control all the Alexas in the house from my phone whether I'm there or not, and send messages to them.

We have no paid subscriptions on any of ours. You can set up normal ones to all the child settings... including disabling shopping!

Hope you don't mind a slight hijack OP - I'm setting up an Echo Dot we've got DD for her 12th birthday. I've currently set it up with Amazon Kids with a child profile for her, but BBC Sounds/Radio 1 won't play on a child profile. So I'm wondering if a standard account (i.e. adult) with content restrictions would be a better option. She has a phone so I think with a standard account, she could have the Alexa app too.

Has anyone with tweens/young teens worked out a good solution? Thanks in advance!

I have 12 and 9 year olds and both have dots. As with all their tech I trust them without putting kids accounts/parental controls on. If that trust was to be broken then I put measures in place. So far I've not had to! Worst my DS does is tell Alexa to fart 🤷‍♀️

@Skala123 thanks, yes I think I’m going to go for a standard account and see how it goes. With most stuff it’s more about stumbling across content than trust but less of a thing with sound than e.g. YouTube I think.

Yes that's true. Of course there's music with horrible lyrics but if you tell the kids to ask for the radio edit of a song that sometimes works!

We have sonos rather than Alexa etc. Or rather the kids have the cheaper ikea version which is just fine. We preferred not to have stuff all linked with Amazon but that's just us. You can get sonos with Alexa but can also get it without.

We have a Spotify subscription and we can play different things on each speaker at the same time with just a single subscription. It can be linked to amazon et so you can play of subscribed to music or digital purchases and you can link it to things like band camp which I like because artists get ripped off with streaming services so it is nice to be able to buy an album in digital format and play it. If you have lots of cds you dunt want then you can get an external hard drive (also good for backing up your computer and photos) and put your cds on there and link to sonos too.

The youngest is getting a speaker for Christmas so that'll be number 5 in the house.