A pinboard for inspiration, with a messaging feature many parents don't know exists.
Pinterest doesn't chase your child's time the way the feeds do, and rarely needs a limit of its own. The phone's usual frames cover it.
The limits by age, and the moves that make them stick: Screen time for kids and teens, a complete guide.
The most important things to know
Pinterest looks like a digital pinboard, and mostly that's exactly what it is: ideas for the bedroom, the food, the drawing, the outfit. No feed nagging at you, no audience keeping score.
But the app has private messages. Which means the rule that covers every app covers this one too: if it has messages, it's social, however calm it looks. We learnt that the hard way at home.
What's positive about Pinterest for your child?
For kids who like collecting, planning and gathering inspiration, Pinterest is one of the loveliest, calmest apps there is. No comparison race, no streaks, just boards slowly filling with ideas.
How can Pinterest affect your child negatively?
The messaging feature is easy to miss, and it's the one that caught us out at home. Our daughter ended up in heavy conversations with a stranger there, in the app we'd assumed was the safest of the lot.
Searches around body, exercise and mental health can also lead to darker content than the first impression suggests, even if Pinterest filters some of it.
Settings you set together
- Messages: restrict who can send them, and look at the setting together.
- Ask what the boards are for. The answer is usually entirely undramatic and often rather sweet.
Ask your child about the app
- Which board are you working on at the moment, and what is it for?
- Where do your pins come from, searching or whatever the home feed hands you?
- Is there an aesthetic you're into right now, and could you show me what it looks like?
- What do you think makes Pinterest calmer than the other apps, or doesn't it feel that way to you?
Glossary
- pin
- One picture or video, saved from the web or from someone else's board, with a link back to where it came from. The whole app is made of them.
- board
- A folder of pins around one idea: the bedroom, a birthday, outfits for autumn. Boards can be public, or secret so only your child sees them.
- save
- The button that puts a pin on a board. Saving is the whole activity, and the algorithm learns from every save what to show next.
- moodboard
- A board that collects the look and feel of something before it exists: a room, a party, a style. Designers do the same thing at work.
- “aesthetic”
- A whole look with a name, like “coquette” or “clean girl”: clothes, colours, room, music. Teenagers try them on the way we tried on bands.
- home feed
- The front page, filled by the algorithm from everything your child has saved. Calmer than other feeds, but it follows the same logic: more of what held attention last.
- messages
- The private chat inside Pinterest, hidden under the speech bubble. Anyone can write unless the settings say otherwise, and it is the feature most parents do not know is there.
- follow
- Following a person or a board so their new pins show up in the feed. A follower count exists, but nobody keeps score the way they do on Instagram.
Sources
The whole mindset behind the guide, with the research and the open-door principle: Kids and social media, a parent's guide
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