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Originally Posted by SmokeAndMirrors
To be honest, I'm not sure going with an ad-supported version is the best idea. If those ads frequently pull in adults, they'll be even more effective on a child. Kids are subjected to way too much advertising these days as it is.
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Easy fix for that: don't connect the Kindle to an Amazon account. My daughter has a Kindle, but no open account. We buy books at multiformat stores & download them through the computer. And she reads a lot of fanfic.
Otherwise, hook up the account so the kid can get freebies from Amazon and send things through the free email conversion, but don't connect a credit card to it. No account money = no buying based on the ads.
However, I suspect the ads are very much NOT targeted at pre-teens; this isn't like afternoon TV shows that expect a 9-year-old audience. In order to have an Amazon account, someone has to be old enough to have a credit card & sign a contract; advertisers won't be aiming at people who *might* be loaned a Kindle but don't have any buying power through it.
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I think kids these days are better with electronics than we might give them credit for. You know your kid better than anyone here - but he doesn't sound excessively careless by your own account. And being of such a tech-immersed generation, and if he loves reading, I think there's a real good chance he'll handle it well.
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This sounds good, with the caveat that any child can be careless for a moment, and that can wind up with a dead Kindle. OP should be braced for the possibility of wanting to replace a broken device because the child may just not realize in what ways it's fragile.
Adults can deal with "it's fragile; if you break it, I'm not replacing it." Kids who accidentally mishandle a device in the first two weeks they have it, and lose it because of that, are prone to drawing the conclusion that such devices are more trouble than they're worth, rather than that they should be more careful--because they *were* being as careful as they knew how to be. They just don't have enough general experience yet to know which actions need extra attention when they're told to "be careful with this."