Thanks, I'd not thought of a minecraft server, most of his friends play it so it could be an option for txt chatting. I'll try spinning one up at the weekend to see how it works.
Our kids do Minecraft on their iPads; the official Microsoft Realms seems to work a little better than the servers I used to stand up, especially when some of the kids they play with are using PCs and XBoxes. It’s ~$8 a month, which is more than it should be, but still not ridiculous.
The kids usually start a voice FaceTime group chat and then start up Minecraft, which keeps the voice chat going in the background. It works great. (If they are playing with someone that doesn’t use FaceTime: I’m pretty sure that the Facebook Messenger for Kids app also works)
I’ll also put in a plug for the Apple Watch cellular - we have them for the kids using the family setup. The kids then have a phone without having a phone, they have the blue iMessage bubble in chat, etc. But no camera, no bad social apps, etc. And you can have them delegate management of their address book to your phone and then set the watch to ignore everything except contacts in the address book. A side benefit is that each watch is $10 a month instead of the $30-50 per month a real phone costs.
Kon-Peki|4 years ago
The kids usually start a voice FaceTime group chat and then start up Minecraft, which keeps the voice chat going in the background. It works great. (If they are playing with someone that doesn’t use FaceTime: I’m pretty sure that the Facebook Messenger for Kids app also works)
I’ll also put in a plug for the Apple Watch cellular - we have them for the kids using the family setup. The kids then have a phone without having a phone, they have the blue iMessage bubble in chat, etc. But no camera, no bad social apps, etc. And you can have them delegate management of their address book to your phone and then set the watch to ignore everything except contacts in the address book. A side benefit is that each watch is $10 a month instead of the $30-50 per month a real phone costs.