Design a Kid-Safe Facebook for Children and Their Parents
Company: Walmart Labs
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
Imagine Facebook is building a version of its social network for kids, and you are the product manager. Decide which children it is for and what it should help them do, how it must differ from the adult Facebook app, what role parents play, which features it launches with, and how you would know whether it is working.
```hint Two customers for one product
A child uses the app, but a parent decides whether it is installed and what it allows. Look for needs that both the child and the parent will sign up for, and let safety shape the core features rather than being added at the end.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- Which ages are in scope: children under 13, the minimum age for the regular Facebook app, younger teens, or both?
- Should this be a separate app for children, or a supervised mode inside Facebook that a parent's account controls?
- What is Facebook's goal: giving families a trusted way to stay connected, bringing future users into its products, or revenue, and is advertising allowed at all?
- Which country launches first, given that children's privacy laws such as COPPA in the United States set consent rules that differ from those in other regions?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A goal that makes sense for the child, the parent and Facebook, and that does not rest on maximizing children's time in the app.
- A chosen age band and segment, with the reasons for treating children and parents as joint users.
- Pain points of children and parents mapped to features, with safety, privacy and parental control designed into the core experience.
- A prioritized first version, plus the adult-Facebook features deliberately left out and why.
- Success metrics with wellbeing and safety guardrails, and the regulatory, reputational and verification risks with mitigations.
### Follow-up Questions
- How would you confirm that a child's account is really approved by a parent, and what happens to the account when the child turns 13?
- Critics argue Facebook should not build a product for children at all. How would you respond, and what evidence would make you change or stop the plan?
- Which metric would you refuse to set as the team's goal, and why?
Overview: A product design question that asks you to design a version of Facebook for children. It tests choosing an age band and a goal, treating kids and parents as joint users, building safety, privacy and parental controls into the core, prioritizing a first version, and defining success metrics with wellbeing guardrails.