Snapchat has announced that it is rolling out ‘Family Center,’ a form of parental controls that will let parents see who their teens are chatting with. Despite having a large teenage user base, Snapchat is among the last social media apps to introduce parental controls. Instagram rolled out parental controls earlier this year, while TikTok has a feature called ‘Family Pairing’ which allows parents to control app settings on their child’s account.
Until now, Snap’s website has only provided a guide for parents and guardians, explaining how Snapchat works, providing safety tips, and ways to “check in” with teens. Most parents would argue that none of these measures are actually actionable, and that’s part of the reason why Snapchat is rolling out long overdue controls inside the app.
In a blog post, Snapchat announced that it is launching a ‘Family Center’ hub. The in-app tool will let parents see who their teens are talking to on Snapchat without actually revealing the content of the conversations. Chats on Snapchat disappear either immediately or after 24 hours depending on the setting. At the moment, Family Center seems quite basic, but Snapchat says it plans to roll out additional features like content controls and the ability for teens to notify parents if they report an account or content.
How To Set Up Parental Controls On Snapchat
In order to set up Family Center, parents will need to have a Snapchat account of their own. Once created, they’ll need to tap the Search button in Snapchat and search for ‘safety,’ ‘family,’ or ‘parent’ to bring up Family Center. Alternatively, Family Center can be accessed by tapping the Settings gear at the top-right corner of the profile and scrolling down to the ‘Privacy Controls’ section. Parents will then need to invite their teen to join Family Center, which also means they’ll need to be friends with each other on Snapchat.
Family Center is available to parents, guardians, or trusted contacts who are above 25 years of age. Snapchat doesn’t allow children below the age of 13 to sign up for an account, so Family Center is open to teens between the ages of 13-18. After a parent sends a Family Center invite to their child, it will appear in a new chat where it needs to be accepted. Once done, parents will be able to view their child’s friend list, see who they’ve been talking to over the past seven days, and report abuse by specific accounts. In an effort to add more transparency, Snapchat will let teens see what their parents view on Family Center as well.
Source: Snapchat